Iran's Regime Would Need Oil at $195 a Barrel Next Year to Balance Budget: IMF

Iran Last NewsOctober 29, 2019Budget, Iran, Iran economy, Iran News, Iran sanctions, oil No comments

IMF: The Iranian regime would need oil priced at $194.60 a barrel to balance its budget next year

Iran's Regime Would Need Oil at $195 a Barrel Next Year to Balance Budget: IMF

Written by Mahmoud Hakamian on 28 October 2019.

The Iranian regime would need oil priced at $194.60 a barrel to balance its budget next year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Monday.

Hurt by tighter U.S. sanctions, Iran's regime - a key member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) - is expected to have a fiscal deficit of 4.5% this year and 5.1% next year, the fund said in a report.

On Friday, international benchmark Brent crude closed trading at just above $62 a barrel.

Iran's regime saw its oil revenues surge after a 2015 nuclear pact agreed with six major powers ended a sanctions regime imposed three years earlier over its illicit nuclear weapons program.

But new sanctions brought in after the United States withdrew from that deal in 2018 are the most painful imposed by Washington on the regime.

The Iranian regime’s economy is expected to shrink by 9.5% this year, compared to a prior estimate of a 6% contraction, the IMF has said, but real gross domestic product (GDP) growth is expected to be flat next year.

“The estimate is that ... sanctions that were reintroduced last year and tightened this year, next year will not have an additional impact,” Jihad Azour, director of the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia Department, told Reuters.

A drop in the Iranian currency following the reimposition of sanctions has disrupted the Iranian regime’s foreign trade and boosted annual inflation, which the IMF forecasts at 35.7% this year and 31% next year.

Azour said the Iranian regime should align the official exchange rate with the market rate to control inflation.

The IMF forecast Iran’s exports of goods and services to drop to $60.3 billion this year from $103.2 billion last year and to fall further to $55.5 billion in 2020.

Iran's Misery Index, which measures total unemployment and inflation, rose to 39% last winter, while the figure was 19.4% in the winter of 2016, the Statistical Center of Iran said in its latest report on the economic situation in Iran in July.

The deteriorating economic conditions have triggered protest rallies by teachers, workers, students, and retirees over the past months, with protesters denouncing regime leaders and government officials whom they accuse of oppression, mismanagement, and corruption.

The current trend is indicative of the Iranian regime’s worsening economy which is a direct result of wasting the wealth of a nation on warmongering and export of terrorism by funding proxies in the region and around the world and also corruption and theft by the ruling mullahs. The only solution is regime change which, as Iranian opposition leader Mrs. Maryam Rajavi has time and again declared, is within reach.

Iran’s Regime Edges to the Brink as the Economy Collapses – NCRI’s Ali Safavi

Iran Last NewsOctober 29, 2019Iran, Iran economy, Iran News, Iran sanctions, NCRI, People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) No comments

Iran’s Regime Edges to the Brink as the Economy Collapses – NCRI’s Ali Safavi

Written by Mansoureh Galestan on 28 October 2019.

Confronted with Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign, and facing international isolation, Iranian regime officials desperately want to depict an image of strength.

But, in reality, the regime has never been as vulnerable and fragile as it is today, argues Dr. Ali Safavi of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

In an op-ed on October 24 for Issues & Insights, Dr. Safavi wrote: An important indicator of its sustained troubles is the economy. Severely mismanaged for decades and devastated by endemic corruption, the economy is in complete shambles. In just a few short months since the full adoption of “maximum pressure,” the economic situation has deteriorated even more drastically. Indeed, the International Monetary Fund said that Iran’s economy will shrink by 9.5 percent this year, more than what was projected previously. So, the continuation of this policy will certainly produce enormous challenges to the regime’s survival, he pointed out.

“Take Iranian condensate, for example, which is a form of ultra-light and expensive oil that is extracted from gas fields. In 2017, the regime exported more than 17 million tons of condensate worth a total of about $7 billion. In 2018, condensate exports dropped by 45 percent. In 2019, a spokesman for the Iranian Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products Exporters’ Association said that the exports have dropped to near zero.”

“Take inflation, as another example. The regime’s own statistics report that the rate of inflation between September 2018 and September 2019 was 42.7%. These official statistics add that the rate of inflation for imported products is triple the overall inflation or close to 150%. All this means that the purchasing power of the population has declined dramatically in a few short months.”

The numbers fly in the face of the empty rhetoric produced by regime authorities, like its President Hassan Rouhani. They are desperate to tell the world that the policy of strength against the regime is not working. But, as the saying goes, “Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you.”

And, the realities of the Iranian economy are horrendous, pointing to an inevitable collapse. Why? Because the majority of the economic activity is controlled by unaccountable and corrupt powerhouses like the Office of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The decline intensifies by the day due to systemic and widespread state corruption, astronomical embezzlement, spiraling inflation, profound structural flaws, and rapidly declining domestic production.

The largest portion of state revenues and expenses are monopolized by Khamenei and the IRGC in order to pursue their parochial interests and destructive policies that are completely divergent from the Iranian people’s interests.

Political Corruption Causing Economic Devastation

As a result, the value of the national currency has dropped by a half in less than a year and tens of billions of dollars are taken out of Iran annually by regime officials and their associates, Dr. Safavi pointed out, adding: Meanwhile, the regime’s central bank continues to swell the money supply – triggering further inflation – by printing more bills to address short term demands without paying mind to strategic needs.

