{"id":263331,"date":"2022-09-04T19:56:38","date_gmt":"2022-09-04T17:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=263331"},"modified":"2023-02-01T22:22:05","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T21:22:05","slug":"iran-raisis-false-claims-world-communitys-responsibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/iran-raisis-false-claims-world-communitys-responsibility\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran: Raisi\u2019s False Claims, World Community\u2019s Responsibility"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Embracing<\/p>\n

Iran’s regime President, Ebrahim Raisi<\/a>, marked the first anniversary of his inauguration last Monday with a wide-ranging speech in which he ridiculously claimed that his administration had solved numerous socio-economic problems at both national and local levels. The speech was aimed to portray an unstable ruling theocracy as more powerful than ever. Yet, Raisi miserably failed by presenting some bogus facts and figures.<\/p>\n

It was no doubt for the same purpose that Raisi avoided referencing the fraught negotiations over the future of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal until roughly the midway point of his two-hour address. When he did, it was only to reiterate the regime’s outstanding ultimatums and to champion his own imaginary success in \u201cneutralizing\u201d US sanctions with domestic economic production. Such claims reinforce prior statements from Raisi and other regime officials, which portray the regime’s Western adversaries as being in much more desperate need of a deal to restore the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).<\/p>\n

This reflects the regime’s effort to exploit a global energy crisis to acquire new concessions from the JCPOA’s Western signatories. That crisis largely stems from the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine, which Tehran recently began actively supporting by providing the Russian military with missile-carrying drones.<\/p>\n

Therefore, Iranian officials and state media outlets argue that by isolating themselves from Russian oil and gas markets, Western powers have only made themselves desperate for an Iranian alternative.<\/p>\n

Tehran now brags about its readiness to fulfill Western energy needs, but that claim has no foundations as the regime is presently struggling to meet its domestic gas needs, even while sanctions dramatically constrain its export capacity.<\/p>\n

Iran’s domestic shortages were highlighted throughout the summer by various reports of power cuts and price hikes, several of which sparked massive protests. Other such protests stemmed from issues of water scarcity and systematic corruption in the face of escalating poverty rates all across the country. Such protests continue to the present day and plainly belie Raisi’s claims of having solved domestic issues by visiting local communities and hearing public grievances.<\/p>\n

In reality, Raisi’s domestic travel was more likely intended to intimidate the public into keeping silent about those grievances. This is in line with the role those pro-democracy activists warned he would play after being installed as president by the regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in June 2021.<\/p>\n

Ali Khamenei had previously sought to consolidate power in the parliament, and Raisi’s appointment was part of the same strategy. Khamenei had tapped Raisi for the nation’s second-highest office specifically because of his reputation for human rights abuses and violent crackdowns on dissents. In 1988<\/a>, Raisi was one of four officials to serve on the Tehran \u201cdeath commission<\/a>\u201d during a massacre of political prisoners, of which 30,000 lives nationwide. And in 2019, as head of the judiciary, he oversaw key aspects of the crackdown on that November’s nationwide uprising.<\/p>\n

Public awareness of this record led to candidate Raisi being widely condemned as the “butcher of Tehran” in the run-up to a tightly-controlled sham election in which the vast majority of Iranians refused to participate. Since his selection as the regime’s president, protests have continued to feature the calls for regime change that defined the November 2019 uprising while also adopting the more targeted slogan “death to Raisi.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Iran: A Fatwa Which Took the Life of 30,000 Political Prisoners in 1988 Massacre<\/div><\/div>
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