Iran has become one of the most isolated countries in the world.

These days, news about rising tensions between Iran and the Republic of Azerbaijan and Turkey is reflected in the Iranian media and many media around the world. Especially after the recent military maneuver of the Iranian army at the border region of Iran and Armenia. Iran’s military drilling was criticized by the President of Azerbaijan, Mr. Ilham Aliyev, and several members of Azerbaijan’s parliament.

On the other hand, several of Iran’s military army and Revolutionary Guards officials offered harsh and provocative responses to Ilham Aliyev’s criticism and implicitly threatened military actions against Azerbaijan. Furthermore, in his speech on Saturday, October 2, Khamenei offered an indirect warning to Ilham Aliyev by saying “those who rely on other countries would soon be slapped”.

Of course, no one expects a large-scale or even limited conflict between Iran and Azerbaijan because neither side is capable of carrying such a conflict. Since Russia’s influence in the countries of the region, any kind of military conflict must most likely have Russia’s green light. And since Russia has close relationships with both countries, a military conflict between Iran and Azerbaijan is very improbable.

However, the recent tension between Iran and Azerbaijan is another testimony to the Iranian’s regime aggressive and expansionist foreign policies. Iran’s meddling in the affairs of its neighboring countries is a bitter truth. Many examples in the history of four decades of the mullahs’ reign prove this point. This issue has reached an end that most countries of the region have repeatedly expressed their concerns.

This is part of the Iranian regime’s foreign policy doctrine and a path to not only spread its hegemony throughout the region but also to divert Iranian attention from internal problems. Because they have neither the power nor the intention to solve these problems.

Iran’s support of terrorism and turmoil in other countries, which by the way, has been very costly for Iranian people, has forced the regime to allocate much of Iran’s money and resources to support its proxies in neighboring countries and beyond.   

By doing so, the local economy has almost been destroyed, and despite Iran being one of the wealthiest countries around the world, (in terms of natural resources by having the third-largest oil reserves and the second-largest gas reserves), more than 80% of its people live below the poverty line. Iran’s economy is experiencing an inflation rate of more than 50% which ranks the seventh highest in the world.

If we take a brief look at Mullahs regime’s foreign policies and relations with other countries, we will see that less than two years after the Iranian revolution, because of provocations of Khomeini and his meddling in Iraq to overthrow its government, he paved the way for an eight-year war between the two countries, causing major damages and losses to people of Iran and, of course, Iraq, each of which suffered nearly one million war casualties.

The damage from the eight-year war, which Khomeini refused to stop, is estimated at more than $1,000 billion on the Iranian side alone, regardless of human casualties. Despite such a high financial and human toll, Khomeini insisted on continuing the war, hoping to overthrow the Iraqi government. In the end, he unwillingly agreed to a ceasefire because he felt the continuation of war could bring his regime to a collapse.

An early ceasefire had been repeatedly suggested by other Persian Gulf countries that included lump-sum compensation to Iran. Khomeini was by no means willing to accept an early ceasefire, but the passage of time forced him to accept the ceasefire after eight long and bloody years. Because of his ignorance and insistence on the continuation of war, the compensation idea never materialized.

In another example, some militias (so-called university students) with Khomeini’s support, contrary to all international norms, seized the US embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held the embassy staff hostage for 444 days. This action resulted in the isolation of Iran in the world and Billions of dollars in material damage.

In another example, the attack on the British embassy in Tehran in 2011 resulted in the severance of diplomatic relations between Iran and Britain for a while and a few million dollars damage.

The same thing happened with Sudi Arabia when some regime’s thugs attacked the SA embassy in Tehran and their consulate in Mashhad in 2015. As a result, Saudi Arabia closed its embassy in Tehran and severed all its diplomatic relations with Iran.
This story has been repeated in relation to other countries such as Kuwait, Bahrain, etc. and has led to the severance of diplomatic relations with these countries.

