Iran Politics Report August 07, 2018
What is behind Ahmadinejad’s tweet addressing Trump?
Islamic Republic’s ideological belief vs integration with international community
What is the List that Ahmadinejad wants from Trump?
In a tweet, former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has asked US President Donald Trump to provide a list of Iranian officials’ relatives who live in the United States: “Mr Trump:
Release the list of relatives of Iranian government officials that have green cards and bank accounts in the United States if you have such a list.”
It appears that this request by Ahmadinejad is related to a report published on June 22, by Iran Student Correspondence Association (ISCA News), affiliated with the Islamic Azad University, claiming to quote US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin as saying that, “5,432 of the children of Iranian officials live in the United States. Of these only 354 have college degrees. 3,947 of them lack any expertise and the rest work at ordinary jobs. At this moment, besides their personal properties, they have US$148.267 billion in their bank accounts and since Iran has not signed FATF [Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering] and these funds come from unknown sources, they must have entered the US through money laundering. We will confiscate these funds and deport these individuals to Iran within three months.”
Apart from the strange content of the report, ISCA News did not identify any source for the report, and no source, be it official or unofficial, can be found on any American website.
Numerous people questioned the authenticity of the report online. However, on June 23, Reza Vaezi, managing editor of ISCA News, doubled down and told the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) that the report was correct, even though it had been removed from the site. “Within a few days we will officially publish the report and you will see that this is what the US meant by the ‘June surprise’,” he said.
The “June surprise” was another baseless rumor that was started by Javad Karimi Ghodoosi, a conservative member of parliament, who is also a former Revolutionary Guards commander and critic of President Rouhani, and who has a long record of “disclosing” unsubstantiated news. On June 13, he told the website, Afkar News, that “the US president’s advisor John Bolton has announced that ‘we have a June surprise for Iran and we are preparing for it’.” A search shows that John Bolton has never uttered such words — at least not publicly — and US government sources have not confirmed the news.
Spreading Fake News
Nevertheless, these reports were too good for some to pass up, and they spread across social networks. Remarks made by a number of parliamentarians show that they have taken the news seriously. One of them was Mahmoud Bahmani, a current member of parliament and the former governor of the Iranian Central Bank under President Ahmadinejad. “Today they announced that our noble-born [a colloquialism used in Iran to refer to the children of the elite, the wealthy and the powerful] have US$148 billion in their foreign bank accounts,” he said. “Our country’s whole reserves are not that much… What [are] these 5,000 noble-born … doing outside Iran? It is said that 300 of them are studying. What are the rest doing? The government must look into this.”
Even Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, the top commander of the Revolutionary Guards, implicitly referred to the “June surprise” in a public speech on July 22. The US, Israel and Saudi Arabia, he said, “had many plans for June and July and were hoping to spread insecurity, but our country enjoys good security.”
It might be that some members of the security establishment want to spread rumors like the
“June surprise” and then claim that they have foiled the plot and thus boast of their power and efficiency. Considering the special relations between the Revolutionary Guards and Javad Karimi Ghodoosi whom some call the Guards’ “unofficial” spokesman, the “June surprise”
might well fit this pattern.
But the report about the “confiscation of US$148 billion” is more complicated. The sentence,
“they [the money] must have entered the US through money laundering”, shows that the writer of the report wanted to draw the public’s attention to the plundering of people’s money by the officials of the Islamic Republic. The report also coincided with the disputes over passing laws related to FATF.
Based in Paris, FATF is an inter-governmental body established in 1989, to “set standards and promote effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures for combating money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system.” On June 20, Ayatollah Khamenei opposed a bill put forward by President Hassan Rouhani to join the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, as was recommended by FATF. But Khamenei rejected this, stating that Iran would not submit to conventions that undermine the country’s independence. He then asked the Iranian parliament to pass its own laws to tackle money laundering and terrorism.
In fact, lack of financial transparency appears to be the main focal point. It is unlikely that that the Principilists were the source of the news attributed to Steven Mnuchin, because, like the Supreme Leader, many of them are opposed to the passing of FATF-related laws. It seems more likely that the source leans towards opposition to the Islamic Republic.
