“If Officials Fail to Put an End to Corruption, Corruption Will Put an End to Us”

Mahmoud Hakamian

It’s become so commonplace these days for Iranian regime officials to warn over the threats and consequences of the constitutional corruption within the regime’s different bodies, describing it as a super challenge.

While economic experts from both sides of the regime’s spectrum acknowledge that it’s the regime’s very economic structure that gives rise to rentiering and corruption, yet when it comes to dealing with the crisis, each of regime’s rival bands points its accusing finger at the other as the source of corruption.

“If people come to the conclusion that officials are incapable of solving their problems, then it will lead to a real frustration”, says Eshaq Jahangiri, Hassan Rouhani’s first vice president, while acknowledging the fact that corruption will cause real problems for the people. “The country’s current economic problems need a political solution, and not an economic one. When you say that the economy is in a bad state, it means that you’ve put the economy on the wrong track and therefore it has to change its direction”, adds Jahangiri. (Regime’s Parliament news agency, March 23, 2018)

Meanwhile, regime’s MP ‘Amir Khojasteh’ warns that “if officials are not going to put an end to corruption, then corruption will put an end to us”. Khojastedh then acknowledges “the most important challenge we were faced with last year was corruption, demonstrated in big financial corruption cases in such entities like the customs and banks. Meanwhile, many of our officials unfortunately remained silent in the face of such corruptions. Corruption has now become widespread and people are upset and angry about it, which like a seven-headed dragon keeps popping up from somewhere even with one head cut off.” (State-run Etemad-Online website, March 25, 2018)

Along the same lines, state-run Janhannews website on March 25 writes “the issue of corruption in the country’s executive bodies has turned into one of the society’s major challenges. In addition to remarks made by some officials and experts about the complicated state of the country’s economy, news of detecting billion-toman embezzlements acts like a sander on people’s minds.”

Pointing to regime’s endless plundering and embezzlement, state-run Fararou website on March 25 acknowledges that “these are the Iranian people who are actually paying the price, as the embezzlements and frauds are eventually funded from people’s pockets in the shape of different kinds of taxes and duties imposed on them, in such a way that it’s expected that this year the low and middle income population will be bending even more under the pressure of different types of duties of unknown nature.”

Also Regime’s MP ‘Ziaollah Ezazi’ says in this regard “corruption has penetrated into the country’s executive, legislative and judicial bodies and will put the entire regime at risk unless it’s dealt with. I should say that with regard to corruption, the danger is imminent.” (State-run Fars news agency, March 24, 2018)

Also in this regard, regime’s former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad writes in his open letter to Khamenei “unfortunately, the Islamic Republic lacks any practical and clear economic model. Despite the fact that our economy is neither based on capitalism nor is it a conventional state-run economy, but it has the flaws and negative aspects of both systems at once, meaning such problems like injustice, social gap, poverty as well as state corruption, bribery and rentiering are all included in our economy.“ (State-run Dolat-e-Bahar website, March 18, 2018)

The fact, however, is that the main source of plundering and corruption lies at the top of the regime, where Ali Khamenei and his associated entities are.

As Mostafa Tajzadeh, Deputy Interior Minister during Mohammad Khatami’s presidency, writes in his open letter to member of regime’s Expediency Council ‘Ahmad Tavakoli’ “Khamenei only claims to be the flag-bearer of combating corruption. In practice, however, he and his associates are either directly involved in corruption –like the judiciary– or have indirectly played a role in spreading it, like the Revolutionary Guards with their wide-ranging economic activities. Khamenei and his associates’ factional approach towards combating corruption –capping some corruption cases while dragging out the others– has actually expanded the dimensions of corruption.”

Needless to say that such recommendations and concerns expressed by regime officials is a little too late, as the Iranian people overwhelmed with a corrupt regime are running out of patience, and, as they’ve already shown, are not going to tolerate this regime any longer.