Iran International
Pasta, the rice of the poor, disappeared from many supermarket shelves in Iran this week or is sold only in smaller quantities after its price suddenly tripled.
In the past few decades, pasta has gradually replaced expensive rice in the diet of lower-income Iranian families. The tripling of the price of pasta announced this week may make it unaffordable to many, critics say.
The price hike is a result of a government decision to scrap the subsidy for imported wheat, flour and other essential items. The higher cost of flour is also affecting a wide variety of breads, cakes and pastries including children's snacks, fast food such as hamburgers and sandwiches, and even the traditional noodles used for making a thick noodle soup called ash-e reshteh. The soup is often served as a main course.
The Student Basij, a pro-government student union, warned President Ebrahim Raisi Thursday that the abrupt end to the flour subsidy could cause unrest. "The society is not prepared for this level of price increases and this level of disorganization in its execution," the union said in a letter to Raisi and urged him to "speak candidly to the people" to explain the reasons, and the measures that will be taken to prevent too much pressure on vulnerable families.
The cost of flour, since the announcement of the new measures on May 1, has hiked to around 160,000 rials a kilo, around 60 US cents. The same flour used to be sold for 27,000 rials (less than 10 cents) last week. It is expected to further rise to around 184,000 (65 cents).
The average monthly salary of a worker with two children, including child and housing benefits, has been set at around 64,300,000 rials (around $230).
People's income should be at international levels, "calculated in dollars, not worthless rials," if the cost of living is the same as in other countries, Jalil Rahimi, a lawmaker, tweeted Tuesday. "Let's not test people's patience. The threshold of people's patience is at the lowest possible level in years," he warned.
The price of traditional flatbreads such as barbari, sangak, and lavash will not be affected as the government says it will continue to subsidize them but instead of subsidizing flour, it will pay a cash handout directly to the consumers.
Non-traditional breads such as baguettes and hamburger buns will, however, not be subsidized anymore. These types of bread are also widely consumed by Iranian families. The higher cost of these breads is likely to badly affect fast food joints and sandwich shops. A hamburger bun now costs several times as much as a burger at a fast-food place only a few years ago, social media users say.
The government claims it has made elaborate plans to ensure traditional flatbreads cost the same as before to consumers although bread at the subsidized rate will be rationed.
The plan has yet not been fully explained by the government, but some lawmakers have said that at bakeries people will pay the same price as now for their ration of bread with registered debit cards to which the government pays cash handouts.
But bakers will not take the brunt, the government says. They will be reimbursed for the difference in the cost of flour based on their sales figures. For anything above their family's rations, people will have to pay the full price.
Tabnak news website said Thursday the total cost of basic food items on average hasnow increased by 200 percent and criticized the government for announcing the hike in flour prices during the long Eid al-Fitr holiday. The announcement has shocked the society, it said.
While the assumption behind the idea of creating a consolidated conservative government was to make it agile and efficient, even supporters of the government say a hardliner president and parliament have been unable to feed the people.
In recent weeks, prices of essential food items, such as cooking oil, flour and sugar have at least doubled.
According to moderate conservative Khabar Online, what was initially a dream, has become a challenge for the Islamic Republic. The heavy political cost of consolidation, wrote the website, fell on the shoulders of everyone including those who had designed the new system in which the main criterion for appointment of government officials is their loyalty to a single political group.
That group has one single trait and that is loyalty to the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The process started with facilitating a landslide victory for hardliners in the 2020 parliamentary elections and completed by doing the same in the 2021 presidential election, mainly by eliminating all the candidates that were not part of the hardliner conservative camp. Later in 2021, Khamenei appointed a well-known hardliner as Judiciary Chief, completing the handover of all power to loyal hardliners who soon got rid of anyone in the government who was not in their camp.
The keyword throughout the entire process was "change." And what was to be changed was presumably the worsening economic situation. However, ten months later, government officials including the president still blame "those who created the current situation.”
However, few openly say that the economic crisis, reflected in rapidly increasing food prices, is to an extent the result of sanctions imposed by the United States that can only be lifted if Khamenei agrees to resolve Iran’s nuclear dispute with the West.
Analysts coming from various political factions, even those at the IRGC-linked Fars news agency were saying that "the root cause of the country's problems was corruption, coupled with plundering of national resources by a well-connected few." They also thought a consolidated government can put an end to all that by getting rid of political rivalries.
But rivalries did not end. Last week, Majles Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf suggested that the controversy about his family's luxury shopping in Turkey was engineered by his political rivals with the assistance of some intelligence agencies. Later in the week, a letter signed by 233 out of the 290 lawmakers was sent to Khamenei expressing support for Ghalibaf. This week, several lawmakers complained that the letter was supposed to be containing a pledge of allegiance to Khamenei and that they were not told it was to express support for Ghalibaf.
Meanwhile, while Raisi had promised to form a non-factional cabinet, he chose nearly all his ministers from among the ultraconservative Paydari Party and the officials of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's cabinet. The parliament also became divided into at least four factions of Paydari, Ahamdiejad's men, Ghalibaf's neo-con aides and traditional conservatives.
Former lawmaker Gholam Ali Jafarzadeh Imanabadi has said that the government has failed and now those who engineered the consolidated system should be held accountable. Some lawmakers includingMostafa Reza Hosseini Ghotbabadi have gone further and called on parliament to table a motion to unseat the President for incompetence. Ghotbabadi said that the Majles has been mulling the idea of Raisi's incompetency at least twice in recent months.