Iran’s Regime Slowly Crawls Toward Its End – OpEd

When the deceased Ebrahim Raisi was appointed as the head of the executive branch in the 2021 presidential election, regime supreme leader Ali Khamenei did not congratulate him. Instead, he praised the people’s participation: “Great nation of Iran! Your heroic and enthusiastic participation in the June 18, 2021, elections added another brilliant page to your honors.

According to the regime’s own inflated statistics, this election had the lowest turnout (48 percent) compared to previous ones. However, regarding the incoming president Massoud Pezeshkian, Khamenei emphasized that he should follow Raisi’s path: “…Khamenei, in a message thanking the people and congratulating Pezeshkian, the elected president, said to continue the path of the martyr Raisi,” according to IRGC-run Javan newspaper on July 6.

The “Sudden” President and the Difficult Path

Now that the sham elections that made Pezeshkian the “sudden” president is over, the infighting among the ruling mafia factions has entered a new phase. However, what has shaken all the pillars of the clerical regime’s structure are the super crises that have been tearing the state apart.

Pezeshkian is bewildered by the situation he has entered: “One of the consequences of becoming the sudden president is that all political forces, both friends and critics, demand a share from him. It has reached the point where they are giving Pezeshkian addresses and saying that if the government wants to be calm, it must use all forces in the cabinet and government. The sudden president has his own troubles.” (Source: Jahan-e Sanat news website, July 20).

A Critical Analysis Based on Systemic Thinking Laws

Based on “systemic thinking laws”, an expert and futurist assessed regime’s the dire conditions and said: At the end of successive governments in the clerical regime, “the situation of the country’s human, economic, social, and environmental development indicators become much worse than before.” (Source: Jahan-e Sanat, July 20)

In analyzing the inefficiency and failure of successive governments, he highlights the difference between simple thinking in solving current issues and complex thinking, believing that:

– The root of all Iran’s issues is meaningfully related to the “worldview and official ideology of the Velayat-e Faqih state…”

– Solutions must arise from the long-term will and desire of the Iranian people. Another issue is the purely economic solutions of the regime’s senior experts without considering the reactionary nature of fundamentalist religious fascism.

– The solutions presented by economists (Farshad Momeni and Hossein Raghfar) without explaining how to “eliminate the corruption network in the country” fall under “social causes.”

The researcher concludes that since these economists do not question and challenge the regime’s nature, which is the main cause of all the current super crises in Iran, it is predictable that the resulting solution will not solve the problem.

Another point is whether corruption is “systemic” or “systematic.” Systematic corruption appears in forms such as import mafias, multi-trillion rial embezzlements, smuggling of goods, currency, and gold, underground transit and drugs, large-scale political appointments, and similar activities by mafia gangs linked to the core of power. Therefore, solving the super crisis of systematic corruption is beyond the president’s capability and is directly tied to Khamenei, because if, for example, a 100 trillion rial embezzlement is to occur, several governmental bodies like the Ministry of Intelligence, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Intelligence, Judiciary Protection, Police, Aviation, and others must coordinate. The president has no control over any of them. So, based on the proposed solution, how is the issue of corruption in the country supposed to be resolved?

– The three variables of “blockage,” “corruption,” and “repression” are signs of crisis, and the root of the super crises lies elsewhere.

– Iranian society is the most protest-prone society in the world.

– Iran’s super economic crises are directly related to the nature of the regime.

The systemic analyst believes, “Iran’s economy’s way out of the current super crises requires a break, a re-creation, and a reinvention.”

Break and reinvention are code names for revolution and fundamental transformation to replace the chaotic, aged, and dying system with a dynamic, lively, and active system.

Past experience shows that efforts by Pezeshkian and his efforts to save the regime will bring it closer to its end. This is what Khamenei fears, as he sees his shattered dreams in the inevitable uprisings of Iran’s youth and women and the organized resistance ready on the scene. The unaccountability of Khamenei and other plundering and repressive officials, destructive and anti-people policies in destroying production, and consequently the devaluation of the national currency, backward, uncoordinated, corrupt, and disjointed governmental structure, multiplicity of power centers and decision-making, cultural destruction, increasing unemployment, skyrocketing prices, rampant inflation, and a terrible class gap between the survival line and the super-rich… all indicate that a new and dynamic system is on the way.