Analysis by PMOI/MEK
March 26, 2019 – In his Persian New Year speech on March 1, Iranian regime Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei described economic difficulties as the most important and imminent of all and said: “The economy is the country’s imminent and most serious problem with the highest priority.”
Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, on the other hand, while recognizing the economic crisis, ridiculously blamed problems from past decades as the root of the current fiasco.
Fearing the growing popular discontent and misery and in an attempt to save face and pump hope and enthusiasm into their desperate bases, Iranian officials continued their quest of empty promises and blaming foreign forces and their opponents in the ruling elite.
On March 2, Iranian state-run television quoted Khamenei as saying: “While referring to senior governmental officials’ reports about the ongoing process of coming up with solutions to counter the sanctions, the Islamic Revolution Supreme Leader reiterated that officials need to enter practice and execution more seriously and swiftly and must not delay the process.”
While naming the Persian New Year the year of “Boosting of Production,” Khamenei insisted on his old plan of “resistance economy” where ordinary Iranians pay the price of the regime’s hegemonic ambitions while the few ruling elite enjoy their luxurious lifestyles.
Grandiose-sounding and empty names are nothing new to modern dictatorships and the Iranian regime is no exception. Following are the titles Khamenei has given to the past few Persian years:
- 20122013: Year of “National Production and Supporting Iranian Labor & Capital”
- 20132014: Year of “Economic and Political Valour”
- 20142015: Year of “Economy and Culture with National Determination and Jihadi Management”
- 20152016: Year of “The Administration and the People, Harmony and Unanimity”
- 20162017: Year of “Economy of Resistance; Practical Steps and Action”
- 20172018: Year of “Economy of Resistance: Production and Employment”
- 20182019: Year of “Support for Iranian Products”
- This year (20192020): Year of “Boosting Production”
Looking at all these names and considering how the mullahs managed to destroy virtually every aspect of Iran’s economy and society over the past years, the names sound hilariously right out of a satire.
As if Khamenei and his band of ruling thugs name every single year after the one thing they plan to completely obliterate next—not forgetting a touch of Islamic and Nationalist propaganda added to it.
Last Persian year (2018-2019), many Iranian outlets and officials warned about the dangers of a tsunami of bankruptcies among domestic manufacturing units.
In an interview with state-run ILNA news agency on January 27, Hamidreza Fouladgar, member of the parliament, said: “One third of small economic businesses are inactive and the remaining two thirds are working below their capacity.”
As if empty words and wishful thinking have helped previously, Mahmoud Vaezi, Hassan Rouhani’s Chief of Staff, said on the second day of the Persian New Year on state television: “The development machine of the country must not stop. These sanctions, we shouldn’t allow the country to, sort of like in the past four to five years have been developments in different provinces, numerous projects, numerous programs, these [things] shouldn’t stop. God willing, this needs to continue and generally we are all set to prioritize and focus on the people’s income and expenditure.”
One can see that the hardly comprehensible hodgepodge of dos and don’ts of Mahmoud Vaezi are just an extension to four decades of the Iranian regime’s propaganda under the pretext of Islam.
Meanwhile the U.S. is studying its options to further decrease Iranian oil exports.
Entekhab newspaper, close to Hassan Rouhani’s faction, writes: “Four U.S. officials said that decreasing Iranian oil exports to zero barrels per day is possible in the current year without putting pressure on the global oil supply.”
In a recent interview with CNBC, Brian Hook, the U.S. State Department Representative for Iran, said that said the fact that forecasts show more supply than demand for 2019 should help the U.S. be more aggressive in its efforts to take Iran’s exports to zero barrels. He said Iran is currently exporting from somewhere under 1 million to 1.1 million barrels a day.
“Last year when we did our waivers it was a tight and fragile market, but we were able to successfully balance our interests,” Hook told reporters.
“There are projections that supply will exceed demand, but those are projections. But we will continue to balance our national security and our economic interests,” Hook said.
According to some forecasts supply would exceed demand globally this year by 400,000 barrels.
Past experience strongly suggests that Khamenei naming the New Persian Year as the year of “Boosting Production” is a strong indication that domestic production will go badly south this year.
The reality is, the mullahs’ four decades of kleptocracy, nepotism, economic mismanagement, and blatant corruption, and virtually every other imaginable evil has no other solution than to uproot the very power structure and ideology that caused the mess in the first place.
