Where is Iran’s wealth spent?

Where is Iran’s wealth spent?

Where is Iran’s wealth spent?

Reporting by PMOI/MEK

Iran, May 30, 2020—With seven percent of the world's natural resources, Iran is one of the richest countries in the world. Accordingly, Iran only has one percent of the world's population, which means the Iranian people should have seven times the average welfare in the world and make more economic progress. But the reality of the Iranian people’s everyday lives in no way reflects these numbers.

The Iranian economy suffers from inflation, unemployment crisis, high prices, job insecurity, and hundreds and thousands of economic and social problems.

The question is, where is Iran's capital spent that causes so much suffering for the Iranian people?

On May 20, the state-run Etemad Online news website quoted Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, former MP from Kermanshah and member of the Majlis Security & Foreign Affairs Commission, as saying: “We may have given $20-30 billion to Syria.”

“When I went to Syria, some complained that I had caused expenses, but I will say this again: We may have given $20-30 billion to Syria. The money of this nation was spent there,” Falahatpisheh said.

This, of course, is not the regime’s entire expenses in Syria. For nine years, Tehran has had an active role in Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s war against the Syrian people. The Iranian regime has sent about 80,000 Afghan, Pakistani, and Iraqi mercenaries to this country and paid them approximately $9 billion in wages.

The regime’s expenditures on ammunition and weapons in the Syrian war are skyrocketing. Add to this the expenses of Tehran’s intervention in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Bahrain. The regime has spent tens of billions of dollars’ worth of Iran’s wealth on its warmongering policies in the Middle East, which has resulted in poverty and misery for the Iranian people.

Zarif once revealed that the regime had paid $35 billion to several people to help circumvent sanctions, and “it’s not clear where the money is now.”

According to the budget deduction report, it’s not clear what happened to the government’s U.S.-currency reserves in 2017. An amount of $4.8 billion was distributed among importers without importing goods and $2.7 billion was spent for soil, dog and cat food.

Summing up the $30 billion paid to Bashar al-Assad, $35 billion paid for sanctions circumvention, and the $4.8 billion missing from the government budget, a total of at least $70 billion of Iran’s wealth has been squandered on things that have no benefit for the people.

It is also important to know that less than 65 countries in the world have a budget close to $70 billion dollars. With this money, more than 4.8 billion stable jobs could be created. The average cost of creating a stable job is 250 million tomans (approx. $14,000).

With this money 1.5 million standards hospital beds could be procured. If we divide this money among the people of Iran, each person would get approx. $875. This money could help build 6 million school classes and pay the wages of the poor workers for five years. This money is equivalent to a 30-year cash subsidy for the Iranian people. With this money, Iranian wheat for 20 years and Iranian meat for 9 years could be supplied for free. So that each Iranian would be given 40 kilograms of meat. This money is equivalent to 1,170 tons of gold.

And this is just the expense of one of the destructive agendas of the regime. The mullahs have also spent hundreds of billions of dollars on nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

When Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former regime president and the chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council, was alive, he revealed: “It is unclear what [regime president]Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has done with $700-800 billion of oil income.” Today it is clearer than ever how the wealth of the Iranian people has been looted. A fraction of embezzlement and theft that happens among regime officials would topple governments elsewhere in the world. But in the corrupt regime of the mullahs, government corruption has become the daily norm.

This, of course, will increase the public outrage and hate for the mullahs and will trigger social and political revolutions. For 40 years, the mullahs have been able to get away with incessant stealing, looting and plundering of the Iranian people’s wealth. But all things come to an end, especially when they’re rooted in evil.

The logic behind Rouhani’s coronavirus lies

The logic behind Rouhani’s coronavirus lies

The logic behind Rouhani’s coronavirus lies

Reporting by PMOI/MEK

Iran, May 24, 2020—During Saturday’s Coronavirus Task Force meeting, Iranian regime president Hassan Rouhani declared plans to resume many operations and further lift restrictions. He also claimed that in at least 10 provinces, the situation is back to normal and the government has been able to contain the deadly virus.

