Reformist Newspaper Highlights Raisi Gaffes, Demands Damage Control

Saleh Ghasemi, head of the Center for Strategic Research on Population told a local news agency that the current birth rate is 1.6 for each woman at the age of fertility. He added that in mid-1980s Iran had a 6.5 birth rate, one the highest in the world, but it has been declining since.

Ghasemi put Iran’s population at more than 85 million, although some believe that this figure includes a few million Iranians who have left the country but are still counted as residents. He added that the population growth rate is currently 0.6 percent but is expected to decline to zero in the next 10-15 years.

Iran’s declining rate of population growth has been a hot political topic in the country, where its Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and senior clerics in the religious political system have been calling for policies to boost population.

Ghasemi said that the biggest decline in births took place between 2015-2020, when there were 550,000 fewer births annually. He went on to say that women born in the 1980s are dropping out of the child-bearing age. This, coupled with change in people’s preferences and lifestyle will continue to reduce births.

In a report Sunday, Fars accused officials of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce of wrongfully declaring that Iran's crude oil exports to China have dropped to around 1,000 bpd, because they are allegedly opposed to "neutralization of [US] oil sanctions". Fars also accused the chamber of sabotaging Iran's relations with China.

In a tweet Saturday, Chairman of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce Masoud Khansari said Iran's oil exports to China "drastically dropped" in the first seven months of the current Iranian calendar year which began 21 March. According to Khansari in the first seven months of 2021 Iran exported just $11 million of crude oil to China in comparison with $9.5 billion in 2018 before Donald Trump imposed sanctions on Iranian oil in November of that year.

Since then, Khansari said, other countries in the region, presumably Saudi Arabia, which is now exporting more oil to China, have taken Iran’s market sahre. "With the continuation of sanctions, the Iranian economy will lose more [trade] opportunities," he argued.

"Why does an entity such as the Tehran Chamber of Commerce which is fully aware of the [extent of the] Iran, China oil trade try to sabotage the relations between Iran and China in the domestic sphere with such wrong information?" Fars asked in a section of its report under the subhead "Tehran Chamber of Commerce's Conflict of Interest with Expansion of Iran, China Cooperation in Neutralizing Oil Sanctions".

Fars also alleged that reports published by the Tehran Chamber of Commerce on the subject "all of a sudden spread suspiciously in the society by certain news websites".

Fars also argued that data from OPEC, tanker-tracking companies and government reports prove that the total crude and natural gas condensates that Iran exports to China still exceed one million barrels a day.

In fact, observers believe that the oil shipments are not directly going from Iran to Chinese buyers. Middlemen buy the oil and through illicit means sell it to China claiming a different origin for the oil.

China is a diplomatic ally of the Islamic Republic but so far it has avoided openly challenging US sanctions. China might be indeed clandestinely importing hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude a day via third party channels, but Iran gains little from this trade as intermediaries take most of the profits and often deliver goods instead of cash.

Official figures released by China's Customs show no direct oil purchase from Iran in 2021. But in March Bloomberg claimed that details from third-party sources indicated that Iranian oil was often re-branded as purchases from other countries and such exports had even surged.

There have also been reports recently that China is enforcing US sanctions on Iranian shipping. According to some officials, Chinese vessels now avoid Iranian ports and Iranian ships are not allowed into Chinese ports.

The news about China’s compliance with US sanctions might be embarrassing for hardline supporters of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who have been trumpeting Iran’s “Looking East” policy. Khamenei promulgated the policy in 2018, saying that Iran should adopt an Eastern orientation of relying on China and Russia for business and commerce in the face of US sanctions.

Khamenei who was speaking on Prophet Mohammed’s birthday to participants at a recent Islamic unity conference sponsored by Tehran, said that the Americans try to divide Sunnis and Shiites by highlighting their differences, while they are in fact against Islam.

He went on to accuse the United States of sawing discord among Muslims and alleged that recent terror attacks in Afghanistan was sponsored by Washington through the Islamic State group. Iran’s anti-Western leader claimed that the US has acknowledged that they are the ones who have created the extremist Islamic group.

Khamenei also argued that Islam is a “collective and not an individual religion”. He said that secular powers try to portray Islam as a religion for the individual, his beliefs and his conscience. They try to present Islam as a religion at the individual level, while it is in fact a religion pursuing social issues and fundamental human problems, he said.

