Iran Warns Of Crackdowns On Online Dissent On Eve Of Elections

According to the Statistical Center’s data, released on February 24, Iran’s GDP growth stood at 5.1 percent in autumn (4Q2023).

This is the second consecutive quarter that the country’s GDP growth slows, while some sectors like agriculture as well as energy (electricity, gas, and water) have even shrunk.

However, oil sector experienced a 21.8 percent growth, thanks to increasing shipments to China. OPEC’s data show Iran’s oil production has increased from below 2.7 mb/d in autumn 2022 to 3.16 mb/d in the same period in 2023, but the growth has stopped since November. Therefore, oil production is not expected to remain a major driving force for economic growth in 2024.

Iran was producing 3.8 mb/d and exporting 2.5 mb/d of oil before the United States pulled out of the JCPOA nuclear deal and imposed sanctions in 2018.

The Statistical Center data shows that GDP growth was 7.9 percent in spring 2023, declined to 7.1 in summer and stood at 5.1 percent in the last quarter.

It is important to note that international organizations have estimated somewhat lower numbers for Iran’s GDP growth. According to the International Monetary Fund, Iran had 3 percent GDP growth in 2023 fiscal year, expected to decrease to 2.5 percent in 2024 and plunge to 2 percent in 2025.

The most important issue in the data is the lion share of the unbridled general government spending in GDP growth.

The general government final consumption expenditure value, based on 2011 fix prices, increased by 16.7 percent during autumn 2023, compared to the same season in 2022.

Meanwhile, the private sector expenditure increased only 3.1 percent, while the gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) grew by 3.4 percent in the mentioned period.

Therefore, the current 5.1 percent GDP growth has been driven mostly by government consumption expenditure growth rather than improvement in private sector or GFCF.

To put it in simple terms, current GDP growth is not based on industrial or employment expansion and does little to alleviate economic pressure on a population that has increasingly lost its purchasing power since 2018. With a persistent 40-percent and higher annual inflation rate for the past five years, millions of people have sunk into near poverty.

The main reason for higher government spending has been the steady devaluation of Iran’s currency, rial, and the ensuing higher inflation. The higher spending is not a sign of more investments or welfare appropriations, but a sign of the government printing more money and inflating its spending numbers.

The reliance of GDP growth on the oil sector and higher government inflation-related spending is clearly seen in the deterioration of people's living conditions. Even regime officials have been sounding the alarm about growing poverty and many loyalist conservatives have been blaming the government of President Ebrahim Raisi, although continuing US sanctions is related to Iran’s foreign policy decided by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Hassan Kazemi Qomi, Iran's ambassador in Afghanistan, said that the delegation has commenced work on “various projects including commercial, residential, and administrative ventures, backed by a $35 million investment.”

The move comes against the backdrop of Iran's recent measures towards Afghan refugees, including reported widespread expulsions with speculation that the latest move will see many of the illegal workers put through a formal system.

Amid ongoing border tensions, Afghans were in December, banned from living in 16 Iranian provinces.

The influx of Afghan workers, particularly in the construction sector, has faced criticism within Iran, facing allegations of taking jobs away from Iranians amid a deep economic crisis.

Iranian officials have estimated the number of authorized foreign nationals in Iran to be approximately four million, with a significant portion presumed to be refugees.

Since the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2021, Iran has refrained from formally recognizing the Taliban government. Nevertheless, Iran has engaged closely with the Taliban and facilitated interactions such as trade and commerce deals.

Afghanistan's embassy in Tehran has been handed over to representatives of the Taliban.

The mission is also scheduled to release its preliminary report on the International Day of Women (March 8).

In his address to the 55th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva on Monday, Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian accused the UN of double standards and criticized it for setting up the fact-finding mission for Iran but not taking any serious action on Israel’s killing of civilians in Gaza.

“We will not forget the outcries in this place months ago under the pretext of an Iranian girl’s death and the formation of a so-called fact-finding mission,” he said.

In her address to the same meeting Monday, the German Foreign Minister Anna Baerbock called for extending the mission’s mandate. “I want to be crystal-clear to those who claim that calling out violations is an interference in internal affairs: Human rights are universal. A life is a life,” she said.

Mahmoud Amiri-Moghadam, director of Oslo-based Iran Human Rights Organization, told Iran International on Monday that it is the outcome of the mission’s investigations that is of great significance and expressed hope that its mandate would be extended for another year.

“The Islamic Republic has always accused human rights organizations and the UN rights bodies of being politically motivated and has never been accountable to them, he said. “But the mission’s report will be a very important message to [Iranian] people who will know the world has heard them …, especially if the mission concludes that [the regime’s actions] were crimes against humanity,” he added.

The UN Human Rights Council voted November 24, 2022, to launch an independent investigation into Iran's deadly repression of peaceful anti-government protests during the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. The motion to form the mission passed with 25 votes in favor, six opposed and 16 countries abstaining from the vote. The following month, members of the mission were announced.

The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 2022 in the custody of the morality police unleashed a wave of protests across Iran that lasted until February 2023.