It is noteworthy that Khamenei and the regime officials did not learn from any of these incidents that led to irreparable damage to Iran and its people. On the contrary, they kept repeating them with other terrorist activities. As a result, Iran has become one of the most isolated countries in the world.

Currently, Iran does not have good relations with almost any of its neighboring countries. If Iran had opted to treat its neighboring countries based on mutualism, it could have benefited amply in all areas.

Case in point: The Republic of Azerbaijan because of its numerous historical, ethnic, and religious ties with Iran and the fact that the Azeri-speaking population of Iran is even more than twice the population of the Republic of Azerbaijan and that the Republic of Azerbaijan has the largest number of Shiites after Iran, i.e. more than 85% of its population are Shiites. And in fact, until the end of the nineteenth century, Azerbaijan was part of Iran, and many people there originally considered themselves part of Iran.   

With such cultural closeness, Iran could have benefited much from its northern neighbor, Azerbaijan, but unfortunately, due to the mullahs’ regime’s unwise foreign policies, they tried to advocate for a wider religious influence in Azerbaijan and lost a great opportunity.   

Taking advantage of Iran’s wrong approach, Turkey, although it did not have such historical and cultural ties with Azerbaijan, was able to gain from this.  

It remains to be seen how this tension between Iran and Azerbaijan will end to the detriment of the Iranian people. This is another reason why the great majority of Iranians want regime change and establish a secular government in Iran. They made this clear by boycotting the sham presidential election last June. But since no dictatorship is willing to relinquish power, this regime will inevitably be changed by another Iranian uprising.

At least 80% of the country’s problems are due to inefficiency and corruption of officials.

During the forty years since the anti-monarchy revolution, Iran has earned nearly $ 1,377 billion in oil sales, of which about 

$ 700 billion was earned during Ahmadinejad’s presidency. However, when Ahmadinejad’s eight-year term ended, he left nothing but a ruined and bankrupt economy.  

Because in addition to the theft and looting of Iranian nation’s assets by those around him and the corrupt ministers of his cabinet, he had spent the country’s income to the Revolutionary Guards, internal repression apparatus, exporting terrorism abroad, and Iran’s missile and nuclear programs. . The people of Iran benefited absolutely nothing from the windfall during the Ahmadinejad era. 

After his departure and the arrival of Rouhani, the situation worsened so much that during Rouhani’s term, the rate of theft and astronomical looting of the country’s assets broke a record. Some of these huge thefts that were exposed during the factional disputes revealed their dimensions.

For example, it was revealed that Ali Rastegar Sorkheh, who was the CEO of Sepah Bank, with the help of Hossein Fereydoun, the brother of President Hassan Rouhani embezzled more than 3,700 billion tomans (Iran’s currency) from this bank. In another case, two women affiliated with Rouhani’s brother embezzled 600 billion tomans and left Iran. The above are just two embezzle cases among tens and hundreds.

Rouhani, being part of the circle of corruption, instead of trying to stop these corruptions, tried his best to either ignore them or justify them through lies and deceiving. Time after time, he promised a better future for the people of Iran and delivered hollow promises in almost all his speeches, which were too many.  

But now, after eight years in power, the situation in Iran is so devastating that he himself cannot hide it, but now he blames the failure of his government on President Trump and US sanctions.  

Meanwhile, according to a regime official, at least 80% of the country’s problems are due to inefficiency and corruption of officials and have nothing to do with the sanctions.

The situation in Iran is so bad that according to experts, at no point in the last 42 years, even during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war has the situation in Iran been so critical, and now that Raisi who is more illiterate than Rouhani, and knows nothing about management or economy is appointed as president, you could imagine what will happen.

According to a regime’s expert, the social and economic problems Raisi will be facing are like a minefield. Every step, in any direction, could end up on top of a mine, leading to explosions and the collapse of the regime.

