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Iran’s Intellectual, Cultural Suicide Under the Mullahs’ Regime

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By NCRI Staff

NCRI – With Iran’s brain drain still going on, flood of the country’s capital wealth, including experts, university graduates, and special talents keep immigrating to other countries, Europe and the US in particular.

It’s obvious that repression, oppressive social conditions, and being too difficult to make a living are the factors that before anything force the brightest Iranians to emigrate from their country.

There are still other factors leading to Iran’s drain of talents; such factors as assigning jobs to regime affiliates, the likes of revolutionary guardsmen, Basijis, and others who are ideologically close to regime, denying talented individuals of getting high ranking jobs, lack of political and social immunity for expressing even scientific viewpoints, and dominance of regime’s affiliated bands over country’s universities and scientific centers, all lead to talented Iranians wanting to leave their country behind.

Yet another reason behind the Iranian talents’ immigration to West is that the vilayat-e-faqih regime keeps pushing the country backwards and hindering its development, so that there’s no appropriate environment for talented Iranians to operate.

With Iran’s brightest graduates leaving the country, millions of dollars of country’s wealth will also be wasted. Former Science Minister in Rouhani’s cabinet ‘Reza Faraji Dana’ pointed out in a 2014 interview that nearly 150,000 talented Iranians immigrate from the country each year, adding “while the country’s total state budget is about 70 billion dollars, we are helping other countries as much as 150 billion dollars a year through immigration of our talented individuals.” (IRNA state news agency, January 7, 2014)

Meanwhile, state-run Khorasan newspaper has in its August 21 issue also addressed the brain drain problem, saying that “the situation has deteriorated so much that even talented high school students are forced to leave the country.”

“Last years’ figures show that 62 percent of Iranian medalists in scientific Olympiads have immigrated to foreign countries, mainly to such developed countries as the United States and Canada”, says the newspaper.

The newspaper then quotes head of regime’s Ministry of Education’s Elementary Education Department as maintaining that “today, many of our students prefer to continue their education abroad after finishing their high school, which is quite worrying.”

The regime official then points to uncertainty over future employment prospect as one of the reasons leading to students’ willingness to leave the country, as the university graduates are faced with a tough job market and an increasing unemployment rate among this group suggests high school students that they might as well face the same situation and thus won’t be able to find a job.

Earlier, state-run IRNA news agency reported on July 26 on the increasing trend of immigration among excellent university graduates due to such reasons as inability to find a proper job or continue with their education, a trend still going on under Rouhani’s government. Regime’s official news agency has acknowledged that Iran lags behind a bunch of neighboring countries such as Turkey, Azerbaijan, UAE, and some others in this chaotic region, with regard to absorbing foreign talents.

In another acknowledgement, state-run ILNA news agency on August 7 has quoted Alireza Zali, head of the country’s Medical Council, as saying “most of medical students intend to immigrate.” Zali has mentioned such factors as lack of job security and disappointment over future among medical students as the reasons behind their decision.

According to these same acknowledgements made by regime officials, the conditions under the Mullahs’ regime are so difficult for university and high school students that “90 out of 125 Iranian scientific Olympiad medalists are now studying in US universities, and only 30 out of every 96 scholarship students studying abroad return to the country.”

Meanwhile, regime officials and media use such terms as ‘intellectual suicide’ and ‘cultural suicide’ to describe this situation.