On January 30, Iranian regime supreme leader Ali Khamenei had a meeting with so-called “producers,” in which he praised his regime’s economic progress and complained about the fact that the people are “unaware” of this progress.
“We are disappointed that these advancements have not been explained to the people and most people are unaware of these efforts and successes and initiatives,” Khamenei said.
Khamenei tried to reframe the abysmal performance of the government of regime president Ebrahim Raisi—which the people are fully aware of—as “growth and progress” and said, “This growth and progress and the work that has been done all took place under sanctions.”
He blamed all the problems on Raisi’s predecessor, Hassan Rouhani, and said, “Sometimes, the problem was the lack of efforts from the government. In the 2010s, we did not see much progress.”
On January 31, Raisi continued Khamenei’s lies and said, “By God’s will, the growth of liquidity has been controlled. Today, Mr. [Mohammad Reza] Farzin [the President of the Central Bank] gave a promising report that it has reached 25 percent. This shows that liquidity growth has been controlled.”
Even if Raisi’s claim is real and the liquidity growth has dropped from 27 to 25 percent, it still means the regime continues to print banknotes at an alarming rate, and liquidity grows by 25 percent every month. This would be an economic disaster in any other place in the world.
But economy speaks in figures, not the claims of the liars and thieves that are ruling Iran. One of the most prominent indicators of the economy is the value of the national currency and the people’s purchasing power. While Khamenei and Raisi were showering false praise on their economic performance, the value of the rial dropped from 500,000 to around 600,000 against the U.S. dollar. This sudden spike was immediately reflected in the prices of basic products, which increased by an average of 9 percent, and the inflation rate, which stands at around 50 percent.
The devaluation of the currency is the result of economic troubles such as the growth in liquidity, inflation, and trade disparity, capital escape, and reduction of national production. But some economy experts believe that the currency devaluation is caused by the regime’s policies to compensate for its budget deficit. As the purchasing power of the rial decreases, the regime is trying to fill its coffers from the pockets of the Iranian population. The Raisi government is on a campaign to raise taxes by 50 percent to continue funding his criminal regime, which wastes the country’s wealth on warmongering, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction.
Truly, any government under the rule of Khamenei had its own share of plundering the people’s wealth and destroying the country’s economic resources. But Raisis’ government has surpassed all of them. The main indicator is the unprecedented depreciation of the rial in the past two-and-half years since he came to office. In 2021, when Raisi became president, the U.S. dollar was being traded at around 240,000 rials. Today, it is hovering at around 600,000 rials, a more than 240 percent increase. Accordingly, the prices of the most basic needs, including food, housing, healthcare, etc. has increased and as a result, poverty and misery has become even more widespread in the society. On January 29, the state-run Arman-e Melli wrote, “Today, only five countries in the world are in a more critical situation than Iran.”
But this situation is in contradiction with the reality of Iran, a country whose resources are eight times the global average and enjoys a highly educated population. On January 15, economist Hossein Raghfar told the state-run Eqtesad 24, “With the current economic conditions, the country’s officials must bear responsibility for future unrests in the country.”