This expert has defined some important characters of this minefield as follows:

1- The budget deficit of 350,000 billion tomans for this year, that we are midway through. Due to the continuation of US sanctions, including oil exports, which is Iran’s main source of income, the budget deficit will be impossible to cover in the short term. The state of Iran’s economy is so bad that the regime is experiencing difficulties with government employees and workers and as usual will print banknotes without backing. This growth in liquidity, which has been around 40% over the past four years, will intensify to unprecedented inflation, which is now above 50% and for some essential items close to 80%. It has caused more than 60% of the country’s population to fall below the poverty line and the middle class to disappear. High prices of almost everything has been instrumental in forcing more than 38 million people to move to the outskirts of cities and live in shantytowns that lack basic facilities.

2- Lack of transparency of Iran’s banking system is another problem that has intensified significantly during the eight years of Rouhani’s term and the government’s debt to pension funds has grown significantly. Rouhani’s government has continuously withdrawn money from these funds to cover its expenses, which resulted in increasing government debt and further devaluation of Iran’s national currency. In 2020, the Iranian currency was the second weakest circulating currency, only behind the Venezuelan Bolivar, and its value has depreciated by more than 3,500 times compared to the beginning of the revolution. According to the head of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, the resilience of Iran’s economy now ranks 128th out of 130 countries. On the other hand, Iranian society has witnessed a continuous rise in class differences to an incredible extent over the past eight years.

In a government that claims to be the government of the oppressed, the vast majority of people live below the poverty line, on the other hand, according to Forbes magazine, despite the continuation of sanctions and the Covid 19 pandemic, that has hit the global economy hard, in Iran, 250,000 people live with an income of more than one million dollars a year. Thus, Iran ranks fourteenth country in the world in terms of the number of millionaires and ranks first in the Middle East.  

This level of wealth is rooted in bribery and corruption that seems to be surgically attached to this regime and has become its fabric. Meanwhile, as mentioned before about 60 percent of Iranians live below the “official poverty line” and about 30 percent below the “absolute poverty line.” In fact, in Iran today there is a very small class of “super-rich” associated with the regime and a very large class of “absolutely poor”, who are ordinary people. 

Clearly, this situation can no longer be sustained, and the patience of the disadvantaged people who have faced poverty, unemployment, Covid-19, droughts, continuous power outages, and a host of other social and economic problems are being tested every hour of every day.  

Right now Iranian people are controlled only with violent repression by the security forces. But imminently Iranian society will erupt like a volcano, as in the November 2019 uprising due to the increase in gasoline prices, that we saw a prelude to. This has happened many times in history, and Iran and the ruling religious dictatorship are no exception. Many experts believe that Raisi will not see the end of his four-year presidency.

Cyrus Yaqubi is a Research Analyst and Iranian Foreign Affairs Commentator investigating the social issues and economy of the middle east countries in general and Iran in particular.

And trust cannot exist as long as Raisi’s regime does.

The very selection of Ebrahim Raisi as an electoral candidate, and then his victory highlighted the sham that is Iran’s electoral process.

Known widely in Iran as the “Hanging Judge” or “The Butcher of Tehran” for his direct role in massacring thousands of political prisoners, Raisi as the president of the Islamic Republic should make clear to the world what has long been clear to the people of Iran: this regime cannot be dealt with because it cannot be trusted.

For nearly half of the regime’s bloody rule, many outside Iran have touted the notion of “reform” or “moderation” within the Islamic Republic establishment. Criminal clerics like Hassan Rouhani and their allies like Javad Zarif have been held out as figures with whom reasoning is possible and for whom Iran’s national interests outweigh those of the system.

Regime apologists who spent years diverting international attention from the Islamic Republic’s crimes against humanity at home and terrorism abroad by promoting the false notion of regime moderation have now pivoted to blame the United States for Raisi’s election. Some have even begun making the case that the man who personally handled the executions of children is not as bad as he may seem.

No matter how well-financed and well-spoken the Islamic Republic’s foreign propaganda machine is it will not be able to change the fact that the hardliners it long said could not be trusted now occupy every relevant position within the Islamic Republic. Their rhetoric, despite its eloquent English and well-placed publication, must defend Raisi’s reality rather than a Viennese fantasy.

