Nearly Half Of Young People Want To Leave Iran - Poll

In a conference on Monday about ways to revive Lake Urmia (Orumiyeh), near Western Azerbaijan Province capital of the same name, Isa Kalantari highlighted that the lake has lost 95 percent of its water over the past three decades, despite government claims that it has appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars to prevent the environmental disaster.

If the lake is not restored, it will have security consequences, and no government can survive in the country because it cannot withstand the flood of migration of millions of people who reside near it, he said. 

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Kalantari said that the country's experts had warned about the drying up of this lake since the mid-1990s, but the authorities ignored the warnings. 

Considering the fact that it has 13 billion tons of salt in its bed, if the lake dries up completely, the city of Tabriz should be evacuated, he elaborated, adding that even if this evacuation is possible, it will cost at least one trillion US dollars.

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“The residents of the neighboring provinces will be forced to migrate; winters will be at least 3-4 degrees colder and summers 3-4 degrees hotter, which will disrupt the entire ecology of the region," he noted. 

At its greatest extent, Urmia was the largest lake in the Middle East and sixth largest salt lake in the world, with an original surface area of 5,200 square kilometers in the 1970s, or 2,000 square miles. It had shrunk to 700 sq km by 2013. The lake began shrinking in the 1980s due to water mismanagement and climate change. 

In an interview with Etemad Onlinein Tehran Safari, Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Affairs explained that Iran relies on Russia for importing essential commodities and in return exports cement to Russia. "We lend our export capability to Russia," he said, adding that "Our trade volume with Russia is $5 billon and we want to increase it to $10 billion."

Safari said Russia is a powerful country in oil and gas and can invest in Iran in the same areas while also transferring technology to Iran. He added that "Iran can also swap Russia's gas and oil with other countries. We get gas from one country and sell it to another country and make some profit. This is our economic and geopolitical potential."

Lately, Iranian officials have spoken about gas swap with Russia. Receiving natural gas and selling it to neighboring countries. But in reality, only Iraq is need of gas, but it is not a customer of Russia.

Safari, who has studied electronic engineering and telecommunications at George Washington University is introduced by Iranian media as a Russia expert. The Etemad Online reporter characterized him as a man with a conservative character who refused to remove his face mask during the interview.

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Meanwhile, Safari, a former Iranian ambassador to Russia and China, told Etemad Online that Iran has signed barter trade contracts with up to ten countries despite US sanctions, however, he declined to name those countries. Safari added that barter trade is Iran's solution to circumvent the sanctions.

He has been a member of Iran's nuclear negotiators team since the 2010s when ultraconservative politician Saeed Jalili was in charge of the negotiations. During the interview, says the reporter, he declined to share many information points, fearing that "the other side might take advantage."

Safari told Etemad Online that "sanctions do not mean death and there are many ways to nullify them." However, his only solution was barter trade. He said that despite the sanctions there are many ways to further international trade although sanctions mainly affect international banking. Asked what those ways were, Safari once again referred to barter.

He disagreed with Etemad Online that barter trade will inevitably increase the cost of transactions. While this can be true in normal circumstances, Iran faces sanctions and countries that agree to barter trade with Tehran would use it as leverage to enhance their profits. Barter also deprives the country of foreign currency it can invest for economic growth.

Prominent economic journalist Maryam Shokrani wrote in a series of tweets on Sunday, August 14, that "Russia has quoted a price ten times higher than usual for work on projects in Iran." She quoted the Transportation and Logistics Confederation as saying that "Iran is about to conclude a contract with Russia for constructing a railway between Garmsar and Inceborun.”

The reporter also quoted Meysam Lajevardi, a rail transport expert, as saying that a German company has offered a contract at one tenth of that amount for the same project."

Shjokrani added that Russia had offered no bank guarantee to Iran for that contract and wanted to bring 80 percent of the personnel needed for the project from Russia. She added that the government of President Hassan Rouhani had accepted those unlawful conditions and it appears that the Raisi administration has also submitted to the same conditions.

Expediency Council member Mohammad Javad Bahonar said in an interview on Didban Iran website on Sunday, August 14, that it is normal for 30 percent of voters not to show up at the polls, as they might think their participation may not make a difference, but 49 percent was a bad record, and an indications that all doors must be opened for political activity in Iran.

Meanwhile, Bahonar criticized the current Iranian government, which is the outcome of the low-turnout election in 2021, for continuing to make promises although it knows it does not have the capability to fulfil them. Also, in an apparent criticism directed at President Ebrahim Raisi's frequent provincial visits, Bahonar said the president should not think that visiting various regions and expressing sympathy with the underprivileged will solve his problems.

