
Breadcrumb
Two days after
Khamenei has been talking about the importance of preventing "the enemy's" influence in the past four months.
"The root cause of the problems returns to… real enemies, the
But
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Iran's real public enemy number one is not the west. It is corruption |
Corrupted areas
Corruption has been rampant in major economic sectors of the country:
1) money laundering and embezzlement in the mostly nationalised banking sector,
2) grabbing public lands in the construction sector,
3) distribution of low-interest loans among well-connected officials in the financial sector; Iranian government's banks have a stack of $50 billion unpaid loans. One third of the low-cost loans have gone to a group of just 575 people;
4) no-bid contracts and the selling off of public and governmental companies in industry and agriculture sectors,
5) granting import and export licenses to the most powerful individuals and people who are connected to military and security establishments, and
6) granting non-competitive governmental scholarships to offspring of well-connected people in the education sector.
Justifications
Iranian officials usually present four justifications for widespread and structural corruption in
Corruption works
Corruption has an important function in Iran. It brings loyalty to the regime and more importantly, to the leader. Khamenei has always been a staunch supporter of sweeping corruption cases under the rug. When a $2.5 billion embezzlement case - the largest in the country - was disclosed in 2011, Khamenei asked the media to stop reporting on the case.
A number of MPs were involved in the case. None were indicted.
In another case, 3,000 people received scholarships to pursue their graduate studies abroad - without any credibility - during Ahmadinejad's administration. During Rouhani's administration, some of these scholarships were nullified - but Khamenei interfered and they were reinstated.
Most of the grantees were family members of high-ranking officials and members of Basij.
Root causes of government corruption
Khamenei has four major policies to run the country and all of them invigorate corruption and abuse of power.
The first is to divide Iranian citizens beween "insiders" (khodi) and "outsiders" (ghair-e khodi). Insiders have all the privileges due to their loyalty to the government, and all the structural and legal discriminations work against the outsiders.
The second policy is banning the free flow of information through censorship, jamming and filtering.
The third is to let the military and security establishment to take a major share of the economy. And the last the leader's office constructing an economic empire that is not under any oversight.
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Fighting against corruption is just a strategy in political competition between factions |
Decorative fight against corruption
Fighting against corruption is just a strategy in political competition between factions.
Every faction accuses another over corruption, while most accusations have some grounds in the reality or at least not verifiably rejected, most were not and will never be reviewed by a court, and politicians do not care about these accusations anyway.
To stay in power, they just need Khamenei's trust. Iranian media are not free to do any investigative work on this matter and the government is not transparent.
In 2014,
Hopeless case
Iranian officials have expressed their hopelessness regarding fighting against corruption.
"I have no hope that fighting against corruption works," says Ali Larijani, the speaker of the Majles.
Ahmad Tavakkoli, an Iranian MP, believes that "corruption is now systemic in
Khamenei, meanwhile, talks about corruption as if he believes nothing could be done: "Some years ago I talked about fighting against economic corruption. I wrote a letter to the heads of three branches of government… What is done? What did you really do?"
According to Article 142 of the constitution, "the assets of the leader, the president, the deputies to the president, and ministers, as well as those of their spouses and offspring, are to be examined before and after their term of office by the head of the judicial power, in order to ensure they have not increased in a fashion contrary to law".
This article has never been enforced.
Majid Mohammadi is an Iranian-born academic and the author of several books in Persian and English on politics, arts and religion in Iran.
Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of al-Araby al-Jadeed, its editorial board or staff.