In reality, the Islamic Republic cannot be trusted. The facade of trust manufactured by “moderates” like Zarif is now largely discredited and irrelevant due largely to missteps by the moderates themselves. The trust, or rather contrived confidence, during the Obama administration, was based largely on wishful thinking. Both President Obama and Secretary Kerry repeatedly referred to the purported fatwa, or religious edict, that Ali Khamenei had issued against the development of nuclear weapons.

Recently, however, the regime’s intelligence minister has disavowed the fatwa for which Secretary Kerry had “great respect” and said the Islamic Republic was not bound by the edict. Speaking on state television, he said that if Iran were pressured it may indeed develop a nuclear bomb. A theocracy that cannot be trusted to respect even its religious edicts can certainly not be trusted to be loyal to a treaty with countries it has sworn to destroy.

If abrogating a fatwa seems inconsequential, the Iranian regime has long proven itself an untrustworthy partner through various additional breaches of international treaties. Indeed, the very basis of the ongoing talks in Vienna, to the impartial observer, appear more comedy than drama. The P5+1 strategy is simple: diplomatic negotiations in an attempt to control the regime’s nuclear program via an international accord. What they ignore is the Islamic Republic’s long track record of ignoring and breaking international accords, both diplomatic and nuclear.

The Iranian “diplomats”’ sitting across from the French, Germans, and Americans in Vienna represent a regime with no respect for the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations which protects the very diplomats attempting to renegotiate the defunct JCPOA. From taking American diplomats hostage for 444 days as its diplomatic debut to the world, its attempted assassination of the Saudi Ambassador in Washington, and then its sponsored storming of the British Embassy in Tehran, the Islamic Republic has long shown a blatant disregard for diplomacy and indeed a violent animosity towards it.

Iran consistently violates the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty despite remaining an active signatory. It has blocked IAEA access to nuclear sites and continued on its enrichment path in clear breach of mutually agreed to IAEA deadlines and United Nations resolutions. If the regime in Tehran can’t be trusted to respect treaties on diplomacy and nuclear issues it has already signed, why should it now be trusted to respect a diplomatic agreement on its nuclear program?

It can’t. Ebrahim Raisi is a man who personally ordered and watched as Iranian prisoners were raped, newborn babies were thrown against the floor, and activists were executed. His regime violates its own religious edicts and dozens of international laws and conventions. Where trust does not exist, no relationship can exist. And trust cannot exist as long as Raisi’s regime does.

Now is not the time to make a deal with Raisi and his regime. Now is the time to focus on the vast majority of Iranians who boycotted the sham election and are saying, with one voice, “No to the Islamic Republic.”

Cameron Khansarinia is Policy Director National Union for Democracy in Iran. He is an alumni of Harvard University. He tweets under @Khansarinia.

Iranians are waiting for an opportunity to overthrow the entire regime…

Finally, after some propaganda shows, which are window dressing of the dictatorship in Iran, and after speculations about who will pass the filter of the Guardian Council, on Tuesday, May 25, at Khamenei’s behest, name of seven people who will be allowed to enter the June sham election, was announced!

In fact, Khamenei took one step closer to appoint his candidate and put an end to this show. Of course, out of the seven people who were allowed to enter the final stage of the elections, everyone knows that six of them have no chance, and Ibrahim Raessi is the one who will be selected as president, and the rest have been included so that it would not be a one man show. Because Khamenei, given the past experiences and the very critical situation in Iran, decided to finalize the issue of the next president at this stage so that what happened in 2009 does not happen again.

A few months ago, he announced the conditions for the next president, saying that the upcoming elections should not be bipolar, meaning that there should be no competition in the elections. He announced the characteristics of the person he wanted in his Nowruz message, which, of course, made it clear that the ideal person for Khamenei was Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by US forces in Iraq last year, and with Qassem Soleimani killed, Khamenei received a huge and unbearable blow, since it was very difficult to find someone like him.

But who is Ibrahim Raessi?

