Iran Business Leader Calls For New Approach To Save The Economy

Based on 24 food items in the past 12 months, the report divided price increases into three categories of acceptable, alarming, and critical. The last it defined as a monthly increase of 2 percent, or an annual rate of 27 percent.

But the report claimed prices for the 24 items had risen 83.3 percent in the past 12 months. It said that “essential food items” – including the ones surveyed in October, were up more than 60 percent in October year on year.

The 24 food items included rice, chicken, dairy products (milk, yoghurt, cheese, butter), eggs, cooking oil, tea, sugar, beans, lentils, vegetables (cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes), and fruit (oranges, apples, bananas).

The prices of three of the 24 items, including potatoes, increased by over 10 percent in October alone, while five other items – including cooking oil and red meat – dropped around 1 percent.

The report was released a day after President Ebrahim Raisi's (Raeesi) live televised interview Sunday in which he said curbing inflation would be a priority target of his government.

Quoting the ministry's report, the reformist Arman-e Melli newspaper Tuesday warned "food poverty” would have “irreparable consequences.

The paper quoted Morteza Afghah, an economist at the Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, that “the income of a group of the society is no longer sufficient even for…their minimum food requirements. Afhgah said that “in Iran people become rich when they are close to politically powerful groups and this amplifies the dissatisfaction of people.”

Those conservatives who follow Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s political guidance claim that a "resistance economy" based on self-reliance is the only way to recover from the damage inflicted by United States ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions introduced in 2018 when the US left the 2015 nuclear deal. After economic growth of 13.4 percent in 2017, the Iranian economy went into recession from which it has not really recovered.

The government, including the Central Bank, have stopped publishing critical economic data, which makes it hard to judge how bad the situation is. But the annual rate of inflation is around 45 percent and the national currency has dropped close to an all-time low.

The Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) warned Wednesday that those on low incomes could no longer cut down on food consumption without serious health consequences, even as they faced rising costs for housing, education, healthcare, and transport.

"Workers have already curbed their monthly spending,” ILNA wrote. “Leisure, clothing, furniture and appliances were given up long ago. When it comes to food, they have to be content with only one warm meal, often of poor nutritional value. But can they give up what is necessary for remaining alive?"

"There were no casualties and rescue and operations forces are at the scene of the accident and have cut off the line," state broadcaster IRIB quoted the Parsian refinery's head as saying. The pipeline was shut off.

There is no independent report about the incident given Iran's strict control of information.

The pipeline carries 32,000 barrels of gas condensate daily(12 million annually) worth approximately $900 million, to the Persian Gulf cost.

Before US sanctions, Japan and Korea were the biggest customers of Parsian’s gas condensate. Now only China is a customer.

The semi-official Fars news agency carried a similar report.

Mohammad Asgari, a spokesman for the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC), said gas production was not affected by the accident, the semi-official YJC news agency reported.

Iran has the world's second largest natural gas reserves but production has not kept pace with galloping demand for heavily subsidized gas, because of lack of investment and foreign partners as the economy faces US sanctions.

With reporting by Reuters

On Tuesday, several students lashed out at Raisi for his economic policies and his administration's approach to human rights, when he met them to mark Iran’s Student Day. An Islamist student harshly attacked him and the ruling elite during a public meeting in Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology.

Mohammad Hossein Bayat, the student who addressed Raisi as the leader of the Islamic Association, told him in all frankness:“You got elected in the least competitive election in the history of the Islamic Republic, with the lowest rate of voter participation.” He added, “We are speaking to you not as a president elected with the free vote of the people in a free election. We are speaking to you as a representative of the ruling system.”

Nonetheless, the press, particularly those such as the Iran Daily, owned by the Raisi administration, pretended in glamorous reports that the meeting was an opportunity for Raisi to present a report to students on his performance during the past four months.

Sara Shabani, a student whose picture appeared on the front-page of the daily while making a point during the meeting with Raisi, wrote in a December 9 tweet: "Presenting a report to students? As the person standing next to Raisi in this picture, I wish to say that he put some security-laden labels on the students in the auditorium and told them 'To repent for what they said.' Outside the auditorium, his answers to the students' questions were nothing but insults and humiliation. Do not try to fabricate beautiful pictures and headlines."

Another student tweeted about the body language in the front-page picture: "The body language is interesting, both Raisi and the chancellor of the university are looking the other way while you are talking to him. Yet another student, Meysam, said that the entire meeting was a show for the media, otherwise individuals such as Raisi never care about the students and what they say.

The Raisi administration has already proven its naivety in the area of putting up "shows" for the media. In a video circulating on social media, his media team filmed the people in overcrowded Iranian taxis reacting to a mock radio news program that says Raisi has been killed in a helicopter crash during a provincial visit.Many of those who posted this video and those who commented on it pointed out that the video has been carefully "directed" and "edited" in a way to prove that young Iranians love Raisi.

