Sciences and technologies are the brain and commanding force of a nation’s life everywhere in the world, encompassing medicine, agriculture, engineering, architecture, the environment, utilities, transportation, education, literature, arts, and sports.
With these undeniable premises that none of them can be removed from the essentials of people’s lives, imagine the experts and scholars of these fields themselves becoming trapped and victimized by the regime’s authoritarian policies, such that their livelihoods become obstacles to their work and expertise.
The sign of this situation is when the nation’s elites, including scientists, professors, students, and freedom seekers, are forced to choose between staying in the country or going into exile and emigration. To escape an incompetent and authoritarian regime, they leave their homeland. The stage or process of a political regime’s collapse and destruction bears such strong and undeniable indicators, even if the regime tries to portray itself as stable and steadfast through reliance on military and law enforcement support.
The crucial difference between science and education versus the economy lies in this principle: a struggling economy can be artificially sustained within days through mass printing of money, but the shortage of thousands of professors, teachers, and students cannot be replaced or compensated even in several consecutive years, let alone one or two. This auto-dynamic punishment is currently strangling Iran’s regime, which relies on a repressive and criminal military and law enforcement system.
This situation was reluctantly acknowledged by Hossein Simaee Sarraf, the Minister of Science under regime President Masoud Pezeshkian.
On November 22, Asr-e-Iran news website quoted him as saying, “In recent years, 25% of university professors have emigrated. Some even have no intention of returning. When this trend continues, replacements will be of a lower caliber. This has caused a decline in universities and students.”
When the money that should be allocated to sciences, education, and its professors is instead spent in billions on the regime’s overseas proxies, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and the institutions serving the regime’s corrupt goals, the policies of a small neighboring country become a mirror of the disgrace and humiliation of the rulers of a geography hundreds of times larger than that neighbor.
Asr-e-Iran reported, “The salaries of professors in our neighboring country across the water range between $4,000 to $7,000, while a full professor with 50 years of experience here barely earns $1,000. Now imagine a young professor entering the university earning $300.”
This is the state of sciences and education as the brain and commanding force of a nation’s life, which the clerical regime has brought to such a disastrous condition.
The former head of the Planning and Budget Organization, Massoud Roghani Zanjani, published a report on his YouTube channel on November 21, saying: “In our financial system, the state has two treasuries: the state treasury and the Supreme Leader’s treasury. Nowhere else in the world has such a thing. In the Supreme Leader’s treasury, oil and gas revenues are allocated to the Resistance Front, while the state treasury only holds tax revenues! With a severe budget deficit, the government must either burden the people to balance the budget or print money and raise inflation.”
The difference in inflation rates among five of Iran’s neighboring countries explains the massive migration and brain drain from Iran and the various occupational and livelihood calamities faced by its plundered people. According to Bloomberg in November 2024, inflation in different countries of the region is as follows:
Oman: 0.7%
Bahrain: 1.1%
Qatar: 1.15%
Saudi Arabia: 1.6%
UAE: 2.4%
Iran: 42.5%”
These examples underscore the direct connection between brain drain and the state treasury versus the regime Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s treasury. They are among the factors and indicators pointing to the stage or process of the collapse and destruction of the mullah’ regime. Neither the previous governments of the regime nor Pezeshkian can make any headway with his rhetoric devoid of scientific and political-economic principles. Such a deep rift exists between the people of Iran and the regime that it will not be resolved except by overthrowing the regime.