Iranians Attack, Jeer Clerics As Tensions Rise In Society

The government’s official IRNA news website broke the news of Gholamreza Shariati’s move to leave the country, while several other current and former officials have been detained. He is said to have been one of the officials backing the owner of the building in his project that eventually violated many regulations.

The Metropol twin towers collapsed on May 23 burying more than 80 people under the rubble, with 42 bodies recovered so far, although the current governor insists that the number is 38. It is not clear what happened to the other 40 people who went missing, as most of the debris has been removed.

A report in local media said that 108 construction workers were on duty in each shift, in addition to businesses that had already opened their doors and visitors to the building. These numbers indicate that casualties could have been many more in the tragic event.

Immediately after the disaster it became apparent that the owner, Hossein Abdolbaghi, a well-connected businessman, had broken multiple regulations when constructing the building, having enjoyed the backing of officials.

One prominent individual who appears to have been one of his protectors is the son of Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of the supreme national security council. Documents obtained by Iran International last week showed Mo’ud Shamkhani recommended Abdolbaghi to city authorities as a reliable businessman.

Shamkhani later denied any connections with the owner of Metropol.

But what the building owner did, was securing illegal permissions to build additional 5 floors, above the city’s building code allowing only 8-story-high structures. Metropol, which was almost completed when it collapsed had 13 floors.

The incident instantly became an example of government corruption and insider dealings by Islamic Republic officials and led to days of large anti-government protests in Khuzestan and elsewhere. The government deployed thousands of “anti-riot” special troops to Abadan and other cities in the province and arrested an unknown number of people, stopping the protests.

Abdolbaghi’s fate also remains uncertain. On the day of the incident, local law enforcement announced that the owner was arrested, but the following day, higher level officials claimed he had died in the incident and produced an unrecognizable body, which they claimed was Abdolbaghi and confirmed with DNA testing. Experts, on the other hand, insist that it would not be possible to complete a DNA identity authentication in a few days.

Rumors on social media said Abdolbaghi had left the country with the help of officials who were partners in crime, and he was possibly in Turkey. No one has been able to verify if he is dead or went abroad.

The controversy surrounding the Metropol towers is not the only scandal in which former governor Shariati has been implicated. In 2020, court proceedings in the case of an illegal privatization deal revealed that his wife tokk $200,000 in bribes from the owner of Haft-Tappeh sugar mill company to provide him cover when he failed to pay his workers for months.

Iran has one of the world’s cheapest fuel prices, with one liter of gasoline going as cheap as 5 US cents, or around 20 cents a gallon, while prices in other oil-producing regional countries is 10-20 times higher. In Europe, gasoline is almost 40 times higher than in Iran.

The history of subsidized fuel goes back to the period before the 1979 revolution, but since then the government has maintained the ever-growing subsidy, as the gap between prices in Iran and elsewhere has widened. As an oil-producing nation, ‘the government takes care of its people’ – has been the logic of fuel subsidies.

Official estimates in Iran put the total annual subsidy of cheap fuel as high as $60 billion, which is more than the country’s oil export revenues.

Now, the government is once again thinking of raising gasoline prices although officials and members of parliament continue to deny that it will happen this year. Mousa Ahmadi, a member of parliament’s energy committee on Sunday said that lawmakers and the government have not discussed a price increase, although his denial was less than categoric.

Already, in two southern regions the government has been experimenting with higher prices, by offering rationed cheap fuel to everyone, and 50 cents a liter unlimited supplies for those who want to drive more and have the money to pay for it.

A news website in Iran reported Sunday that the government has reduced the number of pumping stations on some highways, forcing drivers who need gas to buy it from road-side dellers at five time the price.

Reducing the subsidy, however, is a risky political move in a volatile domestic environment. Last time the government raised prices in November 2019, nationwide unrest ensued, with security forces receiving orders to fire at protesters. At least 1,500 unarmed people were killed, and the regime’s legitimacy was seriously damaged both at home and abroad.

In addition to the inherent risk, the government already scrapped food import subsidies in early May, which translated into an immediate jump in bread and other food prices. This led to days of protests, which were quelled by deploying thousands of specially maintained “anti-riot” troops, who used force and arrests.

The political environment, however, remains tense and the smallest incident could trigger a new round of protests among 80-million Iranians who have become impoverished over the years, especially since 2018. That was when the United States pulled out of the 2015 nuclear agreement and reimposed tough economic sanctions, especially on oil exports.

The national currency has fallen almost tenfold against the US dollar, with food prices rising by 60 percent in 2021, even before the latest decision to stop import subsidies. Some officials and even the government-controlled media say that tens of millions of Iranians have lost their middle-class status and can be categorized as “poor” because of constant high inflation, topping 40 percent annually.

But Iran’s economic problems are compounded by a growing popular perception that the Islamic Republic governing elite is just inefficient and corrupt, and even many insiders feel less constrained in recent months to speak out.

