NCRI – Dehghan, Hassan Rouhani’s defense minister, acknowledged that Rouhani’s presidency era “has quantitatively and qualitatively been the most glorious period in the development of missile and defense programs.” He added that since the time Rouhani came to the office till the end of March 2017, “there has been a 2.5 times more in the section of providing defense credits than the previous government,” and “it will get as high as four times more than the previous government in the new Iranian year of 1396.” (state run news agency IRNA- 5 May 2017).
These remarks prove once again the fact that there are no differences between various factions of the mullah’s regime when it comes to the main policies such as internal suppression, export of terrorism and taking control over the countries in the region; the internal struggle inside the regime is on power-sharing and striving for getting more shares in plundering the Iranian people’s wealth.
Rouhani said on 18 April 2017 that during his tenor “defense capability budget has had a 145% rise compared to the beginning of his government and … in terms of strategic equipment and strategic capabilities of armed forces, the government has advanced equal to 10 years in a period of three and half years.” Needless to say that the actual increase percentage of military and repression apparatuses is much higher than this. Special payments to the IRGC by Khamenei, Astan Quds Razavi, and other organs associated with the supreme leader, which are not calculated in the official budget, reach as high as tens of billions of dollars; as most of the regime’s expenditures in Syria have not been taken into account in the budget.
This skyrocketing rise is happening at a time that more than half of the people live below the poverty line, and as admitted by the deputy health minister, 30% of people are hungry and have no bread to eat. (state run media- 20 August 2016). The country’s economy is experiencing a crippling recession, and according to the regime’s Central Bank, the growth rate of national output, excluding oil revenue, has been less than 0.9% during the first six months of Iranian year of 1395.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
May 7, 2017