After Soleimani’s assassination, Khamenei’s clear choice was Ibrahim Raessi, who Khamenei had failed to appoint him as president four years ago. To this end, the Guardian Council, at Khamenei’s behest, disqualified all those who might have run as rivals for Ibrahim Raessi and polarized the election.

Even those who had repeatedly proved their allegiance to Khamenei, such as Ali Larijani, the two-term speaker of parliament, and one who was a IRGC commander for 10 years, or Ahmadinejad, who was Khamenei’s two-term president, as well as Jahangiri, who is the current deputy President of Hassan Rouhani and all others who were likely to polarize the election.

Raessi, was a young seminary student in the 1979 revolution and first worked as a deputy prosecutor in the city of Karaj in 1980 and was later appointed prosecutor of the same city. During this period, he was noticed by regime leaders for his atrocities in suppressing Khomeini’s opponents in 1981, and in 1982, while he was Karaj’s Prosecutor, he was given the responsibility of the Hamedan City Prosecutor’s Office as well, a position he held for three years. During this period, he harshly suppressed the regime’s opposition.

In 1988, Raessi was selected as a member of the death committee that massacred 30,000 political prisoners at Khomeini’s behest. The names of members of this death committee were later revealed by Ayatollah Montazeri (Khomeini’s successor, who opposed Khomeini’s order and for this reason Khomeini ousted him), and since then Raessi has been hated by most people.

However, after Khomeini’s death and Khamenei taking the power, Raessi moved up the ladder rapidly due to his allegiance to Khamenei. In 1989, he was first appointed as Tehran’s Prosecutor and after 5 years as the head of the General Inspectorate. He worked in this position for 10 years. In 2004, he was given the post of First Deputy of the Judiciary, and then in 2014 he became the Attorney General for a year, but after a year, Khamenei appointed him as the head of Astan Quds Razavi, one of the richest institutions in Iran with tens of billions of dollars of capital.

Astan Quds Razavi is one of the organs of theft and plunder of the Iranians’ wealth. At the same time, he was the Special Prosecutor General of the Clergy, and since 2006 has been the representative of South Khorasan in parliament and a member of the Presidium of the Assembly of Experts.

Khamenei wanted to make him president in 2017, but in fear of another uprising like the one in 1988, he chose not to take that risk at the time, and thus endured Hassan Rouhani for another four years. But after that election, Khamenei appointed him a member of the Expediency Council for five years, and two years later, even though Sadegh Larijani still had a few months left, Khamenei appointed him as the new head of judiciary.

In Iran, the head of judiciary holds the second spot of power right after the president. Khamenei by appointing him to this position provided him with a tool to remove all his opponents.

Now Khamenei knowing the very critical situation in Iran and while the public is opposed to his rule, is determined to appoint a new president because he thinks after his death, which, according to experts, is not far off, any rift at the head of the regime imminently will lead to the disintegration and overthrow of the regime. For this reason, he has chosen the policy of maximum contraction to eliminate any opposition by deploying IRGC and various security forces.

According to many, this sham election is the last show of this kind. Because on the one hand, 80% of the people live below the poverty line due to institutionalized corruption, and on the other hand, people want an end to dictatorship and oppression. They want regime change and establish a democratic government.

Regardless of who will be the president next month, Iranians are waiting for an opportunity to overthrow the entire regime in an uprising like what happened in November 2019. This is what Ahmadinejad acknowledged in a recent speech before being dismissed by the Guardian Council, saying that a flood would soon engulf the entire regime.

Cyrus Yaqubi is a Research Analyst and Iranian Foreign Affairs Commentator investigating the social issues and economy of the middle east countries in general and Iran in particular.

Khamenei is in fact, in a deadlock and deep crisis…

Finally, after much speculation, Khamenei favoured Ibrahim Raisi as his choice for the upcoming presidential election and put an end to all the ambiguities and rumours about the president he wishes to install. He had already prepared the grounds for this election on April 21.

