More Than Half Of Iran's Airliners Grounded For Lack Of Parts

The much-advertised interview broadcast by Channel One of the state-run television in a prime time slot had nothing new and concrete to offer, critics of the hardline president say. They allege that the interview was held in a highly controlled "green-house environment", questions were dictated by the interviewee, and it was a "monologue" and propaganda event rather than a real, challenging interview.

"Green-house interviews may shield the President from the harms of exposure to the media sun, rain, and wind. But this makes him equally vulnerable as he may catch a cold even if a small media breeze suddenly gets through a window!" Reformist Etemad daily wrote Tuesday.

The conservative Jomhouri Eslami newspaper also warned that officials of the Islamic Republic will never be able to convince the public as long as they avoid interviews with free and independent journalists.

The hardliner media affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard and ruling circles have stayed mostly silent about the TV program.

Many have also pointed out that the interviewer repeatedly sang praises of the Raisi administration and its "achievements" while posing his questions. "Niceties [by the presenter] were so exaggerated that it appeared as if an employee is paying lip service to his employer," conservative Asr-e Iran website charged in a commentary Monday entitled "This Is Not an Interview, It's a PR Talk Between Boss and Civil Servant".

The presenter only asked about the nuclear talks in Vienna towards the end of the one-hour talk, to which Raisi gave a very general and short answer.

He avoided referring to the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and only talked about the importance of "lifting of sanctions", a matter of great importance to the Iranian economy, which nevertheless needs an agreement with the United States.

The conservative Jomhouri Eslami newspaper and some other media outlets have also criticized the president for offering completely irrelevant answers to some pre-determined questions.

Raisi told his audience there was no money in the government's coffers when it was handed over to him and claimed that notwithstanding the fact, his administration managed to pay civil servants' salaries without borrowing from the Central Bank. When asked how the government managed this, he responded that the government must harness tax evasion and sell government assets such as real estate that are not in active use.

"The presenter had not asked about your plans to secure budgetary resources, he was asking how this could happen in the three months [since you took office]," Asr-e Iran website asked in another commentary Monday entitled "What Was Raisi's Response to the Most Important Question?"

In fact, Iran’s former central bank chief Abdolnasser Hemmati said after Raisi’s TV talk, that the government has simply borrowed for state and quasi-state banks and they in turn borrowed money from the central bank. He said this is tantamount to printing more money, which the new government has pledged not to do.

Tehran province governor’s office announced on Tuesday that measures were necessary to reduce pollution and protect citizens by closing all educational institutions and limiting commercial activities on Wednesdays and Thursdays each week.

Air pollution is a persistent problem in large Iranian cities, especially in cold and hot weather when more electricity is used and power stations resort to using heavy dirty diesel fuels because of natural gas shortages. Last winter, power plants had to be shut down prompting power cuts that led to some protests. The situation is expected to get worse in January and February.

Iran has the world’s second largest natural gas reserves, but consumption is much higher than in other countries while production remains flat due to lack of investment and new technologies.

Authorities have also banned operations of polluting industrial plants for two days a week and will clamp down on vehicles without a clean bill of health. Many private and large vehicles in Iran are old, using outdated technology as the government strictly limits imports of modern vehicles to support local manufacturing.

Syria's state media quoted an unnamed military official as saying that several missiles struck the containers area in the port setting some of them on fire.

The official gave no further details.

It was a rare attack on the port of Latakia, a vital facility where much of Syria's imports are brought into the war-torn country.

Syrian state TV reported that five explosions were heard in the port and a huge fire erupted in the containers area and fire engines have rushed to the port.

There was no comment from the Israeli military.

Israel has staged hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled Syria over the years but rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations.

Some of the strikes in the past had targeted the main airport in the capital Damascus.

Israel has acknowledged, however, that it targets the bases of Iran-allied militias, such as Lebanon's Hezbollah group that has fighters deployed in Syria.

Israel says Iranian presence on its northern frontier is a red line, justifying its strikes on facilities and weapons inside Syria.

Speaking in an interview with Khabar Online website, conservative analyst Hossein Kanani Moqaddam said every single one of those tiny islands has its own ruler.

Kanani Moqaddam, the political secretary of the Iranian conservative camp's Resilience Front also tried to define the conservative's status in Iran's politics by explaining that although they are in power, they lack coherence.

However, unlike Kanani Moqaddam, prominent conservative analyst Naser Imani has said that conservatives in Iran are better organized than the country's reformists, although both are more unpopular today as they have ever been.

