The situation in Iran has reached a critical point and any time, unexpected events can happen. In economic literature, this situation is called “economic instability.”
Last month the regime’s economic experts warned that what is much worse than high prices and unemployment is the lack of a stable and predictable economy. The situation is confusing for any economic player in the country.
A simple example of that is the people’s purchase power in the first ten days of the month when they receive their salaries.
According to a December 30 report in the state-run Tejarat newspaper, “When we look at the statistics of shopping centers, we notice that the amount of shopping in stores in the first 10 days of the month is very intense, and as we get closer to the last days of the month, the amount of shopping decreases.
“Although these changes may be due to the lack of the salaries of wage earners, who make up most of the society, the reality is that people do not trust the market and prices and try to turn them into commodities as soon as they earn money.
“This is because there is no trust in the country’s distribution and supervising system, and prices may experience staggering growth at any moment.”
This instability can be seen in the hopelessness of the economic enterprises. Most of them are suffering from the instability of the market.
Per Tejarat: “A member of the Chamber of Commerce, while emphasizing that businesses are desperate and they do not know what to do the next day, said: ‘The economic enterprise cannot keep the price of its products valid for two days for the customer. In pre-invoices, the price is set for one or two hours, or in some goods, the price is even written in dollars or euros.’”
Due to this situation what we are witnessing in the regime’s government is an increasing dispute between the economic officials who are creating barriers for each other in cooperation to cross this situation.
“The economic team of the government are not only not the men for economic hardship times, but they are also exhausted in daily affairs.
The website Seday-e Eslahat wrote on December 29, “It seems that the economic team of Dr. Ebrahim Raisi’s government is not in sync with each other and there are deep disagreements.
“This arrangement of the economic team of Ebrahim Raisi’s government, with the addition of Mohsen Rezaei as the economic deputy, has become a tangled web, and it is impossible to identify their joint plan to solve Iran’s current economic problems.”
Such comments are not limited to observations by analysts and reporters. The reality is that there is huge turbulence in Raisi’s economic team.
From the disagreement of Masoud Kazemi, head of the Plan and Budget Organization, with his weaker rival Masoud Khandouzi, the regime’s Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance, who seemly is playing the wrong notes, to Mohsen Rezai, who is arrogant enough and reject all other opinions.
And finally, Mohammad Mokhber, the regime’s first vice president, did not even listen to his boss Raisi. And most ridiculous is the regime’s minister of labor, whose plans are being mocked by others.
Per Seday-e Eslahat: “With these strange interpretations and incoherence of the country’s economic system, we cannot hope for the victory of this team in the economic debate. The president must show more determination and be able to have the last word on his own. Otherwise, we will see a power struggle in the country’s economic system.”
In an article for the state-run Emtedad, economist Hossein Raghfar also pointed to this dispute too and said: “The adoption of inconsistent positions by the economic team and the incoherence in this area indicate that the expectations of the president in this regard have not been fulfilled. There seems to be some sort of division within the government’s economic team, and there are very serious disagreements between its officials.”
While this situation is normal in the regime’s government, but at a time when supreme leader Ali Khamenei is hoping to carry out his goals by consolidating the government to his loyalists, such confusion is despairing for him, and he is witnessing a torn government.
Per the Emtedad article: “In general, the existence of conflicts in the structure of the country’s economy is one of the problems that have always existed in recent decades, and part of the main reason is that everyone is responsible in the existing structure, but at the same time, no one seems to have any responsibility.
“For this reason, everyone can evade the goals set for them for some reason and lay the blame on someone else.”
The situation is so disappointing for the regime that even low-ranking people like a Member of the Supreme Council of the Stock Exchange are complaining about it.
The official, who was quoted by the state-run ILNA news agency on December 27, said, “Even though at first all these economic pillars of the government talked about a special coordination between the economic team, but this coordination was not seen, and we saw in the subject of subsidies that the economic officials are not coordinated and in other cases, these disagreements are seen in the government’s economic team.”
The fact is that the regime’s economy is devastated and most of its officials are confessing to it. And these confessions show hopelessness and a complete stalemate and instability of the regime.
This article was first published by english.mojahedin
iran panorama 