The only reprieve could come from a nuclear agreement with the US, which would lift economic sanctions, but Tehran has hesitated and the year-long talks in Vienna have stalled.

More people in Iran are concluding that the ruling regime stands at a crossroad – to solve its problems with the United States or continue an anti-West foreign policy and risk more isolation and internal dissent.

Hossein Hamidpour, who was reportedly arrested along with five preceding mayors and another five city officials involved in the construction of Metropol Twin Towers project, resigned on Saturday.

The city council appointed Mohammadreza Motavvar, the head of Abadan’s urban development organization, as the new caretaker of the municipality.

Hamidpour, who appeared at the scene of the incident in the early hours after the collapse, was reportedly beaten and booed by the angry residents.

According to reports, the bodies of 40 victims of the collapse have been recovered but an equal number of people are still missing.

Soon after the collapse it became apparent that the owner and builder of the building, Hossein Abdolbaghi, was a powerful and politically well-connected businessman who had disregarded regulations and building codes, being backed by officials, who might have had their own financial interests.

Journalists and social media users accuse authorities of covering up his escape by claiming that he died in the incident.

The collapse of the building led to protests in Abadan as well as in several other cities across Khuzestan who took to the streets to demand accountability. The incident also had national ramifications as an example of government corruption.

In a statement issued earlier this week, the Association of Qom Seminary Lecturers and Researchers on the death anniversary of Rouhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, said that "four decades after the Islamic revolution Iran's political and economic systems are still inconsistent with the ideals and promises of the revolution."

The statement accused Iran's Islamic government of being responsible for widespread poverty, rising inflation, high prices, and financial corruption in the country.

The clerics said it is odd that despite all the promises made to the people, economic and pollical crises have heightened under the current government following the consolidation of hardliners’ control over the state.

Elsewhere in the statement, citing the holy Koran, the Association of Qom Seminary Lecturers and Researchers advised the government to stop oppression and follow a rational approach.

Meanwhile, criticizing the government for what President Ebrahim Raisi and other Iranian officials call "economic surgery," and some other officials label as "a test by God," the statement charged that these are excuses made by a government which has no economic plan. The statement said that allowing naïve officials to do ‘the surgery’ is like giving a sword to a drunken man. Other clerics have asked during the week: "Why the officials think God only needs to test the Iranian people?"

The Raisi government stopped billions of dollars in food import subsidies in early May, which led to an overnight jump in bread and other food prices. Officials insisted that the ‘economic surgery’ was necessary to help the country’s ailing economy.

The statement also harshly criticized the government for its inability to further nuclear talks with the West that could lead to the lifting of sanctions on Iran. It charged that "officials who say the fate of the negotiations should not be tied to the people's livelihood know very well that their financial problems are linked to the nuclear talks."

The seminarians further said that "the current situation has made opportunists and profiteers rich while taking away the bread from the poor people's dinner table." They also charged that "the government's over-reliance on Russia and its support of Moscow dealt a big blow on Iran's economy."

Referring to the government's weakness in dealing with the aftermaths of the collapse of a high-rise building in Abadan, the seminarians blamed the corruption and a lack of accountability for the tragedy that has led to the death of at least 40 people.

The statement charged that "political and economic corruption have spread the ranks of the regime while critics do not feel secure to voice their ideas."

In another development, the Jonhouri Eslami newspaper quoted prominent cleric Hossein Noori Hamedani as saying that the state-run media refuse to broadcast his criticism of rising prices that have imposed hardships on the people.

He said, "the people wonder why top clerics do not say anything to the government in the face of policies that lead to rising prices. The people should know that clerics at the seminary offer their advice but state-run media refuse to broadcast them.

Meanwhile, Aftab News website criticized the government-owned media of adding insult to injury by ignoring the sharp fall of the Iranian currency and publishing and broadcasting strange reports to whitewash the government's shortcomings.

The spokesman of the airport, Javad Salehi, however, rejected the reports of a cyberattack, saying the incident that created long queues of passengers at the airport’s terminals was caused by a technical glitch.

Emphasizing that penetrating the system was impossible, he said the technical issue was due to a problem between the online and offline servers of the system.

Salehi claimed the airport system is not connected to the Internet so it cannot be attacked or hacked, saying the system is based on a very secure intranet.

Colonel Mohammad Haydari, the manager of the airport’s Aerial Border Control, said the incident caused a brief delay of about 15 minutes in flights.

Also on Saturday, an Iran Air jetliner, which departed from Tehran for the Iraqi city of Najaf, had to make an emergency landing in the central city of Esfahan due to a technical failure. It was the third such incident of the airliner in about a week.

On Thursday, a largescale cyberattack by an Iranian hacktivist group calling itself ‘Uprising till Overthrow' targeted over 5,000 surveillance cameras and 150 websites and online services of Tehran Municipality, deactivating the cameras and putting anti-regime content on the websites.