Smoldering Fires Flaring Up in Iran

Susan.Sh. FCN News Agency: Iran’s conditions are heading toward unrest. Smoldering fires across the country are flaring up. There are hands at work fanning these unrest fires. Strikes have begun, and false news and rumors on some social media networks are grist for the mills of those who benefit from this turmoil.

Meanwhile, the reaction of the Islamic Republic’s officials is astonishing. Rather than being a balm for the people’s suffering, they are pouring salt on their wounds. This manner of governing a nation whose people have grown weary inclines minds toward the view that “the leaders of the Islamic Republic see their own survival in war and unrest, and to preserve internal and external power, they want to use the military weapon.”

Unconditional Support for Assad

The most striking example of the regime’s positioning is the recent statements made in support of Bashar Assad from the tongue of the president and leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Hassan Rouhani went even further and explicitly expressed various forms of support for Assad’s government, saying: “Just as we have stood with the Syrian people in all struggles, we will stand with you with all our capabilities in reconstruction as well.”

They, indifferent to public sensitivities, declared readiness for unconditional reconstruction and Syria’s limitations. While the Iranian people have experienced various deprivations and shortages for decades and now, due to the regime’s policies, are forced once again to bear the burden of nuclear sanctions.

Any sound mind acknowledges that these conditions exacerbate unrest in the country and involuntarily expose the people to feelings and reactions that are likely what the Revolutionary Guards want.

Increased Pressure on Sensitive Regions

Meanwhile, certain regions of the country face heightened sensitivity. Khuzestan, the deprived yet oil-rich province, is among them.

Before summer arrives, most regions have already faced severe drinking water shortages. Widespread power cuts loom ahead. Official sources have announced: “27 provinces face water scarcity, and 8 provinces are in critical conditions with rainfall reductions exceeding 50 percent, which in addition to water consumption shortage, threatens them with land subsidence.”

These same officials said that dealing with this situation requires financial resources that are not at our disposal.

Moreover, of the 177 major dams in the country, 69 dams, including Zayanderud, Shahid Rajaei, Saveh, and Maleysadra dams, have less than 40 percent stored water. This will severely limit the supply of electricity needed by the people in summer.

The main burden of these problems will fall on the southern provinces and tropical regions of the country. Khuzestan, the oil-rich yet deprived province, is of this type.

However, the Islamic Republic’s officials, to deal with this situation, have pressured Khuzestan farmers and those in other provinces at severe risk and announced cultivation bans. Without providing any compensation or financial assistance to them.

It is clearly unclear how a significant percentage of the people in these provinces will be able to make a living.

This is while people are well aware that river waters like the Karun have been diverted from the people of Khuzestan and are directed to provide drinking water to central provinces.

This problem threatens the peace of Khuzestan residents and other deprived compatriots while, according to predictions made in recent months, they are forced to endure the bitter experience of dust storms like previous years and have no recourse. Because there is no money available, and they must accept contracting various respiratory, skin, cardiac, and vascular diseases. Because this is a condemnation of the people whose rulers have nothing in their pockets to support them.

Indifference to the Deaths of the Deprived

Recently, news has spread in the country about the government’s future decision to remove medicine from the list of essential goods for the people, which means an increased threat to people’s health. Officials simply justify it by the lack of available financial resources.

This is while people have for years faced the deaths of their loved ones due to lack of medicine and the necessity of consuming substandard medicines, and the high cost of medicines and treatment.

Officials offer no solutions. While officials of insurance organizations, particularly Social Security, have been repeatedly accused of financial corruption and illegal withdrawals from these funds.

Recently, the news of the deaths of 93 thalassemia patients due to the poor quality of domestic medicines shook hearts. But officials remained indifferent. Medical conditions in Iran are not comparable to many other Asian countries.

For example, patients with “SMA” in Iran are without medicine and uninsured, and to cover the cost of medicine in the first year of treatment, they must spend approximately 750,000 dollars. But this medicine is provided free to patients in America, Europe, Japan, and even Colombia, Brazil, and Turkey.

For non-specific diseases as well, more than two-thirds of costs must be paid out-of-pocket by the insured, and the inability to provide this has endangered public health and safety.

Empty Hands and Empty Tables for Workers

In recent months, we have repeatedly witnessed protest gatherings of workers employed in various industrial and service sectors who have not received their latest salaries for months and have received no money.

Their livelihood situation can rightfully be added to the more than 3.5 million officially unemployed in the country. Official news sources recently announced that 80 percent of Iran’s people live below the real poverty line, and the minimum wage for workers in Iran only covers one-third of the minimum living expenses of a three-person household. In another report, it was mentioned that we have at least two million hungry people in the country, but experts estimate this figure at more than 5 million.

People Have Become Riffraff Once Again

This news and information represents only a small portion of the conditions that Iran’s people are experiencing these days and have not experienced for decades. But like fire under ash, they are ready to flare up.

These conditions have led to warnings from some social media users and individuals, and there is fear that the experience of protests and innocent people being killed on a broader scale in different provinces, especially more deprived areas like Khuzestan, will be repeated. The conduct of officials and the regime’s leaders is clear.

As we witnessed in the past week, the matter of popular gatherings in Kazerun, as always, ended with threats and widespread arrests. Officials, calling the gatherers riffraff, said that legal and decisive action awaits the detainees. Once again, as always, it was announced that behind the scenes of the protest gatherings in Kazerun were foreign enemies and networks opposed to the Islamic Republic.

But the realities ahead and undeniable facts prove that the Islamic Republic’s officials are indifferent to popular reactions. They pursue their own interests and, backed by sponsors of terrorism in the world, show their claws and fangs toward the defenseless people of our country.

In the meantime, there is fear that the regime’s leaders, by stirring the emotions of a wounded and oppressed nation, will achieve predetermined goals and the hands of the people, even more empty than before, will be laid to rest in the soil.