During the protests, security forces killed more than 550 civilians including tens of children. Security forces also blinded scores of protesters with shotgun pellet aimed directly at their faces, and tortured many of the tens of thousands of protesters that were arrested. Many of the victims also claim to have been sexually assaulted during interrogations and in prison.

In the past year Iran has also hanged nine protesters despite widespread pleas at home and abroad not to carry out the death sentences after sham trials held behind closed doors and without due process.

Despite these documented atrocities, Tehran almost immediately announced that it did not recognize the fact-finding mission and would not cooperate with it and summoned the German envoy Hans-Udo Muzel to the foreign ministry to protest Berlin’s key role in urging a special Human Rights Council meeting and the formation of the mission.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Iran Javaid Rehman said in November 2023 that the mandate of the mission goes beyond Iran’s human rights violations during 2022 protest crackdown and even extends into the mass execution of political prisoners in 1980s as well as violations of minority rights.

Members of the mission have not been allowed to visit Iran to collect evidence and speak to victims of the violence or their families. The Islamic Republic has also refused to allow UN special rapporteurs on human rights to visit the country since 1992.

Two confidential reports by the UN nuclear watchdog, sent to member states on Monday, paint an overall bleak picture of Iran’s nuclear program with persisting obstacles to proper inspection casting a shadow over its nature and raising concerns about the intentions of the regime in Tehran.

“Only through constructive and meaningful engagement can these concerns be addressed,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi wrote in one of his two quarterly reports. “Public statements made in Iran regarding its technical capabilities to produce nuclear weapons only increase the Director General’s concerns about the correctness and completeness of Iran’s safeguards declarations.”

According to the reports, seen by several news outlets, Iran now has more than 5.5 tons of enriched uranium, up by a ton from October. This includes 712.2 kilograms of uranium enriched at up to 20 percent and 121.5 kilograms at up to 60 percent. It’s this latter stock that has decreased by about 7 kilograms in the past hundred days.

Iran needs a minimum of 42 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent to make a nuclear bomb, based on definitions set by the IAEA. It had enough of this material at the end of 2023 to produce three nuclear bombs. The dilution last quarter means that stock is still more than enough for two.

It’s unclear why Iran decided to get rid of some of its highly-enriched uranium in the last three months. And IAEA has offered no explanation in its reports. It is hard to ignore the fact, however, that the timeframe of this ‘downblending’ matches the timeframe of the recent crisis in the Middle East, which began with Hamas’ rampage of border areas of southern Israel and the ensuing –and ongoing– Israeli onslaught on Gaza last October.

"Maybe they don't want to increase tensions (with the West). Maybe they have an agreement with somebody. We don't know," Reuters quoted a senior diplomat. "At the beginning of the year they decided to do a downblending... A couple of weeks later they did another downblending, this time with a smaller amount."

Whatever the reason behind the decision, the reduction in Iran’s near weapons-grade uranium would likely offer some relief to American and European leaders who have been struggling to find a convincing response to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

President Joe Biden spent the first half of his term trying to revive the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran –and failed. He then turned to chasing an informal agreement, looking the other way as China purchased tens of billions of Iran’s sanctioned oil, and releasing at least $16 billion of frozen funds, all to encourage the Iranian regime to limit its enrichment program, even temporarily.

As a result of those secret talks, Iran slowed its enrichment of uranium to up to 60 percent last summer. In November, however, it resumed its pre-slowdown activities, according to an IAEA report last December.

Iranian officials have always maintained that Iran’s nuclear program is purely for peaceful purposes. But nuclear experts are almost unanimous in their assessment that enrichment to the levels and in the amounts that Iran has been doing since 2021 cannot be justified in the absence of a weapons program.

Successive US administrations, including the current one, have publicly vowed to prevent Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon. In private, however, politicians and experts say that it’s near impossible to stop the Iranian regime if it ever decides to make a bomb.

Led by Major General Tomer Bar, the newly formed Iran unit is a show of force not only to Iran but also to the United States, highlighting concerns over perceived gaps in addressing Iran's nuclear aspirations and its support for terrorism.

The unit's mandate encompasses overseeing military preparations for potential Iranian threats, with a particular emphasis on countering Iran's nuclear ambitions. Moreover, it signals Israel's preparedness to confront Iranian-sponsored terrorism across multiple theaters, including Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.

Iran is currently at the helm of a regional proxy war which has seen its militias come out in support of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, in a war which has escalated to draw in international players including the US and UK.

In recent years, Israel has ramped up its airstrikes on Syria in a bid to thwart Tehran's growing reliance on aerial supply routes for delivering arms to its allies in Syria and Lebanon, notably Hezbollah.

The news of the new unit counters claims from former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who said last week that Israel's air force lacks the necessary resources to halt Iran's nuclear program through military action amid the two nations' shadow war.

In an interview with The National, Olmert, a long time rival of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said, "We can destroy their headquarters, important projects, railways, roads, and airports .. Israel can do a lot to damage Iran's infrastructure, but Israel has no means to be able to destroy the nuclear program of Iran."