Khamenei also underlined that Palestine is the most important factor for Islamic unity and criticized Arab countries that have established relations with Israel since 2020.

A few days after Mora’s one-day trip, Vatan-e Emrooz, a daily founded by an aide of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, published a report saying that the Iranian foreign ministry held a birthday party for the European envoy. The news led to some controversy on Twitter, and other media in Iran reprinted the report.

As of Sunday, October 24, Vatane-e Emrooz website seems to have been blocked by Iranian censors and its Instagram page is also not available. Its Twitter account has been inactive since October 20 when it published its report about the birthday party.

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Mora had traveled to Tehran to break an impasse in reconvening the Vienna nuclear talks between Iran and world powers. Iran has stopped attending the meetings since June.

Both centrist and reformist media have criticized the foreign ministry, which has so far not officially denied the report by Vatan-e Emrooz. The centrist Iranian Student News Agency (ISNA) while reporting on the birthday party, has pointed out that the move by the foreign ministry was out of order, “considering the state of relations between Iran and the other side [West] in the JCPOA negotiations.”

The reformist newspaper Entekhab, however, has gone much farther, accusing the hardliners, who control the foreign ministry, of hypocrisy in their constant attacks on former foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif when he was interacting with Western diplomats, and now when they reportedly hold a birthday party for Mora.

Entekhab in an article on Saturdayemphasized that the foreign ministry has not denied the report by Vatan-e Emrooz. The website said that its reporters have tried in vain to obtain the reaction of parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee. One conservative lawmaker told Entekhab, “I am not aware of the controversy”.

The website also drew attention to the silence of hardliner media over the issue. It mentioned the example of the ultra-conservative Kayhan daily, affiliated with the office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. While Kayhan harshly attacked Zarif for a stroll with former US Secretary of State John Kerry in 2015, now it ignores the rumor about the birthday party, the website said. It added that allowing the foreign ministry to do its job is good news, but it shows the hypocrisy of the hardliners, who constantly impeded Zarif’s work.

During his visit to Tehran, Mora met Ali Bagheri Kani, the new man in charge of the nuclear file in Iran’s foreign ministry and a well-know hardliner. Entekhab quotes Kani’s anti-Western remarks in the past and contrasts it with the alleged birthday party.

The Islamic Republic newspaper (Jomhouri-ye Eslami), enjoying close connections with the office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, in an editorial note wrote that there is a lot to say about an October 18 interview by state television with Raisi, but most of all “an interview with the president should not be a formality”.

The paper, established after the revolution in 1979, is managed by Masih Mohajeri, a widely respected veteran cleric known for eschewing factions.

The newspaper noted that despite earlier promises to accept questions from the public, no such opportunity was offered, and the interviewer did not challenge Raisi when he repeatedly blamed the former administration for current problems people face. The paper asked that more than two months have passed since Raisi took office and why there is no positive movement toward solving the economic hardship people face.

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Iran’s hardliners were lambasting former president Hassan Rouhani in the media for the deteriorating economic conditions since the United States withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement (JCPOA) in 2018. The criticism usually left out the fact that without oil export income constituting half of the government’s budget Rouhani’s hands were tied. The same applies to Raisi.

The Islamic Republic daily wrote that when the price of poultry increased, the state television was attacking Rouhani but now when egg prices have doubled in two months it does not question Raisi.

The paper said that everyone knows the answer as to why egg prices have jumped but Raisi should have been asked about it, so he could have explained that his government is also challenged by the same “external factors”, Rouhani faced, which are beyond the president’s powers to address.

The sharp statement implicitly refers to Iran’s nuclear program and negotiations with the West that have so far not succeeded, leaving the country to struggle amid US sanctions.

The newspaper advised the president “to tell the people the reality, openly and honestly.” In this case, people would welcome his conduct and he would have a better chance of success. In other words, Raisi should come out and admit that US sanctions have led to the serious economic crisis, but the power to change that with a nuclear agreement rests with Khamenei.

Raisi was handpicked by Khamenei to become president after all serious rivals were barred from running in the June election by a constitutional body under the Supreme Leader’s control.

Both before the vote and after assuming office, Raisi has been echoing Khamenei’s slogans for self-sufficiency, and making lofty promises of revolutionary solutions to modern day economic issues. He issues a dozen orders a day for local and national problems to be solved, without saying how his officials can build roads, provide drinking water and electricity or pay workers when there is close to 50-percent budget deficit.