Domestic production has hit rock bottom, causing an “army of the unemployed.” Over the past decade, 50% to 70% of the country’s factories have closed down after being transferred to incompetent “private” owners, typically entities controlled by the IRGC, who plunder the assets and quickly divest. Well-established brand names in the manufacturing, textile, lumber, and agricultural sectors are among the casualties, leaving millions unemployed, according to state-run media reports.

To this situation, one must add the real threat to the regime’s survival: The explosive state of Iranian society, which is the source of the mullahs’ paranoia. They fear that economic pressure could trigger another popular uprising, which would not be contained.

Indeed, the ranks of the impoverished continue to swell in Iran and the middle class gets further decimated because of the mullahs’ corrupt and disastrous regional and domestic policies. The situation has led to increasing public outrage, percolating in the form of daily protests across the country. Most recently, thousands of protesters in the town of Lordegan clashed with security forces, chanting “death to the dictator” and setting fire to the Governor’s Office.

Like embers burning beneath the ashes, millions of disenchanted people are lurking in the streets, awaiting the right moment to rise up. And the Resistance Units of the main opposition, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) are hard at work organizing them. Sooner than anyone can imagine, that could result in only one outcome: the downfall of a medieval theocracy that does not belong to the 21st century, but to the dustbins of history.

Iran - Human Rights: Regime Executes Juvenile Offender

Iran Last NewsOctober 29, 2019Human rights violation in Iran, Iran, Iran executions, Iran News, Iran suppression No comments

Iran - Human Rights: Regime Executes Juvenile Offender

Written by Staff Writer on 29 October 2019.

Report: Children being sold in Iran

Iran Last NewsOctober 29, 2019children Sold, Human rights violation in Iran, Iran, Iran economy, Iran News, Iran poverty No comments

Children working in the streets in Iran while they should be in school-(File photo)

Report: Children being sold in Iran

Matin Karim

Iran, October 28, 2019—The mullahs’ regime in Iran is known to care less about the Iranian people’s problems and needs. In fact, the mullahs are nothing but an occupying force taking advantage of the Iranian people, the country’s economy, culture, educational system, civilization, history, and geography.

This regime also denies all social crises and associates such issues with foreign elements or places the blame on the Iranian people themselves.

On July 1, 2017, the Fars news agency, known to be directly affiliated to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), published a report titled, “Children facing the threat of being leased or having their body parts smuggled / Children being butchered in the shadows of weak laws.”

The piece specifically cites Fatemeh Daneshvar, a member of the Tehran city council saying, “In many cases children simply disappear and their body parts are smuggled. Sometime later, their dead bodies turn up in deserted areas without kidneys and eyes.”

This regime official continues with more shocking remarks. “Time and again we had warned about the phenomenon of children being sold. In dangerous neighborhoods such as Herandi, children simply get lost and their parents do not even file complaints. These individuals have special lifestyles and their parents literally care less about them as many of them are suffering from drug addiction,” she said.

Daneshvar’s remarks shed light on more atrocious aspects of this crisis. “Families are seen leasing their children for work and they may not see their children for weeks. They don’t get worried and believe that they will eventually return. In this area it is very often seen that children are sold off,” this Tehran city council member added.

Her remarks, however, continued in interesting manner, aiming to blame the children and their families for the entire phenomenon of this network smuggling children’s body parts.

“Parents should be very careful about their children and must immediately file reports if their children go missing… In many cases it is witnessed that these parents lack even the slightest sense of responsibility towards their children,” she added.

The publication of this report in state-run media launched a growing dissent amongst Iranian youth and people from all walks of life, expressing their anger in protests in social media. The situation reached a point where regime officials were forced to begin denying any such issues in order to prevent further protests and future consequences.

In a matter of hours, the Tasnim news agency, affiliated to the IRGC Quds Force, ran a report citing an “informed source” inside the regime’s own police saying, “These claims about children being found without kidneys and eyes in the outskirts of Tehran are completely false… Such lies endanger society’s psychological security and the capital police have never had any files of children’s bodies being found in such circumstances.” This clearly indicates how the mullahs’ regime is utterly terrified of such reports in its own media evolving into protests targeting the regime’s ruling apparatus.

Despite the rushed publication of denial in the Tasnim news agency, a state-run website focusing on events inside the regime’s Majlis (parliament) published a piece titled, “The necessity to seriously confront networks smuggling children.”

The piece refers to remarks made by a Majlis member acknowledging the fact there are “children working the streets.”

“Considering the methods now being used by municipality contractors, there must be a supervising entity and networks linked to children seen gathering trash should be held accountable in order to decrease such a dilemma,” the October 23 piece reads.

Articles and reports about “labor children” as a social crisis has been on the rise in recent years for the Iranian regime. This is especially true in regard to children seen searching in the trash for hours and regime insiders profiting enormously from this trend.

Considering the fact that all these factions and networks are linked directly to the regime’s ruling elite, there are no actions witnessed to confront such grave social issues. When these factions and networks are merely seeking further profits, they actually establish new inhumane methods to obtain that escalate in their profits.

As a result, one can conclude that the very party behind the suffering of children in Iran is none other than the mullahs’ regime and their elements across the country. As long as this regime is in power, the Iranian people, especially their children, will continue suffering under their greedy rule.

Iran's Regime Would Need Oil at $195 a Barrel Next Year to Balance Budget: IMF

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Iran’s Regime Edges to the Brink as the Economy Collapses – NCRI’s Ali Safavi