The head of the state agency handling the welfare payments said no Iranian abroad for six months or more was eligible to receive the payments of about $45 per month.
It has only recently emerged in the media that some expatriates have filed the paperwork and are having the payments deposited into bank accounts in Iran. It isn’t known how many have done so. It also is not clear how the government will find out which recipients are living abroad.
The agency head also said the program costs 3.4 trillion rials per month. With a monthly payment of 455,000 rials, that would mean 74.7 million people or virtually every one of the 75 million Iranians estimated by the Census would be receiving welfare payments.