Everyone has known that bread has widely wasted because it has been so cheap, but the government never before put a figure on it.
Farmers are known to have bought bread to feed to their livestock because that was cheaper than fodder. Garbage collectors report vast quantities of bread are thrown away, as the public prefers to buy fresh bread rather than eat day-old bread when fresh bread has been so cheap.
That cheapness ended in December as subsidies were lifted.
Deputy Commerce Minister Hamid Alikhani said Monday that the government expects wheat consumption this year to be only 6.4 million tons, down 26 percent from last year’s 8.7 million tons.
Iran is also threatened with the wheat rust disease Ug99, so the reduced consumption may help Iran avoid substantial wheat imports.
Iran has had problems for years producing enough wheat, but wheat imports are politically unpalatable as they indicate national weakness, in the eyes of revolutionaries.
Based on February 2010 figures, Alikhani says, the average Iranian consumes 8.7 kilos (19 lbs) of bread each month.
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Band in black berates Saudis at soccer matchtc “Band in black berates Saudis at soccer match”
TAKE THAT — Police hold their truncheons high as they smash heads to break up an anti-Saudi demonstration at a soccer match in Tehran Tuesday.
A few hundred Iranian fans
attending a soccer match
against a Saudi team Tuesday set of an anti-Saudi political protest and were forcibly evicted from the stadium by police.
About 10,000 fans were attending a match in Tehran between Iran’s Persepolis club and the Saudi Al-Ittihad team. It was part of the Asian Champions League competition.
Late in the first half, some of the fans starting chanting political slogans against the Saudi monarchy, waived Bahraini flags and demanded that Saudi troops leave Bahrain.
The number of protesters was variously estimated at 200 to 400. They were dressed entirely in black.
They were rounded up by police and driven to an isolated section of the stadium, then expelled early in the second half.
Several were reported to have been arrested. An eyewitness told the Associated Press two protesters were injured.
Persepolis won the game 3-2.
Saudi Arabia, fearing trouble at the match, had earlier appealed for it to be moved to a neutral country, but that request was denied by Asian soccer officials.
14+2
100 Mojahedin wanted in jailtc “100 Mojahedin wanted in jail”
All but around 100 of the
3,400 members of the
Mojahedin-e Khalq confined at Camp Ashraf in Iraq are free to return to Iran without being jailed or prosecuted, Iran’s ambassador to Iraq announced Saturday.
In an interview with the Iranian Students News Agency, Ambassador Hassan Danaifar said, “Except for nearly 100 individuals, against whom legal charges have been filed with the Judiciary, all other residents of the camp may return to our dear Iran or travel anywhere else they wish.”
Danaifar, however, failed either to announce the precise number of those charged or to release a list of those facing charges, so his announcement failed to provide any real encouragement for Mojahedin members to return to Iran.
The Islamic Republic has often said that it only wishes to punish the leaders of the group and those who actually engaged in attacks on Iran. But this is the first time it has said those categories number less than 100. If true, that suggests that the Mojahedin’s cross-border terrorist operations were really very limited in scope and far from the huge scale Iran has painted them as being for decades.
Just last week, Iranian Justice Minister Morteza Bakhtiari said the Mojahedin-e Khalq killed 12,000 Iranians in decades of terrorist actions inside Iran. He repeated the official canard that the United States supports the group’s terrorism.
Since the United States captured Iraq and confined the Mojahedin to Camp Ashraf, about 300 have contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and been returned to Iran by the ICRC. The regime has gone out of its way to welcome them home, though it isn’t known how they have been treated after the welcoming ceremony.
Only a handful of Moja-hedin members have been accepted by third countries where they had relatives or citizenship prior to joining the group in Iraq.
Danaifar said those returning other than the unnamed one hundred would be granted amnesty on their return.