On the one hand, a letter was sent by 220 members of the parliament, affiliated with his faction, asking Ibrahim Raisi to run for the presidency. On the other hand, he had eliminated potential rivals such as Hassan Khomeini (grandson of Ruhollah Khomeini) by advising him not to think of running for the presidency.

On several occasions in the past, Ibrahim Raisi had denied his willingness to run to play the game, but finally, on May 15, he agreed to bring this game to an end and announced his candidacy.

In reality, Khamenei’s most favourite candidate for the post would have been Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by American drones in Iraq. With Soleimani gone, Khamenei had no other choice than Ibrahim Raisi, who was appointed by himself as the head of Iran’s judiciary only about two years ago. There are still three years left of Raisi’s head of judiciary.

Putting these facts together reveals the fact that Khamenei is in fact, in a deadlock and deep crisis. According to informed observers, given Khamenei’s 82-year-old condition, he is unlikely to see the end of the next four-year presidency, and he will have to choose someone to replace him as the new Supreme Leader.

Of course, for some time now, the issue of combining the role of the supreme leader with the presidency has been raised among some of the regime’s leaders, and the election of Raisi to the presidency paves the way for this idea to materialize.

One of the reasons Khamenei is currently opposing the ongoing JCPOA talks in Vienna is that he wants these talks and agreements to occur during the next president’s time and the success of the talks go to the new president, Raisi.
But Ibrahim Raisi, who ran for president four years ago, is hated by the people for his direct involvement in the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in the summer of 1988, most of whom were members and supporters of MEK.

Because of Raisi’s role in the 1988 massacre, he is referred to as Ayatollah Death; he could not get this seat in the last presidential election. His involvement in the crime was so obvious that even Hassan Rouhani mentioned it in his election speech 4 years ago, saying that Raisi had done nothing but issue death sentences, imprisonment and torture in the past 38 years.

But since Ibrahim Raisi was one of Khamenei’s most trusted figures, shortly after his defeat in the previous presidential election in March 2019, he was appointed as the head of the judiciary by Khamenei, one of the three main positions of power in Iran after the Supreme Leader.

Raisi’s appointment was considered as another step Khamenei had taken to bring his regime to more cohesiveness. In reality, Raisi was appointed to use his legal power and influence to eliminate any opposition of any form and shape. It is as if, in this short period of time, many dissidents who had done nothing but criticize Khamenei were sentenced to long prison terms, and a large number of political prisoners and dissidents were executed.

The dramatic increase in verdicts against political and civil activists during his tenure as head of the judiciary indicates a widespread wave of repression of civil society and critics in Iran.

It is good to note that just in the first six months of Ibrahim Raisi, as the head of the judiciary, judges have issued about 1,000 years prison terms and 1,400 lashes for civil and political activists. Raisi’s reign as the head of the judiciary has resulted in a 120 percent increase of repressive verdicts and sentences over the same period last year.

It is noteworthy that the government structure of the mullahs is similar to the structure of the Mafia, and they strengthen this structure with family ties. For example, the wife of Ibrahim Raisi is the daughter of Alam al-Huda, the Friday prayer leader of Mashhad the second-largest city in Iran. This makes Raisi, Alam-al-Hoda’s son-in-law. Alam al-Huda was elected to this position by Khamenei in 2006.

A year later, Alam al-Huda was elected as a member of the Assembly of Experts. In March 2016, he was appointed as Khamenei’s representative in Khorasan Razavi in order to have full authority in this province. And now, his son-in-law is set to take over the presidency and become the Supreme Leader in the next step.

But the fundamental question among experts is whether the appointment of Ibrahim Raisi as president can save the regime from this dangerous situation that many say is on the brink of collapse. In a situation where most people are planning to boycott the elections because of their hatred of the government, and with slogans such as “We have heard too many lies, we will not vote anymore” or “Our vote is overthrown,” the people have already expressed their views on not only the presidency but in relation to the whole system, regime change.

Cyrus Yaqubi is a Research Analyst and Iranian Foreign Affairs Commentator investigating the social issues and economy of the middle east countries in general and Iran in particular.