In recent years, it seems as if anytime the U.S. government highlights corruption in Iran, international Iran-watchers—including Iranians in the diaspora—quickly adopt a knee-jerk reaction. “So what?” They say on social media, often en masse. “Iranians already know about corruption. Nothing new here,” they add.
But as an Iranian who conducted in-depth research inside the Islamic Republic, I beg to differ. In 2017, I spearheaded an in-country study based on over 2000 surveys of Iranians who lived across the country and hundreds of in-depth interviews with locals. That year also saw a slew of corruption scandals that left Iranians reeling about the lack of transparency and scruples by the men who run the country.
Sure, the majority of the demographically-representative sample that I interviewed inside Iran “knew” that their government was overrun by thugs. However, hardly anyone understood how such corruption siphoned off the country’s riches and put it into the hands of the few, often under the guise of charity and religious authority. This is the reason why it is necessary to uncover the opaque dynamics of corruption throughout Iran’s economic structure, and empower the people with facts and transparency about how their government works.
Iran’s economy is built on entities called bonyads, which were formed after the 1979 Revolution. Many of the bonyads were initially founded to better the lives of ordinary Iranians, tasked as such with the noble aim of “redistributing wealth among Iranians.” But the reality has been very different.
Instead, bonyads have become profit-driven opaque “corporations” that operate above the law and with impunity. They do not pay taxes but they continue to receive “financial aid” from the government, a process often administered by the same people. Some, like Mostazafan Foundation and the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order (EIKO)—a.k.a. Setad—have amassed so much wealth and power that they recently proposed they could replace the government all together.
Iranians generally know about a handful of companies run by bonyads, and about the corrupt business ties to Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC). International researchers occasionally further this knowledge by unveiling a few dozen more examples. Doublethink Institute has done some unprecedented research into this subject, naming hundreds of entities and mapping complex relationships between them. We continue to find corrupt practices across Iran’s most lucrative economic sectors, including banking, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, mining, tourism, food, hospitality and many more. The businesses in these sectors offer the majority of consumer goods from toothpaste and soap to dairy products and foodstuff, often forming de-facto monopolies and engaging in price-fixing without any oversight from the government or the public. Iranians remain unaware of this and of the extent it affects their lives, even as many are increasingly forced to choose between feeding their family and buying life-saving medicine.
So when the twitteratis dismiss talk of corruption in Iran as “nothing new,” I remind them that Iranians who live inside the country deserve to know the details, including answers to who is responsible, why the culprits get away with it, how government corruption affects Iranians’ lives and what can be done about it.
*Originally published by Doublethink Institute