REGIME IMPLEMENTS RADICAL ECONOMIC "SURGERY"
As part of its ongoing efforts to ameliorate domestic economic malaise and better weather mounting international sanctions, the Iranian government has implemented a massive overhaul of the national economy. The effort, originally slated for September but activated in mid-December, entails the elimination of costly and extensive state subsidies on a range of goods and services in a step that economists say could save the Islamic Republic as much as $100 billion - a quarter of national GNP - annually. In place of subsidies, the Iranian regime has proferred monthly cash payments of some $40 for every Iranian.
The transition, however, has not been problem-free. Riot police were deployed temporarily in major population centers to head off any potential unrest, as commodity prices shot through the roof. Official media sources have reported a five-fold increase in the price of gasoline, while the cost of electricity for Iranian citizens has effectively tripled. Regime officials, however, remain optimistic about the outcome of the economic changes Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called the "biggest surgery" the Iranian economy has seen in fifty years. (London Guardian, December 19, 2010; Radio Free Europe, December 20, 2010)
TURNING UP THE HEAT ON THE GREEN MOVEMENT
Now that the Iranian government has successfully beaten back the Green Movement that coalesced following the controversial June 2009 reelection of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, regime officials are looking for retribution. Tehran’s chief prosecutor, Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi, has announced plans to prosecute Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Kharroubi, the thwarted reformist presidential candidates that went on to become the Green Movement's titular leaders. “Leaders of the sedition will definitely be prosecuted,” Jafari-Dolatabadi has confirmed, warning that “[t]he accusations against the sedition leaders are more than they think and they will understand when we issue our list of charges.” Jafari-Dolatabadi's comments come on the heels of a speech by Iran's Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in which he condemned the “seditionists” for having “hurt the Islamic Revolution and the people” by “conspiring and giving hope to the enemies.” As a result, Iran’s judiciary is now said to be under intense pressure to launch a legal offensive against the leadership of the Green Movement.
As part of that effort, Iranian opposition leaders have been formally barred by regime authorities from traveling abroad, a leading Iranian lawmaker has confirmed. Mousa Qorbani, a member of the Judicial Committee in Iran's legislature, or majles, recently told a state-run television program that Mousavi and Kharroubi - along with former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami - have been "recognized" as "mohareb" (opponents of God) by the Iranian regime, and as a result "are barred from leaving" the country.
And, worried over the enduring appeal of reform within the Islamic Republic, Iranian conservatives are even seeking to jury-rig next year’s legislative elections. A number of high-profile regime hard-liners (among them the Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of the government’s influential constitutional watchdog, the Guardian Council) have argued that pro-reform candidates are “traitors” who still seek to overthrow the clerical regime. In response, Jannati and others say, politicians who advocate even incremental changes to the Islamic Republic should be barred outright from participating in the March 2012 poll. (New York Times, January 1, 2011; Associated Press, December 25, 2010 and January 5, 2011)
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