Iran’s state-run media has started to admit that the country’s economic downturn is solely due to the regime’s corruption and mismanagement. Even if they continued to downplay the true size of the issue, it just proves that officials are deceptive when they say sanctions are the real problem.
According to the Vatan-e Emrooz daily, which cited data from the Parliamentary Research Center, the poverty line for four-person households rose by 165 percent from 2013 to 2019 and is expected to grow again in 2020 due to the Covid-19 outbreak.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), and the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI / MEK Iran), reported that the coronavirus death toll in 541 cities surpasses 287,300.
“Absolute poverty can be defined as the inability to achieve the minimum standard of living, and in fact, absolute poverty is the lack of access to subsistence standards in society. This is due to the difference in the cost of living in different regions.”
The Vatan-e Emrooz then went on to discuss how Iran’s per income per capita has declined in the last eight years, reaching just 4,870,000 tomans in 2019.
Meanwhile, the ILNA News Agency reported that 19 million Iranians live in rundown ghettos, reflecting how terrible is the current situation. Despite the fact that Iran is one of the world’s wealthiest nations, with many natural resources.
As evidenced by the indictment of former Central Bank Chief Waliullah Seif for embezzling $30 billion and 60 tons of gold reserves, the Jam-e Jam daily stated on Monday that “mismanagement has hurt the country’s economy more than sanctions.”
Seif was not acting on his own behalf, according to the report, and his case included a number of high-ranking officials, including President Hassan Rouhani.
While the daily Mostaghel criticized how presidential candidates could justify investing billions of tomans on their campaigns when so many people are suffering.
“In a situation where people are facing economic problems, how do some presidential candidates spend hundreds of billions of tomans on advertising? What are the factors that have caused a presidential candidate in Iran to reach hundreds of billions of tomans of wealth and spend it on his campaign?”
While addressing the regime’s president about the dire situation in the region, Kayhan, which is acquainted with the regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, wrote on 10 May:
“What evil were they supposed to bring to the country that they did not bring?” this publication added. “Didn’t they sell off the country’s financial assets and close down hundreds of factories? They did, in reality.”
“Didn’t they serve thirty billion dollars in foreign exchange reserves in golden plates to rent-seekers? They did, in reality.”
“Did they not entice the country with wheat, meat, poultry, and other imports? They did, in reality. Didn’t they set records in terms of inflation, deflation, the Gini coefficient (class divide), and disastrous liquidity? They did, in reality.”
“Did they not reduce the national fixed per capita income from above 6 million tomans in 2013 to below 5 million tomans? Yes, they did.”
As a result of the economic and social problems, Iranian society has become a ticking bomb. Officials from the regime and the state-controlled media express concern about the imminent national uprising.
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