barrels of oil a day, quintuple Iran’s actual output before the latest sanctions slashed production.
Iranian officials have a bad habit of throwing statistics around very loosely. That tends to be especially true of clergymen who are not educated in a statistics-drenched environment.
But Iranians are brought up teething on oil production numbers and thus Mohammad Mohammadi-Golpayegani’s gaff elicited gasps from many.
What was unknown was whether Golpayegani—who has been Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi’s chief of staff for decades—was stunningly ignorant or assumed his audience was stunningly ignorant.
He was speaking to a group of clergymen and academics in Gilan province. He said that in 1988, Iran pumped 8 million to 9 million barrels a day, but that output had now risen to 19 million to 20 million barrels.
Iran’s highest production briefly topped 6 million barrels a day in 1978 just before the revolution.
It has not reached that level since the revolution. Iranian officials have often claimed output of 4.2 million barrels in recent years and most newspaper readers in Iran would understand 4.2 million to be the current production level.
Where Golpayegani came up with 18 to 19 million remains a mystery. It was also a mystery as to why he would falsely state a statistic that is used daily in the media and thus widely known to Iranians.
