Tehran Municipality Had To Sell Property To Pay Employee Salaries

They focused on opportunities for greater cooperation on regional issues in a phone call, in which Blinken also thanked Al Thani for Qatar’s continued assistance with Iran and Afghanistan diplomacy, as well as Qatar’s announcement of an additional $60 million to support the Lebanese Armed Forces.

The American diplomat lauded Qatar’s efforts in helping to continue efforts for attaining a mutual return to full implementation of the 2015 nuclear accord, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in particular for Doha hosting indirect talks between Tehran and Washington.

Brokered by the European Union, the two-day talks in the Qatari capital last week were aimed at breaking a months-long impasse in negotiations to restore the JCPOA, but ended without any tangible results.

Tehran blames Washington’s inflexibility to guarantee Iran’s economic benefit under the deal for lack of progress in the proximity talks, while US officials say, "The Iranians have not demonstrated any sense of urgency, raised old issues that have been settled for months.”

In a phone call with French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna on Monday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said, “The US side attended talks in Doha without an approach based on initiative and progress. Our assessment of Doha talks is positive but we should see how the US wants to seize this chance for diplomacy.”

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri-Kani paid an unannounced visit to Russia after Doha talks.

Speaking in an interview with Didban Iran [Iran Monitor] news website, the Esfahan University professor said that if protests continue in Iran they will turn out to be more dangerous for the country than a nuclear bomb.

Iran’s runaway inflation, currently at an annual rate of 55 percent, has impoverished a vast majority of the population and is seen as the result of a nuclear program that has brought on international and US sanctions for the past 15 years, crippling the economy.

Meanwhile, Renani added that because of the ongoing dissent, officials are losing their self-confidence and keep making hasty decisions secretly to cope with a multitude of problems.

He said revolutions have been constantly taking place in Iran for 110 years now. "The constitutional revolution of 1905, the Qajar Dynasty’s fall in 1920, the Iranian oil nationalization movement of the early 1950s and the Green Movement of 2009 against Islamic Republic policies have all been revolutions."

However, he added that all of those revolutions were the consequences of Iranian elites and leaders' inability to maintain dialogue among themselves and with the people.

Renani warned against the declining self-confidence of decisionmakers in Iran, adding that Iran is at a stage where too many crises happen at the same time. "In such a situation, the regime is entangled in a quagmire of instability, challenge, and wrong social and economic decisions. The only thing the government can do is fight fires: “Putting out fires here and there while ending up in a strange confusion as a result of its inefficiency," the economist said.

He was most likely referring to hurried decisions made by President Ebrahim Raisi’s administration to cope with the country's biggest economic crisis in its modern history. Those decisions including a desperate attempt to eliminate food subsidies and increase prices of essential commodities.

When these decisions led to a major crisis in early May and culminated in protests, the government announced various new measures including rationing bread, issuing coupons and promising higher cash handouts, while so far it has not able to do any one of those things. In the meantime, price kept rising and dissatisfaction has led to a situation hard to control or continue.

Since 2017, Renani has been leading a series of academic dialogues to discuss solutions to Iran’s problems. He says the "Development Dialogues" is an academic attempt to look for the missing give-and-take between the elites and the government during the past 110 years.

"Throughout this time, intellectuals thought that Iran can reach development only through regime change," he said. He added that Iranian academics are collecting some 50 different narratives that could determine the route to development. However, he regretted that "We have not been able to turn this into a real dialogue among those who pursue Iran's development."

"Unfortunately, many join the discussions only to prove themselves. They are not there to listen to others in order to correct their narratives. Some even refused to join the conversation to avoid possible criticism," he said, most likely pointing at lack of interest on the part of the officials to listen to critics.

Renani added that some 95 percent of private sector institutions in Iran are formed and maintained by less than five individuals each. "That is because we cannot talk to each other," he stressed.

Hossein Tayyebifar, who is the IRGC’s deputy for clerical affairs, made the remark during a ceremony to introduce the new representative of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Ardabil province, northwestern Iran, adding that such forces can defend the achievements of the Islamic revolution and its fundamental values and beliefs.

Khamenei had earlier ordered his supporters “to fire at will”, metaphorically giving a green light for religious zealots and security forces to act as they deem necessary. 