Rouhani made the comments against the backdrop of the continued spread of COVID-19, which has so far claimed more than 43,800 lives.

Experts and physicians as well as many of the regime’s own officials oppose Rouhani’s viewpoint and constantly warn that the situation is critical across the country, and contrary to Rouhani’s claims, there are no white areas in Iran. The reopening will only make the situation worse.

For example, the president of Tabriz Medical Sciences University said, “Current information shows that every week, there’s a 30-40-percent increase in the number of people who have contracted coronavirus.”

The deputy governor of Sistan and Baluchistan province revealed that the number of coronavirus cases has grown by a factor of 15 in comparison to the first two months of the outbreak.

One of the senior health officials in Golestan said that by April 2, 230 people had died of COVID-19 in this province while the regime’s official reports only confirm 10 deaths in the province.

As Rouhani can’t prevent the reality from being revealed, he resorts to different lies and twists the truth to justify his criminal policy of sending the people back to work in the coronavirus minefield in different ways.

It’s what Rouhani doesn’t say that reveals the truth about the coronavirus outbreak in Iran.

On Saturday, Rouhani claimed that 10 provinces were in good state. Aside from how reliable this claim is—Rouhani refrained from naming those 10 provinces—his remarks mean that 21 other provinces are in critical conditions. Rouhani’s own health ministry has stipulated that no province is in a white state.

Rouhani also claimed that compared to the number of coronavirus cases, the number of COVID-19 deaths are declining. What this means is that both coronavirus cases and deaths are increasing—it’s just their proportion that is decreasing. Obviously, if the number of deaths had declined, Rouhani would explicitly say so.

This type of falsehood mongering has a long history in the mullahs’ regime. For example, Ali Khamenei, the regime’s supreme leader, once claimed that the speed of scientific progress in Iran was 13 times faster than other places in the world. Even if true, this is again a devious way of twisting the truth. Consider two vehicles, one moving at 100 km/h and the other at 2 km/h. If the first vehicle accelerates to 120 km/h, then it would have seen a 20-percent speed increase. If the second vehicle accelerates to 20 km/h, then it would have seen a 1,000-percent increase. In this case, one could claim that the second vehicle accelerated at 50x the first.

This is the kind of logic that regime leaders use to claim that they are managing the coronavirus better than European and American countries.

At the same time, Rouhani is utterly frustrated at the constant revelations made by the Iranian resistance, which is debunking his lies every day. In the Coronavirus Task Force meeting, Rouhani said, “Some want to create mental insecurity in the country and some want to create the impression that things will not return to normal.”

The regime’s state-run media express Rouhani’s frustration even more vividly. The state-run Arman Daily wrote on Saturday, “The situation of the state is very sensitive. Social, economic, and political changes after the dangerous coronavirus epidemic will definitely affect us… We have a very limited window.”

Iran’s stock market bubble is about to burst

Iran’s stock market bubble is about to burst

Iran's own economic experts worry that the artificial growth of the stock market is a bubble

Analysis by PMOI/MEK

Iran, May 17, 2020—In recent days, the Iranian regime’s President Hassan Rouhani and members of his cabinet expressed optimism over the astonishing rise of Tehran Stock Exchange indicators. They spoke of the prosperity of the stock market and considered it as a proof of the baselessness of those who spoke of the public’s mistrust toward the regime’s economic and financial policies.

Rouhani said: “Some outsiders who are propagandizing that the Iranian people do not trust the establishment are lying and our economic situation, our stock market situation, proves that they are lying."

Previously, Ali Rabiei, spokesperson for Rouhani’s government, had also spoken about the vitality of the stock market and expressed his happiness that money and capital are going to the stock market instead of housing, coins, and currency markets. He claimed that amassing people's liquidity and pouring it into the stock exchange would lead to economic growth.