While most of what appears to be criticism of Raisi and his administration by young people are about hypocrisy and lies, some media and politicians criticize him for his inaction in foreign and economic policies, co-opting unpopular pro-Ahmadinejad politicians in his cabinet and selecting the members of his team and lower layers of government managers from among his or his aides' relatives.

In one of the latest examples of such critiques, reformist political activist Majid Mohtashami pointed out in an interview with Arman daily on Thursday that the Raisi administration is an example of a populist governmentthat promises to build four million homes in four years.

Mohtashami said that meanwhile, the national currency has fallen 25 percent during Raisi’s first 100 days in office. He added that the president had promised a non-factional administration, but most of his men come from one hardliner group, while new faces in his government were chosen based on kinship rather than merits. This has made Raisi hostage to two oligarchies one made up of relatives and another one formed by the members of pro-Ahmadinejad Paydari Party.

Hossein Shariatmadari, who is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s representative at the flagship conservative paper wrote the commentary after the United States this week issued a statement reiterating past seizure of Iranian arms destined to Yemen’s Houthis and oil for Venezuela in international waters.

Washington also announced new sanctions on Iranian security officials and entities for human rights violations, including killing protesters and abuse in prisons.

Shariatmadari also said that these US actions coincide with the resumption of nuclear talks in Vienna, and show “the empty-handedness of America and the West” in the negotiations. He added that the United States should know it cannot get concessions from Iran by “empty promises”.

Iran has made similar threats in the past, but the closure of the strait will also chock off Iran's trade amid its current economic crisis.

Iran’s new hardliner negotiating team is demanding all post-2018 American sanctions to be lifted all at once before Iran agrees to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA.

The United States has expressed dismay at Iran’s position and has said that if talks in Vienna do not show Tehran’s seriousness, it is ready to ramp up pressure.

The option could be exercised should diplomacy fail and if their nations' leaders request it, a senior US official has told Reuters.

The scheduled US talks with visiting Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz follow an October 25 briefing by Pentagon leaders to White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan on the full set of military options available to ensure that Iran would not be able to produce a nuclear weapon, the official said on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The US-Israeli preparations, which have not been previously reported, underscore Western concern about difficult nuclear talks with Iran that President Joe Biden had hoped would revive a 2015 nuclear deal abandoned by his predecessor, Donald Trump.

No results from talks

But US and European officials have voiced dismay after talks last week at sweeping demands by Iran's new, hardline government, heightening suspicions in the West that Iran is playing for time while advancing its nuclear program.

The US official declined to offer details on the potential military exercises.

"We're in this pickle because Iran's nuclear program is advancing to a point beyond which it has any conventional rationale," the official said, while still voicing hope for discussions.

Gantz, in a post on Twitter as he departed for the United States, said: "We will discuss possible modes of action to ensure the cessation of (Iran's) attempt to enter the nuclear sphere and broaden its activity in the region." He did not elaborate.

Israeli officials have been urging the Biden Administration not to accept a “bad deal” which would leave a path for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons in the future. Any agreement now means that Washington has to drop its most effective sanctions against Iran and there would be no second chance to get concession from Tehran.

Nuclear negotiations will resume on Thursday, according to the European Union official chairing the talks, and the US special envoy for Iran plans to join them over the weekend.

Iran has been enriching uranium to 20 and 60-percent purity, with the latter having no civilian use. As the talks drag on, the West and countries in the region are concerned that Tehran is getting closer to the critical point of a nuclear break-out.

The 2015 agreement gave Iran sanctions relief but imposed strict limits on its uranium enrichment activities, extending the time it would need to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon, if it chose to, to at least a year from around two to three months. Most nuclear experts say that period is now considerably shorter.

Compromised

With the deal's nuclear benefits now badly compromised, some Western officials say there is little time left before the foundation of the deal is damaged beyond repair.

Such drills by the United States and Israel could address calls by Dennis Ross, a former senior US official and Middle East expert, and others to openly signal to Iran that the United States and Israel are still serious about preventing it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

"Biden needs to disabuse Iran of the notion that Washington will not act militarily and will stop Israel from doing so," Ross wrote last month.

Ross even suggested the United States should perhaps signal a willingness to give the Israeli's the US military's bunker-busting Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 30,000-pound bomb.

Asked about such remarks about deterrence, the senior US official said: "When President Biden says Iran will never get a nuclear weapon, I mean, he means it."

Central Intelligence Agency Director Bill Burns said on Monday that the CIA does not believe Iran's supreme leader has decided to take steps to weaponize a nuclear device but noted advances in its ability to enrich uranium, one pathway to the fissile material for a bomb.

Burns cautioned that, even if Iran decided to go ahead, it would still require a lot of work to weaponize that fissile material before attaching a nuclear weapon to a missile or other delivery system.

"But they're further along in their mastery of the nuclear fuel cycle and that's the kind of knowledge that is very difficult to sanction away or make disappear, as well," he said.

US officials have also long worried about America's ability to detect and destroy dispersed components of Iran's nuclear weaponization program once enough fissile material for a bomb were produced.

Exclusive report by Reuters