Iran: a review through policies . .
. Do you get it?
Policy making in an authoritarian sate? A theocratic state? A Republic?
Factors influencing: elections http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoRRqvqStD8
#BBCtrending: Iran food aid backfires in 'shame'
The Power of Social Media
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26076612
????
Definition: national, ethnic, linguistic, and
religious divisions that affect political
allegiances and policies.
• can be cumulative or cross-cut.
• Cumulative cleavages pit the same
groups of people against one another on
many issues, such as religion and class in
Northern Ireland. Catholics tend to be
poorer, while Protestants tend to be
wealthier.
• Cross-cut cleavages feature groups
sharing common interests on some issues,
but opposing one another on
Cleavages in Iran
Religion
______89%
_______ 10%
1% Jewish, Zoroastrian,
Christian, Buddhist
Ethnic Groups
_______ (51%),
_______(24%) North),
Gilaki (and Mazandarani
(8%), North)
K_____7% (northwest)
Balochis (southwest)
Arabs ( 3% southwest
Bashu)
Bahais
largest non-Muslim minority
in Iran
A heavy concentration in
Tehran
Bahaism stresses the
brotherhood of all peoples,
equality of the sexes, and
pacifism
Persecuted
U.S. House of Representatives resolution
condemns Iran's persecution of Baha'is
.
3 January 2013
WASHINGTON D.C., United States — The
United States Congress has called on Iran to
release Baha'is imprisoned solely for their
religious beliefs.
In a resolution passed on 1 January, the House
of Representatives expressed its condemnation
of Iran's "state-sponsored persecution" of
Baha'is.
"Ordinary Iranian citizens who belong to the
Baha'i Faith are disproportionately targeted,
interrogated, and detained under the pretext of
national security," said the resolution, which
was the 12th such measure approved by the US
Congress since 1982
Reserved seats
Majles-e Shura-ye Eslami (Islamic Consultative
Assembly), consists of 290 members, who are elected
for four-year terms. The Majles approves the national
budget, drafts legislation, and ratifies international
treaties. All Majles candidates and all legislation from
the assembly must be approved by the Guardian
Council.
Five seats are reserved for the representatives of
the officially recognized religious minorities: two
for Armenian Christians and one each for
Zoroastrians, Jews, and Assyrian Christians. The
Majles can propose and pass legislation and cannot be
dissolved by the executive branch. Cabinet ministers
can also present bills. The current speaker is Ali
Larijani (since 3 May 2008)
NOT for the Bahai
Iran is a young country (see chart): two
out of three people are below the age of
30. On the streets of affluent north
Tehran, young people dress in the latest
fashions—even if the jeans-clad women
are obliged by law to wear the Islamic
headscarf (the hijab). The audience at
prayers, however, is older: shabbily
dressed men well into their 40s, regime
stalwarts who have trekked uphill from
the poor southern suburbs
COMPARE
A picture of Iran’s youth
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/16/y
outh-in-iran-inside-and-out/
Iran raises voting age to 18
Sunday, 14 January 2007
Iran Focus
Tehran, Iran, Jan. 14 – Iran's Guardians Council approved a bill
that had been passed by Majlis (Parliament) last week to raise the
country's voting age from 15 to 18, a council spokesman
announced on Saturday.
The new law concerns national elections in which those above
the age of 15 had previously been permitted to vote, state
television quoted Abbas-Ali Kadkhodai as saying. He added that
the law, which took effect immediately, was approved by the
Guardians Council on Wednesday.
The ultra-conservative Guardians Council is Iran's highest vetting
organ.
Population Policy
See the latest . .. .http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19052458
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Iran's new
message to parents: Get busy and have babies
Iran urges baby boom, slashes birth-control
programs
7/29/2012
In a major reversal of once far-reaching family planning policies, authorities are now
slashing its birth-control programs in an attempt to avoid an aging demographic similar
to many Western countries that are struggling to keep up with state medical and social
security costs.
The changes — announced in Iranian media last week — came after Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described the country's wide-ranging contraceptive services as
"wrong." The independent Shargh newspaper quoted Mohammad Esmail Motlaq, a Health
Ministry official, as saying family planning programs have been cut from the budget for the
current Iranian year, which began in March.
The policy shift brings the country full
circle.
