Analysis by PMOI/MEK
Feb. 6, 2019 – Ahmad Tavakoli, member of the Expediency Council, is the latest senior Iranian official to confess that the endemic corruption that plagues the entirety of the Iranian regime is causing a rift in the society and fueling protests.
In an interview with the state-run ILNA news agency, Tavakoli said, “When systematic and networked corruption is eating away at the bases of the establishment like termite, who would need foreign enemies?”
Tavakoli specifically pointed to the corruption among regime officials, especially after the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988. “In recent years, especially since the [Iran-Iraq] war ended, inclination toward comfort and luxury living started to expand among officials, a fact that caused dissatisfaction among the people. Dissatisfaction gradually turned into hatred,” Tavakoli said, adding that never has the people’s hatred of the Iranian regime been so profound that it is today.
In late 2017, protests erupted in more than 140 Iranian cities over economic woes and government corruption. The protesters, Iranians from every segment of the population, shouted anti-regime slogans and called for regime change. Having been on the losing end of government-run embezzlements and state-run financial corruption, the Iranian people have become fed up with the misery that their life has become.
Protesters bare-handedly confronted security forces that had been dispatched to quell the demonstrations. In many cities clashes ensued and the regimes repressive forces killed several protesters. Thousands more were arrested and dozens were killed in prisons.
But since December 2017, protests have been intermittently continuing in different provinces and reasons by different Iranian communities. The common denominator of all protests are the anti-government slogans which make it clear who the protesters hold to account for the calamities that have engulfing the country.
In his interview with ILNA, Tavakoli said, “When corruption grows, one of its results is the incapacitation of the government. This is how the country currently is.”
In the past year, different Iranian officials have given promises to address the economic problems across the country, including unpaid wages of thousands of workers, demands for better work and education conditions by teachers, water shortages in agricultural regions, mitigation of disastrous living conditions of disaster-struck regions, job security for truck drivers, refunding of the stolen investments of Iranian investors, and much more.
But so far, the only response that the Iranian regime has given to the demands of protesters across the country is hollow promises, ignorance and crackdown by security forces.
It is clear that a regime that spends billions of dollars on fueling terrorism and sectarianism in neighboring countries if fully capable of solving the country’s economic problems. But the regime’s priorities lie in spending the country's wealth to preserve its rule through the spread of violence in the Middle East and the brutal repression of dissent inside the country. And Iranian regime officials would rather fill their own coffers than solve the people’s problems.
But as Tavakoli warns, the continued corruption at the highest level of the Iranian regime will continue to intensify the hatred toward the regime. And there’s only so much the regime can do to contain that hatred through violence and repression.