Campaign to Expel the “Noble-Born”
Only two weeks before the report was published, Ali Javanmardi, a reporter for Voice of America (VOA) started an online petition campaign, advocating the expulsion of the “noble- born” and the children of the Islamic Republic officials.
The petition was addressed to President Trump, and Javanmardi has yet to publish his final report for the campaign. On August 1, however, after Ahmadinejad’s tweet was published, Javanmardi wrote on his Telegram channel that, “many of the Islamic Republic’s senior political and military officials have sent their children to the United States.”
It cannot be said with certainty that the “confiscation of $148 billion” and the “campaign to expel the noble-born” are directly related, but such news would help the campaign in claiming that the signatures that it has gathered have convinced American officials to take action. In fact, to show their success, some campaign activists have claimed that Donald Trump has assigned a team to investigate the green cards issued to the Iranian “noble-born”. Again, this news is completely unsubstantiated and a credible source for it cannot be found.
Nevertheless, Ahmadinejad’s tweet is bound to make promoters of the “confiscation of US$148 billion” news happy, although it does not mean that the parties to such rumors are necessarily connected or act in coordination with each other. It only shows the consequences of the lack of transparency and the more difficult road ahead for objective journalists.
Source: BBC Persian
Iran’s economy: Hostage to Islamic Republic’s idealogic ambitions By Ali Hajiqasemi, Political Sciences Department, Sodertorn University, Sweden
Ali Qassemi has written about Iran’s recent struggles and highlighted the country’s pointless economic policies.
The currency crisis in Iran in recent weeks has made economic policy implementation the number one priority for Islamic Republic’s authorities, despite the fact that politicians believe a couple of changes in the economic team and policies are enough to get Iran out of this quagmire.
What has become evident is the extent of Iranian economy’s vulnerability which could not even resist the threat of sanctions’ return and went through dramatic currency exchange rate fluctuations in a short span of time.
Based on economic experts’ ideas on the root cause of the crisis, there’s enough knowledge on the issue, its consequences and effects on national economy as well as solutions to counter currency fluctuations. The big question and ambiguity lies around the lack of motivation and drive in strategists and policy makers in decision making organizations in order to instigate sustainable developments in economy. This is the angle we have chosen to focus the reasons behind the inefficiency of political system in dynamic economic policy making. There are a number of significant reasons and impediments on which we aim to elaborate on:
Lack of a potent administration:
Iran’s political system has a multi-layered framework meaning that actors on different levels, horizontal and vertical, possess extensive freedom of action. On one hand, this freedom of action brings about sluggish decision making and policy implementation, and on the other hand gives parallel power players the ability to disrupt the functionality of the parliament and the administration as two important bodies mainly responsible for making relevant decisions. When we refer to the multiple decision making bodies in Iran’s political system, the Office of the Leader is the primary body that draws the attentions, which is justified given the vast authority of the office, but if the Office of the Leader was the only decision making rival to the administration and the parliament, reaching an agreement between the three wouldn’t be a farfetched idea.
What causes real trouble is the existence of parallel bodies that directly and legally or either indirectly and surreptitiously limit and disrupt the policy making arena and leave administrations in Iran with fewer authority in comparison with other democratic systems.
Garnering maximum support from the parliament is not the only challenge that administrations have to deal with in Iran, but the need to satisfy the Guardian Council, the Expediency Council, the Office of the Leader, IRGC HQ and other ones in the establishment has made the administration an inefficient body.
In addition to that, the extensive presence of dependent organizations such as police force, different foundations, credit and finance institutions close to the IRGC and Astan Quds Razavi ( a wealthy charity organization based in Mashhad), in Iran’s economy and their grip on import
and export are among other factors impeding a forward going economy in Iran. Their presence limits private companies’ involvement in Iran’s economy and reduce the administrations ‘ability to fully implement its intended policies on economic development.
Lack of national supervision over a strong establishment
Despite Iran’s lack of a strong administration, a powerful establishment is ruling over the country and exerts its power on economy with expansive authoritarian mindset. The lagging economy of this establishment is one based on red tape and is generally focused on petroleum revenues while distributing the goods and services in the society especially among certain groups is its main priority.