According to Didban Iran, several members of the parliament have also criticized Raisi for his provincial visits and warned that he could be accused of populism. They warned that when the promises made during these visits remain unmet, people will no longer believe what the government says in other instances.

Amid a worsening economic situation since his election, Raisi has made a big show of his provincial visits and has advertised the effort on government media as an important accomplishment. Another public relations tactic has been blaming the economic crisis on his predecessor, while publishing sometimes unsubstantiated and contradictory figures on the economy.

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On Sunday, lawmaker Sodayf Badri, said at the parliament that the people are under economic pressure and they no longer trust the lawmakers. Some even accuse the parliament of undermining the people's interests to protect the government, he said.

Explaining the country's economic situation, Bahonar said, "We consume 300 billion euros worth of energy in Iran every year. Consuming energy should eitherlead to welfare or to increasing production. But none of these happen in Iran. We might be able to save 30 percent of this energy without doing any harm to the people's welfare. This 30 percent saving means 100 billion euros can be added to the economy."

Although the figure cited by Bahonar seems exceedingly exaggerated, Iran does provide around 50-60 billion dollars in energy subsidy to citizens, by selling gasoline, natural gas and electricity extremely cheap.

Bahonar reiterated his idea about a bicameral parliament in Iran, a system in which one of the houses would exclusively prioritizes national interests. Currently, he said, various occupational and ethnic groups follow their interests at the Majles.

He regretted that Iran as a country that used to sell $100 billions of oil every year, now has $15 billion per annum through circumventing US sanctions and by selling oil under the counter. “Just imagine that the income of a country with a population of 80 million has dropped from $100 billion to $15 billion.” All the country's economic problems are due to the fact that the government spends 1.5 times the amount of its income. At the same time, we are a 100 billion Euro country that wishes to live like a 500-billion-euro country.

Bahonar criticized the way the government is managing the affairs of the country. He said: "Japan with a population of 160 million has 600 thousands government employees, while Iran has a population of 80 millions and 4 million government employees.

Mohammad Javad Karimi Ghoddousi (Qoddusi), a member of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said that Iran does not need to send Revolutionary Guard forces to the US to kill officials because it will be very dangerous, instead “if we pay thugs in New York’s Manhattan, they can do the job for us too.”

Wrongly claiming that the US said a member of Iranian Revolutionary Guard was sent to assassinate John Bolton, the former United States National Security Advisor, he also denied any connection between Hadi Matar, the man who stabbed author Salman Rushdie last week in New York and the IRGC. 

A statement last week from the US Justice Department alleged that an IRGC operative had attempted to pay individuals in the United States” $300,000 to carry out Bolton’s killing, “likely in retaliation for the January 2020 death of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – Qods Force (IRGC-QF) commander Soleimani.”

Ghoddousi said that people like former president Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “deserve to die for their crimes,” particularly killing IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani, but the Islamic Republic has zealous supporters that back Tehran’s positions “and wherever they get this opportunity, they will take revenge on them.”

Bolton was National Security Advisor April 2018-September 2019 and was not in the post when President Donald Trump authorized the drone strike in Baghdad in which Soleimani and nine others died. The United Nations special rapporteur judged Soleimani’s death “unlawful killing.”

There was no mention of the nuclear deal, the JCPOA, in the official readout of the cabinet meeting, and state agencies reported that President Ebrahim Raisi only talked about the "discourse of resistance" as the only effective way to tackle problems facing the Islamic World.

‘Resistance’ is a label Tehran uses to refer to its allies and proxies in the Middle East who follow its foreign and regional policies.

Referring to August 14 designated as the “Day of Islamic Resistance” in the official calendar of the country, the president praised the concept of resistance in confronting “world arrogance”, an expression the Islamic Republic uses to refer to the United States. 

As the European Union submitted a final take-it-or-leave-it proposal to restore the Iran nuclear deal, some reports say Iran is unlikely to agree to a return to the JCPOA. 

The new text reportedly includes guarantees that foreign companies will be able to invest in Iran or operate there once sanctions are lifted, without fearing the repercussions of any party withdrawing from the deal, as the United States did in 2018 under President Donald Trump, but Tehran demanded more drastic concessions outside the scope of the original agreement, including over an International Atomic Energy Agency probe into undeclared nuclear material found in the country.