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Iran Regime’s Institutionalized Corruption and Its Strategic Consequences

Iran Regime’s Institutionalized Corruption leads to its ultimate downfall

Iranian regime’s top officials including the supreme leader and president and their families are involved in a systematic corruption in Iran

Written by Shamsi Saadati on 11 February 2020.

As domestic and international pressure grows on the Iranian regime, especially as its February 21 parliamentary election draws closer, factional feuding and infighting is exacerbating. Each faction tries to blame the other for Iran’s economic and social crisis, particularly the regime’s corruption.

The regime has looted Iran’s national wealth within the last four decades. Besides misusing funds for terrorism and oppression, the regime’s institutionalized corruption has resulted in an aristocracy and major social differences between the Iranian people and the regime’s officials and their families.

In this regard, Vice President Eshagh Jahangiri, in an interview with the state-run Tasnim news agency on January 28, while using the word “Revolution” for the regime, said: “The corruption nowadays has taken the entire revolution like termites. While some people are starving, others are plundering the national wealth.”

Despite his position as the regime’s Vice President, instead of trying to stop this corruption, Jahangiri only complained about it. Jahangiri speaks of corruption, but he refuses to identify those behind it, since all the regime’s faction and officials, including himself, are involved in it.

In this regard, the Kayhan daily, known as the mouthpiece of the regime’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, in an article on October 17 about the position held by Jahangiri’s brother, who was arrested for corruption, wrote: “Mehdi Jahangiri is Chairman of the Tourism Finance Group and Vice Chairman of Tehran Chamber of Commerce, the Vice President’s brother, founder of Tourism Bank, director of Iranian Cultural Heritage and Tourism Investment Company, which had established six major satellite companies rapidly, chairman of the Board of Directors of Bonab Steel Industry Complex, Member of the Board of Directors of Handball Federation, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Negin Tourism Company, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Mahdal Industries and Mines Company etc.”

In a similar news on February 9, the state-run Rouydad 24 news agency, close to President Hassan Rouhani’s faction, wrote about corruption by the wife of Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, former mayor of Tehran who is close to Khamenei. The article titled, “Shocking facts and statistics about Ghalibaf’s wife’s charity,” reveals that “correspondence and documents currently under investigation in the Tehran municipality show that one of the pending assignments is how properties were donated to the charity of Zahra Moshir, the wife of Ghalibaf.” Apparently, Ghalibaf’s wife used the construction of a public hospital as a cover for plundering money. In this regard, the article stated: “In 2011, only 5% of the property’s price was received as a down payment by the municipality of Tehran. The rest of the payment was supposed to be paid five percent in cash and the rest as installments. Such a contract was completely one-sided and in Ghalibaf’s favor. Yet, the official letter from the Department of Finance and Urban Economics claimed that the price of the property was initially incorrect, and that the property was sold at one-fifth of the price.”

The facts listed above once again confirm that corruption and embezzlement is not limited to one person or even a faction within the regime. It is rather institutionalized and won’t stop until the regime’s downfall. This corruption, however, has a strategic impact for the regime. It paves the way for more protests by the Iranian people, who are grappling with poverty and watch their national wealth being plundered.