The power structure and politics in Iran is planned in such way that blocks Iran’s 80 million population from having a significant role in economy. Political factions’ activities are prohibited and that means social groups cannot have their say in planning and policy making. Syndicates are also deemed inappropriate, thus their demands wouldn’t be acknowledged. Elections have also failed to have a significant influence on economic policies. During the previous
“enthusiastically held” elections, the only goal seemed to be the existence of ballot boxes and maintaining the “republic” feature of the establishment. The citizens’ rights were limited to nominees who were already deemed qualified by the establishment while the elections rhetoric were not supposed to include political context or economic planning.
Lack of consensus and a national vision for sustainable economic development
National economy’s improvement requires economic vision in order for the private sector and the government to be able to coordinate their planning and economic activities. The absence of a powerful administration and the authority and influence of revolutionary foundations who bear the political culture of the establishment has made policy making in line with the country’s national interests fall victim to establishment’s interests.
Revolutionary foundations are not interested in resource management and planning to reach better economic and developmental indices. Their first priority is to maintain power and the establishment’s military-security structure. Military men look at politics and the society from a defense perspective and focus most of their attention to security threats; therefore, they use most of the resources to strengthen and consolidate defensive strategy. The strengthening and consolidation of military organizations’ position in economic activities and excessive allocation of budgets to them stems from the same mindset. In such context, there’s no room for tapping on the potentials of different societal classes.
This biased mindset which credits the military, feeds the growth of systematic corruption in political and economic structure, because they consider the system as being theirs, while dodging accountability. In such structure, the mindset which goes after development would not be able to accomplish its ambitions. On the contrary, administrations with such attitude would face
resistance and obstruction in reaching consensus on economic planning. The latest example is the unilateral objection to the JCPOA, because if it had been successful, it would have integrated Iran’s economy into global market and would have led to significant growth of private sector in Iran’s economy.
National economy under ideological goals and requirements
Iran’s economy has been struggling with international sanctions during the past 40 years, absent any serious willingness in political structure to end this situation. If an establishment viewed the sanctions as being normal and tried to adapt itself is one thing, but ignoring the dissatisfaction of citizens with the continuation of sanctions indicates that the establishment is founded on something other than its citizen’s consent and interests.
Iranian citizens, regardless of being economically active or mere consumers, have been hit hard with years of sanctions, while they have had nothing to do with the country’s broad economic policies. National, regional and global policies that have been implemented in line with the interests of the leaders is a legacy to which no one has been allowed to make any changes.
Under social pressure exerted by the society, some changes in authorities’ belief system have happened, but changes in foreign policy have been very sluggish. Iran’s political system sacrifices economic policies at the price of giving top priority to ideological interests and high ambitions in foreign policy. The incidents in recent weeks have left no doubts about the reduction in the society’s tolerance in the face of crises and sudden changes.
In dynamic political systems, the governments would refer to public opinion and consult with thought leaders and experts to reach a solution that is the closest one to public demands in the face of crises. In the absence of such political mindset, the power balance becomes very crucial.
If the political system fails to suppress excessively influential and irresponsible bodies, so that it can give more possibilities to the responsible administration, it would be impossible to implement constructive economic policies in Iran. Without an economic planning that comes as a result of a consensus among influential social groups, private sector and other powerful foundations known as private-governmental (Khosoulati), the country would see the continuation of confusion and uncertainty in the market.
In the short term, Iran’s biggest challenge is the return of sanctions. Iran’s refraining from negotiating with Trump is a clear example of the establishment’s ideological struggle. US withdrawal from the JCPOA is in contrast with international norms, but Trump’s United States acts as a present and influential reality whose actions’ result could be the return of sanctions.
Therefore, the same factors that brought Iran to the negotiating table with the international community are on the agenda, but this time the US is on the other side of the table, waiting. If entering negotiations with Trump can prevent the return of devastating sanctions, the political system has no logical reasons not to negotiate. The country is not meant to be at loggerheads
with the US for eternity. Negotiating with Trump could put an end to Iran-US long-time enmity giving Iran’s economy access to golden opportunities it has been deprived of for decades.
