{"id":21735,"date":"2021-04-14T07:00:34","date_gmt":"2021-04-14T05:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iranfreedom.org\/en\/?p=21735"},"modified":"2021-04-13T18:27:02","modified_gmt":"2021-04-13T16:27:02","slug":"the-cause-of-irans-economic-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iranfreedom.org\/en\/articles\/2021\/04\/the-cause-of-irans-economic-crisis\/21735\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cause of Iran\u2019s Economic Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For years, the economic crisis<\/a> in Iran has been growing. Officials have long sought to blame this on international sanctions in order to hide the fact that the regime\u2019s economic policies are at fault.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How else would you explain that there was not even a small let up in the problems following the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA<\/a>) in 2015, which led to sanctions being removed? In fact, the Iranian people took to the streets over inflation, poverty, and unemployment in December 2017, several months before the US pulled out of the deal and reinstated some of the sanctions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The uprising quickly became about regime overthrow, but the first protest was centred on economic and as protesters across the years have made clear, mismanagement and corruption is the cause, not sanctions. That\u2019s why Iranians broadly supported the reintroduction of sanctions, chanting \u201cthe enemy is here; they are lying when they say it is America\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The regime\u2019s lies about sanctions are being openly contradicted by the people, political activists, and even their own economists. A number of these economists even sought to quantify how longstanding corruption in both the government and the so-called private sector is damaging the economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farshad Momeni, an economics professor at Allameh Tabatabai University, said: \u201cIran\u2019s political economy has been increasingly taken over by the mafia from the end of the Iran-Iraq war until today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He noted that \u201cprivatization\u201d of government industries has only put more wealth into the pockets of regime affiliates, including the IRGC which now controls about half of Iran\u2019s gross domestic product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, from 1991 until 2019, 900 projects, companies, and enterprises worth $170 billion were moved from the state sector to the private sector. And that doesn\u2019t even account for the money from import and export or smuggling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iran\u2019s Central Bank said the country earned $180 billion from exports in 2018 and 2019, but they don\u2019t know where all the money went. The Iranian Resistance believes that it\u2019s lining the coffers of \u201cIRGC <\/a>financial institutions and so-called religious foundations controlled by\u2026 Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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