Analysis by PMOI/MEK
Iran, April 1, 2021—Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declared in his speech to mark the New Persian Year that domestic production had been ramped up over the past year, but has this helped the Iranian people?
Abbas Davari, Chair of the National Council of Resistance of Iran’s Labor Commission, said no. His reasoning is that the goods that saw a boom in production, i.e., car tires, aluminum, petrochemicals, steel, and pharmaceuticals, are those that are controlled by the massive financial empire of Khamenei and his Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).
In 2013, Reuters wrote: “[The] Headquarters for Executing the Order of the Imam has become one of the most powerful organizations in Iran, though many Iranians, and the wider world, know very little about it… It has morphed into a business juggernaut that now holds stakes in nearly every sector of the Iranian industry, including finance, oil, telecommunications, the production of birth-control pills, and even ostrich farming. The organization’s total worth is difficult to pinpoint because of the secrecy of its accounts. But Setad’s holdings of real estate, corporate stakes, and other assets total about $95 billion, Reuters has calculated. Just one person controls that economic empire – Khamenei. As Iran’s top cleric, he has the final say on all governmental matters.”
This “surge in production” actually represents a plundering of the national wealth and destruction of the economy, according to Davari, but how?
Well, even a quick look at Iran's state-run media shows that things are not good for the majority of Iranians, 80 percent of whom are in poverty. A thousand clothing production centers closed in Mashhad, one-sixth of the paper production guild units closed, over three-quarters of production units in industrial towns closed, unprecedented closure of factories and unemployment of workers.
Davari wrote: “The trend of closure of factories continues to this day. As a result, impoverished workers go down in the swamp of poverty, and the middle class has been purged.”
Five million Iranians lost their job last year alone. Even those who still have a job are finding it impossible to meet their basic needs because wages if paid, do not rise with inflation. This while the regime has empty properties to house the homeless and money to feed the starving.
To make matters worse, the regime has a whole separate scheme that involves defrauding investors by encouraging them to put their savings into various credit institutions linked to the regime. The money is then never returned, let alone the high rewards promised.
Davari wrote: “Khamenei intends to plunder people’s wealth through deception. The Iranian people and the international community should prevent Khamenei and his regime from devastating Iran’s economy and people’s lives.”
