iran panorama

 Written by Shamsi Saadati was Iran’s worsening economic crisis. The regime’s institutionalized corruption, mismanagement, and misusing of the country’s wealth have caused inflation and skyrocketing prices. “According to Iran’s Statistics Center, milk prices have been on the rise since June 2019, especially after the increase in milk prices by the parliament. If we consider the price of one liter of milk in 2019 was at 4,500 tomans, it is currently 12 to 14 thousand Tomans,” Jahan-e Sanat wrote in this regard. “The price of 30-egg basket is 50 to 65 thousand tomans. A month ago, its price in the market was 45,000 Tomans. It can be said that the price of each egg basket has increased from 5 to 20,000 Tomans in less than a month,” wrote the state-run Vatan-e Emrooz daily. The skyrocketing prices are due to the high inflation rate. While state media and statistic centers speak of a less than 40% inflation rate, Ehsan Soltani is one of the regime’s experts who believe that the real inf...

 By Shamsi Saadati As more governments worldwide race to vaccinate their people against Covid-19, the Iranian regime tries to further profit from the vaccination process at the cost of endangering people’s lives.    After months of delay in procuring the Covid-19 vaccine, the regime now allows the so-called private companies to import vaccines except US and EU vaccines.    “We called for the import of the  Covid-19 vaccine  a few months ago, and recently a new call has been made to pharmaceutical importing companies for any company that can import. Initially, the Ministry of Health decided that the Covid-19 vaccine import should be done only through the Board of Trustees,” Haidar Mohammadi, Director General of Drugs and Substances, said on Friday, adding, “Still, since this collection is governmental, we decided with the discretion of the Minister of Health, to allow private companies to import the vaccine and provide it to the Ministry of Health.” Kha...

By Dr. Majid Rafizadeh US President Joe Biden last month pledged $4 billion to the global Covax scheme, which is attempting to distribute coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines to 92 low and middle-income countries. This is ironic given his predecessor’s declaration of “America First” when it comes to jabs. It is important to point out that this declaration is by no means unique to the US, but it highlights the world’s major vaccine inequalities, with poorer nations left behind, particularly those with little to no medical research and production infrastructure. Over the past year, recognizing that they fell into the second category, parts of the Middle East — but not Iran — have undertaken intensive efforts to address this glaring gap in their toolkit to fight COVID-19. While some analysts and scholars may argue that the economies of some countries in the Middle East are dominated by state-generated oil revenues, there has been a recent drive to increase the role of the private secto...

By Dr Majid Rafizadeh Last month, President Biden  pledged  $4bn to the global COVAX scheme, whilst ironically issuing a Trumpian declaration of ‘America First’ when it comes to jabs. That stance was by no means unique to the United States, though it once again highlights where the major vaccine inequalities lie. In the world’s poorer nations, but also in those with little to no medical research and production infrastructure. Over the past year, recognising that they fell into the second category, Middle Eastern nations have undertaken intensive efforts to address this glaring gap in their Covid toolkit. In economies dominated by state-generated oil revenues, there has been a relatively recent drive to increase the role of the private sector. Liberalisation of foreign ownership regulations, more generous permanent residency rules, tax breaks and state subsidies have all been deployed by Middle Eastern governments to attract foreign companies. To some extent this has been succe...

  By Shamsi Saadati The coronavirus pandemic is a global crisis. Thus, governments are rushing to procure credible vaccines and carrying out public vaccinations. But the case is different in Iran under the mullahs’ regime. The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran ( PMOI/MEK ) announced on Friday that over  203,800 people  have died across Iran due to the novel coronavirus. Yet, the regime in Tehran continues its vaccination scam. Rattled by two major protests in Iran in less than a year, the Iranian regime embraced the entry of Covid-19 to Iran. The authorities initiated a criminal coronavirus policy to control the restive society by using Covid-19 mass casualties. Due to the growing public demand for vaccines, the authorities started a vaccination scam, in line with the criminal coronavirus policy, almost after a year of cover-up and inaction which had resulted in over 200,000 Covid-19 fatalities. The regime’s president Hassan Rouhani and his...

 Contradictory remarks by Iran regime’s officials underline their intention of using the  Covid-19  vaccine issue as a leverage to lift sanctions, further plunder Iranians, and intentionally increase casualties. Iran’s President  Hassan Rouhani : “We considered procuring vaccines from the first months of this year” Mohammad Reza Naghdi, a top  IRGC  commander: “We would not use foreign  vaccines  to vaccinate people” Homayoun Samehi, Member of the Parliamentary Health Commission, speaking to the state-run Donya-e Eghtesad daily: “It will take at least two years for the vaccine to enter Iran” Dr. Massoud Mardani – Member of the National Coronavirus Combat Taskforce (NCCT): “We do not have the money to procure vaccines.” Ali Rabie, Government spokesperson, December 22, 2020: “We have money, but we have trouble transferring the money.” Nasser Riahi, President of the Medicine Importers Union: “We have no problem transferri...

By Farid Mahoutchi Iran, December 21, 2020— Iranian regime supreme leader  Ali Khamenei  shed crocodile tears for the hardworking doctors, nurses, and health care workers in a televised address on Sunday, trying to erase a year of destructive policies and mismanagement with shallow words of praise. But Khamenei’s ridiculous show of affection does not change the critical and tragic situation the country’s health care system has been facing since the beginning of the  coronavirus outbreak . A look at remarks made by officials and state-run media sheds light on the truth. The conditions of Iran’s nurses On December 20, the state-run Hamdeli described the situation as such: “Very few nurses in hospitals are faced with an increasing number of Covid-19 patients and they are in a war of attrition… Until now, more 60,000 nurses have contracted Covid-19 and more than 100 have lost their lives. Hamdeli further quotes, Mohammad Sharifi Moghadam, the secretary of Home of Nurses, as s...

By Shahriar kia Iran’s state-run media continue to acknowledge the social and economic crises in Iran, underline the regime’s inaction, and warn the authorities of possible outcomes. The Iranian people have to face rampant poverty and inflation, in addition to the Covid-19 crisis. “Last month, the Central Bank, as the official reference for the country’s statistics, announced a poverty line of 10 million tomans. Between 70 and 80 items of workers’ medicines, such as pills and syrups, were removed from social security booklets. When we face such issues, we see that workers’ salary of 2.8 million tomans does not cover the worker’s living expenses,”  wrote  the state-run Hamdeli daily on Saturday. All the while, “More than 70% of workers are underemployed and can no longer afford to buy red meat or even white meat and have been forced to remove these items from their monthly shopping cart,” according to the semi-official ILNA news agency on November 16. The reason for these skyro...

  By Shamsi Saadati The  People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK)  announced on Friday that the coronavirus death toll has  surpassed 145,400 . The official death toll by the regime’s Ministry of Health stands at 37,409, around one-fourth of the actual figure.   The Iranian regime initiated a cover-up since the very first days of the outbreak. Now, even the regime’s latest, record-breaking statistics come nowhere close to revealing the true extent of the crisis. The daily death tolls are actually higher than acknowledged because the rates of infection are higher than acknowledged. And that is the case because the pandemic took hold of Iranian society much earlier and much more aggressively than most people realize.  Tehran officially acknowledged the first domestic cases of Covid-19 in mid-February, right around the time of parliamentary elections. But sometime later, the MEK obtained doc...