Analysis by PMOI/MEK
Iran, November 8, 2019—As protests over government corruption continues to rage in Iraq and Lebanon, Iranian officials, who are watching the situation closely, are afraid that their turn will come next.
Therefore, knowing that their regime’s days are numbered, these officials are doing their best to distance themselves from the economic grievances that plague the country. They have resorted to their usual blame game, in the process revealing more and more of the regime's corruption.
“America can’t do a damn thing,” MP Hamdollah Karimi said in a Tuesday Majlis (Parliament) session, referring to a saying of Iranian regime founder Ruhollah Khomeini. “It is our own authorities who are doing ‘damn things’ and are causing problems for the livelihoods of our people.”
In another case, the state-run Mashregh website, affiliated with the principalist faction and the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), revealed that the sister-in-law of communication minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi had a monthly salary that amounted to 690 million rials, about 50 times the salary of a worker and 25 times that of a teacher. Meanwhile, poverty and unemployment is taking its toll on most of the country's population. “This woman was born in 1986. How many people that age do you know who are unemployed? In three years, she made 23 billion rials. If you do the math, it comes down to 690 million per month,” the publication writes.
The issue of theft, stellar wages, high prices and the hollow promises of government officials to fix the economic situation has become a source of worry for Iranian authorities, especially as they are seeing the increasing outrage of the Iranian people.
"The Iranian economy is on the verge of collapsing, and unemployment among young people is increasing and turning into a crisis."#Iranhttps://t.co/QIosztZDfW
— People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) (@Mojahedineng) November 3, 2019
“With 270,000 prisoners across the country, the social divide, inflation and high prices, there’s no way we can go into the society and come out smiling,” Karimi said during the Majlis session. “The livelihoods of the people are worsening. Many of [government promises] have become threadbare so much that they’ve been repeated. The people are tired of speeches and black-and-white paintings. Political currents are trying to hide their crimes by paying bribes to their accomplices.”
These remarks only show how much regime officials are afraid of the explosive state of the Iranian society. In the past year, every segment of the Iranian society and people of all walks of life have been staging demonstrations and strikes, protesting government corruption, the economic situation and the inaction of officials. Teachers, students, farmers, truckers, merchants, workers and government employees and many more communities across Iran are constantly protesting to their life and work conditions.
Incompetence, corruption & mismanagement are more reasons why people in #Iran are continuing their anti-regime protests.#IranProtestshttps://t.co/e1CUUOUz5Z
— People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) (@Mojahedineng) October 14, 2019
And every new government corruption case that becomes revealed only adds to the people’s rage.
“The people are not satisfied with either the reformists or principalists and don’t see them as doing the people any favor,” Karimi said.
In the past, the regime tried to deceive the people by feigning a sort of rivalry between the so-called reformist and principalist factions. But it has become evident that differences aside, these two rivaling gangs are both united when it comes to preserving the tyrannical regime and its corrupt rulers, and plundering the country's wealth on warmongering and terrorism.
Try as they might, after 40 years of stealing from the Iranian people’s pocket, the regime’s officials can’t hide their crimes, and whatever they do only results in more evidence of their corruption being revealed. That’s why in cities across Iran, protesters are chanting, “Reformists, principalists, the game is over,” making it clear to Iranian officials that they reject all regime factions and only want regime change.