After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, families were strongly encouraged to contribute to a
baby boom demanded by leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who wanted fast population
growth to contribute to a "20 million member army" in support of the ruling theocracy. In
1986, toward the end of the eight-year war with Iraq, census figures show the population's
growth rate reached 3.9 percent — among the highest in the world at the time and in line
with Persian traditions that favor big families.
But the leadership just as quickly hit the brakes in the
1990s, fearing a galloping population could overwhelm
the economy.
Iran became a regional leader in family-planning options, including offering free or
subsidized condoms and other contraceptives, and issuing religious edicts in favor of
vasectomies. One clinic in Tehran promoted its vasectomy services in huge letters
atop a water tower.
Banners at public health care centers urged smaller families as a path to a better life.
By 2011, the most recent period for which figures are available, Iran's population
growth had fallen to one of the lowest in region — 1.3 percent.
Ahmadinejad offers Iran couples cash to
have babies bbc 2010
The official policy changes began in 2005 after the election of President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who called the birth control measures ungodly
and a Western import. In 2009, he unveiled proposals for each new baby
to receive $950 in a government bank account and then get $95 every
year until reaching 18.
On Wednesday, Khamenei said contraceptive policy made sense 20
years ago, "but its continuation in later years was wrong."
"Scientific and experts studies show that we will face population aging
and reduction (in population) if the birth-control policy continues," said
Khamenei a day after the Statistical Center of Iran said the country's
population had reached more than 75.1 million — more than double its
33.7 million in 1976.
Iran’s Economy/ Economic Policy
•reflects the dilemmas of
•late modernization,
•authoritarianism,
•war
•and “the curse of oil”
Resource Trap
Revenues from oil exports
projected to reach at least
$45bn dollars in the year to
March 2007, according to
reports in the Iranian press
- fund about 50% of Iran's
annual budget.
Oil still accounts for 80%-85% of Iran’s export
commodities
•Worlds’ fourth largest producer; third largest reserves
After the Revolution
•Clergy lacks experience governing
•Khomeini's famous statement” economics is for donkeys”
•“red vs Expert” problem
•Massive emigration of skilled professionals
and entrepreneurs (approximately a couple of
million)
•Bazzaris still imp
•
•Iran Iraq war
•devastated by the long war with Iraq, which destroyed infrastructure,
drained the national treasury, and killed many of its young men. By
1988, when the war ended, Iran’s per capita GDP had fallen to just over
half of its 1979 level
•The eight-year Iran-Iraq war resulted in USD$350 billion in damage in Iran alone.
Iran’s application to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) in
1996 had failed in part because of its legal impediments against
foreign investments and in part because of U.S. opposition
Their most important supranational organization membership
has been with the________________ of ____ ____________
________ which was formed in 1960, with Iran as a charter
member
B_____________
sixty percent of the economy is directly
controlled by the state, while another
ten to twenty percent is owned by
the______________
Set up ostensibly to help the disadvantaged, such aswar veterans or the poor.
However, over time they have become major economic players in their own right,
controlling substantial assets and industries while operating independent of any
government oversight (other than the Supreme Leader). “cleric fiefdoms,” key
PATRONAGE mechanism
Reduced State Subsidies
December 2010 the legislature passed President Mahmud AHMADI-NEJAD's Targeted
Subsidies Law (TSL) to reduce state subsidies on food and energy. The bill over a fiveyear period will phase out subsidies that previously cost Tehran $60-100 billion
annually and benefited Iran's upper and middle classes most. Direct cash payouts of $45
per person to more than 90% of Iranian households have mitigated initial widespread
resistance to the TSL program, though this acceptance remains vulnerable to rising
inflation. This is the most extensive economic reform since the government implemented
gasoline rationing in 2007 CIA World factbook
Dec 2 2009 Shoppers at a bazaar in north
Tehran. A research group connected with
Iran's Parliament has estimated that the
removal of price supports would instantly
quadruple the price of gasoline, and could
result in similar increases for basic goods
Iran's bold economic reform
Economic jihad
Economist June 23, 2011
Iran has undertaken reforms that other governments in the
region should envy
GOOD news from Iran is rare, and the IMF is seldom a font of
happy tidings about anything. So when a mission from the Fund
cheered the Islamic Republic’s economy earlier this month,
heaping praise on the policies of its ruthless government, eyebrows spiked upwards as in a
comic scene in a Persian miniature. The shock was even sharper given that the IMF, whose
biggest shareholder happens to be the Great Satan, America, is a pillar of global capitalism, a
system that Iran’s maverick president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, gleefully lambasts as evil
...
