{"id":338009,"date":"2025-10-08T17:36:50","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T16:36:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=338009"},"modified":"2025-10-08T17:36:50","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T16:36:50","slug":"irans-budget-theater-how-the-regime-uses-public-funds-to-preserve-power-not-serve-the-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/economy\/irans-budget-theater-how-the-regime-uses-public-funds-to-preserve-power-not-serve-the-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran\u2019s Budget Theater: How the Regime Uses Public Funds to Preserve Power, Not Serve the People"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_338014\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-338014\" style=\"width: 1000px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-338014\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/budget-corruption-in-iran-1.jpg\" alt=\"An Iranian official reviews the national budget document\" width=\"1000\" height=\"565\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/budget-corruption-in-iran-1.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/budget-corruption-in-iran-1-300x170.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/budget-corruption-in-iran-1-768x434.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/budget-corruption-in-iran-1-743x420.jpg 743w, https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/budget-corruption-in-iran-1-150x85.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/budget-corruption-in-iran-1-696x393.jpg 696w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-338014\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">An Iranian official reviews the national budget document<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong><em>Two-minute read<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">While millions of Iranians struggle with rising poverty, inflation, unemployment, and housing shortages, the regime in Tehran continues to treat national budgeting as political theater rather than a mechanism for governance or public welfare. A striking report by the state-run <a href=\"https:\/\/sarasari.khorasanonlin.ir\/Newspaper\/Item\/131652\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Khorasan<\/em> daily<\/a>, published on October 5, openly admits that Iran\u2019s budgeting system has collapsed into a ritual of deception \u2014 a tool to mask corruption and sustain the regime\u2019s power structure.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Under the headline <em>\u201cBudgeting for Nothing,\u201d<\/em> the paper writes:\u00a0\u201cFor decades, our national plans have never been meant for implementation. Everyone knows they are merely formalities. The same applies to the country\u2019s budgeting. All officials \u2014 from the heads of commissions to the president and parliament \u2014 know that only about 60 percent of approved credits ever materialize.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This rare confession by a regime newspaper lays bare the structural failure of Iran\u2019s financial system. When top officials acknowledge that nearly half of the national budget is fictitious, it means that the budget is no longer a roadmap for development \u2014 it is a symbolic document, designed to create the illusion of governance while concealing vast unaccountable funds.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Iran?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Iran<\/a>\u2019s 1404 Budget: Crushing the Population to Fund Regime Survival<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/WyAw7LLjk7\">https:\/\/t.co\/WyAw7LLjk7<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/iran_policy\/status\/1897743990423695664?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 6, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: justify;\">Billions Hidden from Oversight<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>Khorasan<\/em> reports that while the government claims to allocate 600 trillion tomans to the national budget, only 350 trillion tomans are ever disbursed. The gap \u2014 hundreds of trillions of tomans \u2014 is absorbed by opaque networks within the regime, flowing into the hands of unaccountable institutions, military entities, and special foundations loyal to the ruling elite.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">These inflated figures are not accidental. They serve as a smokescreen for corruption and rent distribution, allowing regime insiders to divert public wealth into private or clandestine channels. Every \u201cunrealized\u201d portion of the budget represents a portion of stolen national resources, redirected outside the reach of audits, parliament, or public scrutiny.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The regime\u2019s budget process has thus become a ceremonial act of state survival, not an instrument of governance. Successive governments, regardless of rhetoric, have used the annual budget not to manage the economy but to simulate normalcy \u2014 to pretend that a functioning state still exists in Iran.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">These so-called \u201cdevelopment plans\u201d are, in fact, formalized promises never meant to be kept, a bureaucratic ritual masking the truth: Iran\u2019s economic planning <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/economy\/delving-into-irans-corruption-chronicles-part-1\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">apparatus serves corruption<\/a>, not citizens.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Iran?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Iran<\/a>\u2019s 2025 Budget: Prioritizing Propaganda, Security, and Religious Institutions Over Public Welfare<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/SRfrZfJxDa\">https:\/\/t.co\/SRfrZfJxDa<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/iran_policy\/status\/1892581832069095881?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 20, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: justify;\">The People Pay the Price<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In this broken system, workers, teachers, pensioners, farmers, and unemployed youth are not beneficiaries of the national budget \u2014 they are its victims. The billions lost to hidden allocations could have gone to education, healthcare, housing, and employment programs. Instead, they sustain the regime\u2019s security apparatus and power networks.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The <em>Khorasan<\/em> article captures the essence of this injustice with biting irony:\u00a0\u201cBudgeting for nothing\u201d is the repeated game of promises against empty dinner tables.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Behind the grand numbers and false projections lies a deliberate strategy of impoverishment. The regime keeps the population economically weak to prevent resistance and control dissent, fully aware of sleeping on a bomb.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In today\u2019s Iran, the national budget has become a political weapon, not a fiscal plan. It funds repression and propaganda, not progress. Each unfulfilled promise is another reminder that the regime\u2019s priority is self-preservation, not the people \u2014 and that Iran\u2019s wealth continues to be drained to sustain a dictatorship built on lies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two-minute read While millions of Iranians struggle with rising poverty, inflation, unemployment, and housing shortages, the regime in Tehran continues to treat national budgeting as political theater rather than a [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":338014,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[269,270],"class_list":{"0":"post-338009","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-iran-economy","9":"tag-corruption"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - 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