Other analysts, including Tehran University academic Kiumars Ashtarian separates the traditional conservative camp from its newest wing that is nicknamed as "the revolutionary current." It consists of young hardliner conservatives in the Iranian parliament. According to Ashtarian, those who belong to this group are driven by their dreams and illusions, a characteristic that brings them under the general label of idealists.

However, Ashtarian believes that these young hardliners will be soon diverted to the main track of conservatism in Iran once they experience the reality of Iranian politics and come face to face with its barriers at the parliament.

Another non-traditional wing of Iran's conservative camp is known as the ultraconservative Paydari party, who are mostly former supporters and officials of ex-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Like many other observers, Kanani Moqaddam believes that Paydari always finds it difficult to be a team player. The party has been frequently accused of preventing coherence in the conservative camp by disrupting any balancing coalition at the last moment. This has been happening over and over in all parliamentary and presidential elections after the 2009 presidential election.

Asked to pass his judgment about the status of President Raisi and Ahmadinejad in the conservative camp, Kanani Moqaddam said Ahmadinejad has never been a conservative. He simply used Iran's conservatives as a ladder to climb the political structure and claim the President's seat. Once he made it to the presidency, he let down his conservative allies, Kanani Moqaddam said.

His judgment about Rouhani was different. According to Kanani Moqaddam, a former lawmaker said that Rouhani was a conservative who made it to the presidential palace by an alliance with Iran's reformists and moderates. However, according to Kanani Moqaddam, the main element that led to Rouhani's victory in the election was the bad record of President Ahmadinejad and his populist administration. The people did not want another president like Ahmadinejad, he said.

Meanwhile, Kanani Moqaddam added that Raisi's election as President has led to a fierce rivalry among conservative groups and further divided the conservative camp as every group tried to seize as much power and financial resources as they could.

On the likelihood of Raisi's success in the absence of non-conservative challengers in Iran's political landscape, Kanani Moqaddam opined that regardless of the situation Raisi is unlikely to be able to solve Iran's problems during the first four years of his presidency. However, he did not say what is likely to happen if few vote for him for a second term, or if Khamenei who engineered his victory in June 2021, concludes that Raisi should be replaced.

On Monday, the rial reached 310,000 against the United States dollar in the open market, bringing the rial’s fall to 25 percent since President Ebrahim Raisi (Raeesi) took office in early August.

"Our circumstances regarding availability of foreign currency for the country are very good and I expect the situation to improve in the near future," Ali Salehabadi, the CBI governor told reporters, in an apparent bid to calm the foreign exchange market since the latest round of nuclear talks with world powers ended Friday with no breakthrough.

Salehabadi said that Iran's access to foreign currency had improved since the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year in late March, paying for $36 billion of imports.

Salehabadi told reporters that since the beginning of the current Iranian year in late March $22.4 billion in non-oil export revenues were repatriated, which he said was a 45 percent year-on-year increase. Iran’s oil exports, mainly to China, have considerably increased since late 2020 from around 200,000 barrels per day to more than 600,000.

Iran has three government-regulated foreign currency markets, including both the exchange system for exporters and importers known as NIMA and licensed exchange bureaus, where individuals, companies and government bodies can purchase foreign currency, based on approved documentation.

The official rate for licensed foreign exchange bureaus Monday announced by the Melli Iran Exchange Company, which sets official rates daily, remained at under 279,000, at least 30,000 less than the street rate for paper notes.

The CBI governor assured exporters that there was no impediment to bringing revenues into the country in the form of paper notes and that they could readily sell foreign currency through government exchange mechanisms, albeit at a lower rate than on the open market.

According to Salehabadi, exporters had this year (since March 21 2021) exchanged $20 billion through the NIMA system, a 70 percent increase on the same period last year.

"Over $100 million is daily exchanged in the official NIMA market, 70% more than last year," Mostafa Ghamari-Vafa, the head of the CBI's public relations, tweeted Sunday.

The Iranian currency has fallen almost tenfold since early 2018, when it became apparent that then-president Donald Trump would withdraw the US from the 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and impose sanctions on Iran. Under ‘maximum pressure’ Washington threatens to sanction third parties buying Iranian oil or dealing with its financial sector, which has deprived Tehran of foreign-currency revenue.

Since then, the government has resorted to printing money to finance its budget deficit, leading to a fourfold increase in liquidity, growth in inflation, and the weakening of the national currency.