According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), reports published by Iran’s state media on September 15 continue to echo how entrenched the Iranian regime is with current crises, notably the worsening Covid-19 outbreak in Iran and the declining economy, leaving Iranian citizens to grow ever restive.
The NCRI said, “One of the subjects discussed in Wednesday’s newspapers in Iran is the Covid-19 death toll. The state media now acknowledge the regime’s engineered coronavirus statistics fall well behind the real mortality and infection rate.”
As the state-run Jahan-e Sanat daily published earlier this week, the death toll in Iran from Covid-19 is reportedly up to seven times higher than the official figures given by Iranian regime officials. This claim came from Professor Kourosh Holakouee Naeini from the statistics and epidemiology department at the Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Following this claim, the Ministry of Health seemingly changed their mind and announced that the actual number of deaths was 2.5 times higher than the statistics they originally announced.
The NCRI said, “Downplaying the Covid-19 crisis, mainly announcing engineered low statistics are part of the regime’s inhumane Covid-19 policy.”
The Aftab-e Yazd daily warned on September 15 that the worsening Covid-19 crisis, along with the internal issues within the Iranian government are leading towards ‘the intensification of public distrust of the system’, which will likely spell disaster for the regime. They warned regime officials that if the negative consequences continue, “the efficiency and legitimacy of the political system may be challenged.”
The NCRI said, “Another subject Iran’s state media only partly acknowledged was Iran’s worsening economic crisis. The regime’s institutionalized corruption, mismanagement, and misusing of the country’s wealth have caused inflation and skyrocketing prices.”
Janat-e Sanat noted that reports from Iran’s Statistics Center have indicated that since June 2019, the price of milk has risen rapidly. They gave an example of large the increase has been, suggesting that if the price of one liter of milk was 4,500 tomans in 2019, the price has risen to 12 – 14 thousand tomans, just 2 years later.
Vatan-e Emrooz daily discussed the increase in the price of a 30-egg basket. Within the space of a month, the price has risen from 45,000 tomans up to a figure between 50 and 65 thousand tomans.
The cause for the skyrocketing prices is said to be due to the high inflation rate in Iran. State-run media and Iran’s own statistics centers have suggested the inflation rate is no more 40%, but according to regime expert Ehsan Soltani, the true rate, recorded in June, was 71%. As for the cause of the high inflation rate, that is down to the regime trying to compensate for the country’s budget deficit, by printing banknotes excessively.
The NCRI said, “The economic and social crises have turned Iran’s society into a powder keg. The regime’s deliberate negligence of people’s problems and giving hollow promises continue to increase the public hatred toward the regime.”
Considering the current crises in Iran, Ebtekar daily took it upon themselves, in their publication on Wednesday, to give a warning to regime officials about the reactions of the Iranian people. They wrote, “The worrying thing is that people’s old wounds open up, and people may react restlessly. If these reactions are combined, there will be serious and fundamental concerns [for the system].”
