Every facet of life and governance is presented as the inverse of its lived reality. And anyone who dares to peek behind the curtain—journalists, dissident professors, activists, even, bizarrely, the Iranian president himself—becomes a threat to the regime.
The Iranian economy is a grand hall of mirrors, concealing criminal theft on an epic scale. Fake privatizations, hidden backroom tenders, currency tiers purportedly designed to favor consumers, and bank bailouts have enriched oligarchs rich while impoverishing the nation. The regime blames its bankruptcy on sanctions and claims to be working toward their removal while making foreign policy choices guaranteed to trigger more sanctions.
Every crisis is shrouded in lies that mask its real cause: Why is Tehran running out of water? Why is a gas-rich country facing electricity shortages? Why does a single family dominate the import of agricultural feed? Why, as a former mayor of Tehran, demanded in his newspaper last week, do 40 million Iranians live below the poverty line while the state operates mega charitable foundations with billion-dollar budgets ostensibly to help the poor? For this candor, his paper was shut down.
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