Khamenei admits economic problems will not go away soon

 By Farid Mahoutchi

In his Nowruz address, Iranian regime supreme leader Ali Khamenei acknowledged that the Iranian people are facing extreme livelihood difficulties, soaring prices, and inflation, and that these problems won’t go away anytime soon.

“It must be relieved. We hope that this year some of these problems will be solved, because they won’t be solved all at once. They will have to be solved gradually,” Khamenei said, referring to the multitude economic problems that have driven the lives of Iranians into poverty. “Rushing and saying that it will all be solved soon is not realistic.”

Ironically, his remarks are in sharp contrast to the preposterous claim by his handpicked president, Ebrahim Raisi, who had boasted that “poverty will be eradicated in two weeks.” Indeed, Ebrahim Raisi, who had the full endorsement of Khamenei, has had a disastrous economic record in his first year in office. Contrary to his campaign promises, Raisi has miserably failed in addressing economic problems. His policies have led to a hike in inflation and prices of basic goods. In the year 1400 (March 2021-March 2022), inflation reached an official rate of 41 percent and the poverty line reached 120 million rials, four times the average salary of a worker-class family.

Nonetheless, Khamenei did not hold back in praising Raisi’s government, calling it a “popular government” that has “revived hope in the people of Iran” and has a different mindset than the previous government.

What Khamenei futilely tried to hide was that Raisi became president following a widely boycotted election that had the lowest turnout in the regime’s history. Instead, he described the election as a “real election” and as an important milestone. “The people came to the ballots despite the coronavirus pandemic, and cast their votes,” Khamenei said.

Raisi has become known among the people as the “Ayatollah of massacre” and the “butcher of 1988” for his pivotal role in the mass execution of more than 30,000 political prisoners in the summer of 1988. And since he has assumed office, the people have used every occasion to express their hatred toward him and other regime leaders.

Khamenei also tried to spin his regime’s disastrous management of the pandemic as an achievement and tried to claim credit for this success. Ignoring that more than half-a-million Iranians had already died due to regime’s inhuman policies, including the initial cover-up of the spread of the disease to Iran, the refusal to impose a nationwide quarantine, and the ban on the import of WHO-approved vaccines from the U.S. and Britain, he brazenly said, “The deaths of this dangerous illness reduced from several hundred in a day to 20, 18 a day,” Khamenei said. “And the difference between these two conditions is because the vaccine was put at the disposal of the public.”

What Khamenei didn’t mention was that he personally banned the import of WHO-approved vaccines in 2020, which led to the uncontrolled spread of the virus and the death of hundreds of thousands of people.

This article was first published by english.mojahedin

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