Where you feel that the central apparatus has a flaw and cannot manage a situation properly, fire at will; “It means you have to decide, think, find, move, act and yourself," Khamenei said in June 2017, which was interpreted as his permission to his supporters to deal with opposition. 

His remarks came as the Iranian government has handed a draft bill to parliament to ease the use of firearms by different security forces against civilians amid recurring protests while different organizations are taking up a notch their level of control over the society.

A letter obtained by Iran International shows that the prosecutor of Mashhad in northeastern Iran has ordered the city’s governor to prevent women not observing hijab rules from using the city’s subway, while the government is intensifying social restrictions, including closing cafés and detaining women for “improper” hijab.

The announcement by the ministry came as Masoud Younesian, the secretary of the epidemiology and research committee of the national taskforce to combat coronavirus, said on Sunday that two new subvariant of Omicron, namely BA4 and BA5 -- which started in the African continent -- may soon prevail over the country. 

He added vaccines are less effective against the new subtypes, which have also been increasing in other countries around the world. 

Younesian expressed worries about a new wave of the pandemic in the country, saying that now it is not far from the expectation that Iran’s daily infection numbers will reach four digits, and double-digit deaths are also a possibility. 

According to the official data, about 20 to 25 percent of people in the country did not receive covid vaccines at all, and between 30 to 35 percent only got one dose. 

The number of deaths in Iran since Covid-19 began has been 300,000 higher than in previous years, suggesting pandemic deaths may be more than officially reported.

Iran has reported around 141,000 deaths from Covid since the beginning of the pandemic, the Middle East’s highest official level, leaving 160,000 more deaths unexplained.

Responding to allegations that test questions were leaked and sold for huge amounts of money, Abdolrasoul Purabbas, head of the higher education ministry’s evaluation organization (Sazeman-e Sanjesh), swore in a program broadcasted by the state-run television (IRIB) on Saturday that corruption in holding the exams was not true.

Social media users posted images of test booklets half an hour after the exams started to prove that they had leaked out, but Purabbas insisted that nobody could have accessed the test questions. According to him 480 participants who had attempted to use digital equipment to receive the answers to the multiple-choice test questions from outside were arrested.

Around a million young men and women sat for the annual university entrance exams known as Concours from Wednesday to Friday to compete for available places in universities and colleges across the country but some of them, apparently, already had the questions and knew the correct answers.

A Telegram social media channel on Friday published the test questions half an hour after the exam started as proof that they had leaked. Many claim that the questions, and answers, had been sold to those who could afford paying between $10,000-20,000 to get placement in top universities. Those who fail, or are not accepted in their preferred universities, have to wait for another year to take the Concours again.

The figures mentioned in local media are huge sums in Iran where the middle class has become impoversihed due to years of 40-50 percent inflation. The scandal has further tarnished the image of the clerical government, which has already lost a lot of credibility in the eyes of the public.

The Concours (from French, meaning competition) which is held only once a year across the country is designed to test a candidate's ability to study in college, with questions based on Iran’s high-school curriculum. It is recognized by all Iranian state universities as well as the Islamic Azad University which has branches all over the country.

Allegations of corruption in holding the Concours are not new. This year authorities said they had taken extra measures, including shutting down the Wifi and mobile internet around the exam locations during the several-hour-long exams. Candidates were also searched before the exam and signal detectors were used to ensure they were not using digital equipment such as mobile phones or Bluetooth to cheat.

Several lawmakers have demanded a probe into the recurring issue of leakage and selling of Concours questions and graduate school entrance tests which are also held at a national level.

A member of the parliament’s education committee, Mehrdad Veys-Karami, told the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) on Saturday that there are organized criminal groups that help candidates to cheat in return for huge sums. It is not clear who leaks the questions and how payment is exchanged.

Veys-Karami urged the authorities to take precautions such as frequent moving of those involved in the process of preparation and distribution of the test questions to prevent any chances of fraud.

The Concours is held in five major groups (mathematics and physics, experimental sciences, humanities, arts, and foreign languages). All participants are also required to sit for tests in Persian literature, Islamic studies and culture, as well as Arabic and English languages.

The supreme cultural revolution council decided last year that from this year the score in the Concours would make up 40 percent of the final score to be admitted to university, with the remaining 60 percent coming from the high school average grade point.