But it didn't take more than two weeks for this big government-run scam to come to an end. the regime’s own financial experts from both rivaling factions are talking about the big scam of the clerical regime that is stealing all the people's savings and assets, and they warn about these assets being stolen.

If the past is prelude, the regime’s aim is to loot people’s money and empty their pockets in order to compensate for the government’s budget deficit. The budget was predicated on selling 1.5 million oil barrels per day at $60 per barrel. But now, they are selling 50,000-70,000 barrels at a price below $10, and they’re not receiving the compensation in fiat.

On the other hand, all sources of currency earnings have reached zero, and the regime’s only source of income is to find new ways to loot the people. Previously, Rouhani's government was able to rake in huge profits by playing with the price of currency, suddenly increasing the U.S. dollar exchange rate by 4-5 times and looting up to three-quarters and even four-fifths of people's assets and the salaries of workers and employees. The regime used this money to offset its budget deficit and provide the funds needed for its terrorist activities and apparatus of domestic repression.

Rouhani's government is also looting people by raising the prices of services monopolized by the government, such as water and electricity, etc., and the increased prices of goods. Now, the regime is eyeing the stock market as a new channel to lay hands on the people’s wealth.

The Chairman of the Article 90 Parliamentary Commission said with these methods, the government has collected 5,500 trillion rials (approx. $36 billion) in two months.

The way it works is that the shares of companies and institutions that have gone bankrupt and are virtually negative in value are sold at exorbitant prices to buyers using deceitful advertisement methods. One of the regime’s economic experts talked about companies that have gone bankrupt. For instance, the share of one company that was filing for bankruptcy was worth 60 rials a piece, but through securities fraud methods, the shares were pumped to more than 60,000 rials in a short period of time, more than 100 times its actual value.

But this false growth, which is driven by the economic interests of regime officials and factions, will sooner or later lead to more poverty by squandering the money and capital of the people who have invested their funds in hopes of making a profit.

But for several days now, it seems, stock market indices have been declining and this trend is expected to continue.

The consequences of this situation are dire for the regime. Government officials compare the situation to that of credit institutions, except that if the number of victims then was about 100,000, this time the number of affected people will be in the millions. In previous cases, the regime could deny its connection with financial institutions, but this time, the government and Rouhani and regime supreme leader Ali Khamenei are officially behind this big scam. And this can trigger massive protests that will shake the regime’s foundations at one of its most vulnerable situations. 

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Iran Regime’s Latesda Involves Offloading Antibody Tests to Europet COVID-19 Propagan

Iran Regime’s Latesda Involves Offloading Antibody Tests to Europet COVID-19 Propagan

Director of the Pasteur Institute of Iranian regime, Alireza Biglari

State-affiliated media in Iran has been vigorously promoting the idea that the regime is not only effectively managing its own coronavirus outbreak but is actually helping the rest of the world to bring the pandemic under control.

On Tuesday alone, Fars News Agency claimed that 10,000 protective masks had been sent to Afghanistan, that 5,000 Covid-19 tests had been sent to the same country the previous week while 60 other countries expressed interest in obtaining those same tests, and that 40,000 antibody tests had been sent to Germany. 

Curiously, the director of the Pasteur Institute of Iran, Alireza Biglari, elaborated on this last story to Western media, noting that the tests were available for export to Europe because Iran was not using them. To the extent that the Iranian regime is testing its own population at all, it is apparently only testing for active coronavirus cases. The regime seems to have no interest in developing a full picture of the prior extent of the outbreak, even if it has the capability to do so. 

There is only one sensible explanation for this: The Iranian regime is trying to cover up the true infection rate, and by extension the true death toll, to downplay its own mismanagement of the crisis. In recent weeks, the mullahs’ regime has invested a great deal of energy into convincing its domestic supporters and foreign sympathizers that the Iranian response to Covid-19 was better than that of most Western nations. Regime’s officials such as its President Hassan Rouhani have said this outright and have used it to justify the regime’s policy of prematurely reopening the Iranian economy. 

