Analyzing by PMOI/MEK
Iran, March 9, 2021—In a recent televised speech, Iranian regime supreme leader Ali Khamenei tried to downplay the country’s current crises. Regarding the coronavirus disaster, Khamenei had previously dismissed the crisis, claiming that it is not a big issue. In contrast, in his recent remarks, he warned that the situation is more dangerous than last year.
Khamenei also shed crocodile tears for the people’s harsh economic problems and their struggles with skyrocketing prices. “Unfortunately, the living conditions of the people are not good today! This is a great sorrow for us,” Khamenei said. Without mentioning the main cause of the problems which is the regime’s corrupt system, Khamenei blamed some “unknown dealers and intermediaries.”
With these remarks, Khamenei tries to cover up the reality. Downplaying the horrible reality of poverty and misery gripping the Iranian people is to absolve the main causes of looting, which is the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and its hold on the country’s economy. This also shows the regime’s fear of the explosive state of Iran’s population, the majority of which lives under the poverty line.
The regime has led Iran’s society to poverty, hunger, and calamity. People’s purchase power has decreased dramatically.
A deep economic crisis, negative economic growth, a huge budget deficit, staggering liquidity growth, rising inflation, free fall of national currency value, rising unemployment, closure of at least 2,000 factories and production units due to corrupt economic and banking policies, government corruption, embezzlement, and the looting and plunder of people's wealth in the stock exchange are just some examples of how the mullahs have destroyed Iran’s economy.
Even the regime’s state-run media reveals some of the facts that portray the bitter reality of Iran’s society today.
“Iranian workers receive the lowest wages in the world. The minimum wage in 2020 was $110, and in February 2020, it decreased to $100, which is one-third of the wages in 2015-2016, a fifth of what it was in 2010, and at its lowest in the last three decades,” wrote the daily Kar va Kargar on March 2.
“The inflation has reached a point that some people can’t afford to buy bread. In these circumstances chicken and eggs are considered luxury products and the cost of housing has increased by 79 percent,” the daily Resalat wrote on March 2.
The daily Jahan-e Sanat quoted one of the regime’s economists on February 27 as saying, “In the last 15 years, the misery index (the product of inflation and unemployment rates) in Iran is triple of the global average and only Venezuela is more miserable than Iran.”
The other side of the coin is the regime’s unbelievable and institutionalized corruption and looting of national wealth, which is unprecedented in Iran’s history. The regime has plundered Iranian people’s wealth and national resources and has left nothing but destruction. Iran’s economy is totally in the hand of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and the regime has spent billions of dollars in supporting proxy wars in the middle east.
But the main question is whether Khamenei can handle the situation with deception and duplicity? Anyhow, his only concern is to prevent the explosion of a poor, outraged, and repressed society.