The reason for the praise is Iran’s exemplary execution of a task dear to the IMF’s heart:
structural reform. The Islamic Republic describes things differently. Speaking on the occasion
of Nowruz, the Iranian new year in March, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
declared this to be the “year of economic jihad”. Whatever its name, the sweeping reform of a
ruinous, three-decade-old system of state subsidies that Iran began last December seems to be
radically reshaping the country’s economy for the better
Iran's Ahmadinejad pushes subsidy reform
as antidote to economic woes
Wed, Jan 16 2013
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appeared in parliament on
Wednesday, urging lawmakers to allow government plans to cut subsidies to go ahead as
a way to revive the economy, struggling in the grip of tightening Western sanctions.
Parliament suspended the second phase of the government's subsidy reform plan in
November, saying that reductions in subsidies, which began in 2010, had contributed to
higher inflation. Further cuts would harm an economy already battered by Western
sanctions on the banking and energy sectors, they said.
But Ahmadinejad on Wednesday defended the reforms, also called the targeted-subsidies
plan, saying they had reduced income inequality between the rich and poor and were key
to combating the effect of sanctions.
The reforms are aimed at easing pressure on state finances by cutting tens of billions of
dollars from government subsidies on food and fuel, while offsetting the impact on Iran's
citizens by giving them monthly cash payments.
Iran's $12-billion enforcers
From road-building to laser eye surgery, the
Revolutionary Guard dominates the economy.
August 26, 2007|Kim Murphy | Times Staff Writer
Iran's Revolutionary Guard has quietly become one of the
most significant political and economic powers in the Islamic
Republic, with ties to more than 100 companies, which by
some estimates control more than $12 billion in business and
construction, economists and Iranian political analysts say.
The Guard was created in 1979 as a military and intelligence
force to protect the ideals of Iran's Islamic Revolution. But
the 125,000-strong force has used the massive military
engineering capability it developed rebuilding the country
after the 1980-88 war with Iraq to take over the strategic
highlands of the Iranian economy.
President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad spoke at a
military parade in Tehran
last month, with the
Guards’ leader,
Mohammad Ali Jaafari,
and a former leader,
Yahya Rahim Safavi,
directly right of him.
CAIRO — As Iran continues to manage the aftershocks of its contested presidential election, the Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps has moved aggressively to tighten its grip on society, most recently with its
takeover of a majority share in the nation’s telecommunications monopoly.
The nearly $8 billion acquisition by a company affiliated with the elite force has amplified concerns in Iran
over what some call the rise of a pseudogovernment, prompting members of Parliament to begin an
investigation into the deal.
“It’s not just a matter of the Guards dominating the economy, but of controlling the state,” said Alireza Nader,
an expert on Iran and co-author of a comprehensive RAND Corporation report on the Revolutionary Guards.
The Guards was created as an elite military force at the founding of the Islamic republic, but its broad
mandate — to protect the revolution — has allowed it to reach far beyond its military capacity and evolve
into the nation’s most powerful political and economic force.
Its ability to enhance its status even further since the election has important implications for the future of
Iran’s domestic politics, decisions on its nuclear program and prospects for long-term relations with the West,
said Iranian analysts inside and outside of the country. Increasingly, it is the interests of the Guards and its
allies that are driving the nation’s policies, and those interests have often been defined by isolation from the
West.
The takeover of Iran’s telecommunications system followed a familiar pattern. A private
firm, initially approved by Iran’s Privatization Organization, was excluded as an eligible
bidder because of a “security condition” one day before shares were put on sale. Mobin
Trust Consortium, affiliated with the Guards, then won the bidding.
Until this case, the most striking instance of the Guards’ muscling into a business involved
management of the Imam Khomeini Airport. In May 2004 the Guards shut down the
airport and evicted the Turkish company that had the contract to run it. The Guards then
put its own firm in place. The Guards also appears to have defied an edict by Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to privatize its many holdings, which run from laser eye
clinics and car dealerships to control of oil and gas fields, according to the RAND report.
Nuclear program
see BBC Q & A. . .
Men in traditional uniforms danced Tuesday
during a parade in Mashhad and lifted containers
said to hold uranium enriched by Iran. NYT
4/12/06
Iran's lead nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, right,
meeting in Tehran with the ambassadors of the five
United Nations Security Council veto powers (France,
Britain, Russia, China and the U.S.) plus Germany.
NYT 8/23/06