That policy began to go into effect on April 11, when workers in so-called “low-risk” positions were ordered back to their jobs. Since then, mosques in about one-third of the country’s administrative districts have reopened, and entire towns have been designated as “white” zones, with little enough coronavirus spread to allow for the full-scale resumption of normal activities. At the same time, representatives of the Iranian regime’s Ministry of Health have warned that in reality there are no white zones, and that the continuation of this policy could cause a second wave of Covid-19 cases. 

It is rare to hear even a single word of dissent from within the Iranian regime. So it is interesting to note that such dissent has been a recurring feature of public discourse about the outbreak in Iran. In late February, when Tehran was still insisting that the death toll from Covid-19 hadn’t exceeded a dozen people throughout the country, one local official from Qom spoke out to reveal that there had been at least 50 fatalities in that city alone. 

Much more recently, a member of the Health Ministry task force assigned to the coronavirus acknowledged that the illness had most likely spread to more than half a million people. But even this appears to be a conservative estimate. And of course it will be impossible to know the full extent of the spread if Iranian regime either cannot test the public for antibodies, or refuses to do so. 

The best information that we have to go on right now is hospital records and the testimony of Iranian doctors and nurses. From this, The Iranian opposition coalition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) have determined that the number of infections can probably be measured in millions, and that the total number of fatalities is very nearly 40,000. Historically, the NCRI has been a reliable source of intelligence about Iranian affairs, and these particular reports are only made more plausible by the regime’s  preoccupation with covering up any evidence that might challenge their official narrative. 

The propaganda value of that narrative is laid bare by dubious claims of Iranian medical exports to Europe. If there is any truth at all to the particular claims about antibody testing, then Iran is beginning to shift its own capacity to other countries, allowing them to develop much more comprehensive records of their own outbreaks, while Iranian records remain threadbare. 

But unfortunately for the regime, and fortunately for its many adversaries, this particular bit of propaganda cannot progress without undercutting others. 

As soon as an Iranian outbreak of coronavirus was confirmed, the regime began exploiting it as the basis for new arguments in favor of relief from US sanctions. A shocking number of Western policymakers took those arguments seriously, fearing that Iran’s access to medical equipment would be impeded by the American strategy of maximum pressure. But now Iran is not only saying that it doesn’t need additional access to medical supplies, but that it has built up a surplus and is willing to share with the rest of the world. Besides, the regime rejected US humanitarian aid from the beginning, along with its failed campaign of covering up the fact that humanitarian aid are not sanctioned.  

Iranian regime’s officials have been contradicting themselves on this point for weeks. One day, state media declares that sanctions have had no impact on the regime’s response to the public health crisis, but the next day the regime’s Foreign Ministry accuses the United States of using “economic terrorism” to harm the Iranian people maliciously. In this way, the regime insists upon sanctions relief but also sets the stage for that relief to be directed toward projects other than managing the public health crisis, which is supposedly already under control. 

Under these circumstances, sanctions relief would only give this regime license to step up its crackdown on dissent, accelerate the spread of propaganda, and generally conceal the reality of situation that powerfully exposes the regime’s disregard for its own people’s welfare. And if Iran’s regime is truly offering antibody tests to the nations of Europe, they ought to refuse them. 

The entire international community should fully insist that Iran’s regime test people possible. And afterwards, the regime’s leaders should be expected to tell those people why, as Covid-19 was spreading to millions, the mullahs were downplaying the risk, disregarding countermeasures, and insisting that Iranians gather together in public to vote in fixed elections, celebrate their regime’s anniversary, and defy Western critics of the regime’s propaganda. 

Yet, the regime won’t do this, since doing this will spark an uprising, and makes the regime’s nightmare of downfall true.