December 31, 2021
The Raisi Administration continues to amble along at a snail’s pace that is infuriating conservative Principleists even more than Reformists.
Principleists can be heard muttering that the public is now tabbing them as do-nothing politicians, the epithet the Principleists had long (and successfully) hung around the necks of the Reformists.
The Reformists were often hobbled by the fact that the Principleists had taken control of the Majlis and have always controlled the Judiciary, using those power centers to spike Reformist initiatives. But the Principleists now have unchallenged power throughout the regime—and thus no excuse for inaction.
It is widely assumed that President Raisi was being groomed to succeed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi when he passes away. But there is much chatter now that Raisi understands neither government nor politics and would not be a welcome successor to Khamenehi.
The public’s main concerns are assumed to be inflation, jobs, sanctions and the coronavirus. But the government is seen as paying little more than lip service to those concerns. In fact, the new budget just submitted to the Majlis assumes that sanctions will not be lifted at all in the coming Persian year, even though the state’s rhetoric proclaims that to be its main goal.
The big plus-ups in this year’s budget are for the space program, the Pasdaran and the regime’s dream of an Iranian internet cut off from rest of the world. Few analysts think those are the Iranian public’s priorities.
Raisi clearly recognizes other problems and priorities. But he offers little in response but bromides. He said he understood the problems of nurses who have been worked to the bone by the coronavirus. But his recent response was to say, “The Health Ministry has a duty to pursue the problems of nurses seriously until the final result is reached.”
Raisi has assembled a huge economic team to tackle the most fundamental problems of the regime. But few of them are economists or have any managerial experience in dealing with the economy. Many analysts see the economic team as unwieldly. No one is clearly in charge, so everyone appears free to push his own pet solutions, even if they contradict someone else’s pet solution.
Raisi himself has spent a career largely in the Judiciary and is devoid of any economic experience beyond deciding how he will spend his own wealth.
The economic message of the administration’s first few months in office is an emphasis on self-reliance or autarky, not relating to the rest of the world. The head of the national Chamber of Commerce sees this as a pathway to disaster.
Gholam-Hossain Shafei, the chamber president, said at a recent ceremony in Mashhad that national assets are depreciating faster than new investments are being made in the economy. In the meantime, the world economy has made great progress and Iran has remained behind, he argued.
Shafei stressed that the world economy is intertwined and interdependent and implied that Iran has remained behind in globalization. He added that Iran has the potential to rescue its economy but it cannot be done “with traditional steps.”
Raisi has not broken with traditional steps, however.
Even a prominent cleric has publicly said the country cannot remain isolated and avoid dealing with the rest of the world.
“No one can be trusted [fully] in the international community, but at the same time, no one is needless of negotiations and relations with other countries,” Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi-Amoli told Foreign Minister Hossain Amir-Abdollahian.
“We have to negotiate with them and shake hands with them whether we want to or not, but we have to count our fingers afterwards,” Javadi-Amoli advised, according to remarks published on the ayatollah’s personal portal.
Javadi-Amoli is recognized by many Shiites as a grand ayatollah.
The quotes came from a readout of the meeting published on the grand ayatollah’s personal portal, while state media largely ignored his message about the importance of good relations with other countries.
Raisi has most recently gotten into trouble with his own supporters for saying the government’s coffers were empty when he took office.
Raisi and his supporters had harshly criticized then-President Hassan Rohani for revealing Iran’s dire economic situation in front of “the enemies,” when Rohani complained in June that the government’s coffers were empty.
The editor of the hardline daily Kayhan even accused Rohani at the time of giving away state secrets to the enemy by issuing such statements.
During his election campaign in June, Raisi said that even a novice diplomat knows that someone who is involved in negotiations should not talk about an empty treasury.
The moderate conservative website Khabar Online has asked why Iran’s conservatives are silent now about statements that might ruin Iran’s chances in the nuclear negotiations by limiting its bargaining chips.
Raisi himself had sarcastically criticized Rohani’s statement about an empty treasury in June. “If they knew the language of negotiations, they would not have said that the treasury was empty,” and Majlis Speaker Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf who was Tehran’s mayor at the time lashed out at Rohani and said as early as 2013: “We wish to speak at the negotiating table from a position of power. When you disclose that the treasury is empty, what are we are going to say to the other side?”