The miserable living and economic situation of the Iranian people is so bad that these days it is the subject of a choir of confession in the state media and the regime’s experts. But when it comes to the causes of this issue, at least within Iran’s executive system, the root of the problem is sought outside the mullahs’ regime, and specifically sanctions. The regime’s president, Hassan Rouhani, has said many times that whatever you could, shout at the White House.
But what is the reality and how much of the problems of the Iranian people are due to sanctions, and if there were no sanctions, would the Iranian people not have economic problems? Before these sanctions, would the Iranian people have lived in luxury?
The issue of the sanctions has become so controversial that the regime’s officials have repeatedly admitted that the main problem is internal and resulting from plundering, because theft and looting is a special feature of the mullahs’ regime.
In the current situation, before the regime’s presidential election, revelations about people’s poverty and state corruption are two issues which have escalated. And internal factions expose each other’s thefts every day and shed crocodile tears for the people.
For example, the statement of the Speaker of the Parliament, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, caused a scandal by exposing years of astronomical thefts and corruption.
In a dispute with Hassan Rouhani, he acknowledged blatant theft of the annual budget, saying, “Our budget structure is flawed. You see, this year the budget structure is the same as we recorded in the budget bill, which means that the gap between the increase in revenues is 46%, i.e. expenses, revenues are 10%, i.e. 36%” (Khabar TV, 24 January 2021).
Qalibaf sheds crocodile tears for the people in a situation where one of his deputies named Issa Sharifi has been sentenced to 20 years in prison these days, but why?
The state-run Khabar Fori website wrote on 24 January 2021: “Issa Sharifi was sentenced by a court.”
The question is, what did this Issa Sharifi, who was one of Qalibaf puppets, do?
He stole 5,000 billion, but only paid 480 billion tomans, which means that less than 10% of what was stolen was taken from him.
Some 90% of the looted money remains in the hands of the same thief, although that 10% went from one thief to another too.
Issa Sharifi was Qalibaf’s deputy for 16 years and has been one of Khamenei‘s IRGC air force chiefs for many years.
The 5 trillion tomans that he has stolen is equal to the salaries of 2.5 million workers who receive a monthly salary of 2 million tomans.
These days when Qalibaf is boasting about the increase in people’s subsidies, the theft of only one of his deputies is equal to the one-year subsidy of 9.26 million people receiving subsidies from Iran.
But really, how much of the misery of the Iranian people is due to the theft and taking of people’s property by the mullahs’ regime, and if we add up these thefts, how much of the economic problems that the people are facing would be solved?
Is it true that 70% of economic problems are caused by so-called mismanagement? And if it is real, what is its percentage?
These questions remain unanswered in the regime, but the reality is that the cause of all the economic problems of the people is due to the plunder of wealth of the Iranian people by regime officials.
The issue of mismanagement, which is raised in the gang war, is to deprive the integrity of the government of looting and plunder of resources and property of the Iranian people.
When talking about the regime’s actions in the economic, social, security and other fields, the use of terms such as mismanagement and misconduct reduces the burden of the predatory and criminal actions of the leaders of this regime.
This regime, in its entirety and with all its factions, gangs and all its ministries, is involved in looting and plundering the property of the people like a mafia.
To get a small picture of the looting of people’s property by the leaders and members of this system, it is necessary to point out some of the embezzlements and thefts that have been revealed so far.
During the factional feuding and the war on the looting of people’s property in recent years, the media of both factions exposed a corner of the thefts and embezzlements of the leaders and members of the government.
What has become media about these embezzlements. The sum of these embezzlements since 1992 amounts to 30.167 billion dollars.
Naturally, this level of embezzlement is part of what has been looted from the property of the people for more than 40 years and stolen from the pockets of the Iranian people.
Akbar Turkan, a former deputy oil minister, admitted that when oil prices rose, the ninth and tenth governments’ oil revenues reached $531 billion.
The media admitted that in 2017 alone, Rouhani sold more than $40 billion in oil.
None of this money was spent on the people. It was spent on both terrorism and the mullahs’ proxy groups in the region and in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, or it flowed into the pockets of the rulers and the mullahs and their children.
In many of these embezzlements, Khamenei’s institutions, and specifically the Revolutionary Guards and the regime’s leaders, were involved.
