Iranians endure a cratering economy, while the leaders of the regime have been enriching themselves.
This from frontpagemag.com.
Some revealing man-in-the-street interviews in Iran, where hatred of the regime has put many people on the side of Israel, and made them receive with pleasure the news of Ismael Haniyeh’s assassination, can be found here: “Iranians side with Israel, even against their own regime,” by Emily Schrader, Ynet News, August 5, 2024:
For 45 years, the Iranian people have been subjected to a dictatorial Islamic government that prioritizes support for terrorism and enables rampant levels of corruption, over the wellbeing of the people, the Iranian economy, and the future of the state itself….
According to a six-month investigation by Reuters:
Ayatolah Khamenei now controls a “’financial empire’ worth $95 billion.
How much of that he has pocketed for himself and his immediate family is unknown.
But he’s likely to have far exceeded even the three greedy leaders of Hamas, whose net worth—four billion dollars for Khaled Meshaal, three billion for Mousa Abu Marzouk, and four billion for the late Ismail Haniyeh—all comes from aid money that foreign donors intended for the people of Gaza, but instead it went to a handful of thieves living in Doha.
How bad is that Iranian economy? Consider only this: in 2015 a dollar was worth 32,500 Iranian riyals. Today, a dollar is worth 650,000 riyals. The riyal has thus depreciated to one-twentieth of what it was valued at less than a decade ago.
Many Iranians have seen their life savings evaporate. And they are enraged not just at the corruption at the top—among the ayatollahs and the IRGC commanders—but also at the spectacle of their government spending billions of dollars to supply their proxies in the Middle East. The Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza, and especially, Hezbollah in Lebanon are given both money and expensive weaponry. How much, they wonder, of Iran’s wealth has gone to supplying 200,000 rockets and missiles for the Lebanese terror group?
That is why Iranian protesters shout not the slogans favored by the regime: “Death to Israel” and “Death to America,” but, rather, “Death to Palestine,” “Help us, not Gaza,” and “Leave Syria alone and deal with Iran.”
Ynetnews spoke with Iranians in the aftermath of the historic assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil to try to understand their feelings and reactions regarding a potential war against Israel. Because there are currently Iranians on death row for speaking to Israeli media, the names of the Iranians interviewed cannot be published but below are their stories:
Overall, the Iranian people are extremely pro-Israel and reject the regime’s warmongering, but multiple Iranians expressed concern about operating on Iranian soil. F, from Tehran, stated, ‘I was worryingly happy as he [Ismail Haniyeh] got what he deserved, but I’d rather he was dealt with someplace else.’ He added after, ‘I also had a good feeling that potentially some Iranians were involved.’
When asked about the possibility of an all-out war between Israel and the Islamic Republic, most of the Iranians Ynetnews spoke with expressed more fear of the Islamic Republic than of the IDF. ‘I personally am not scared of Israeli retaliation because I know that IDF and Israeli officials see us Iranian people on their side and would do whatever they deem necessary to minimize the collateral damage as they did with the case of Haniyeh.’ …
On August 6, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz announced that Iran’s message of an intended attack was delivered to Israel via Hungary’s Foreign Minister, who called Katz directly to relay the information. If Iran follows through, and it can hardly back down now that it has made this announcement to the world, the IDF will undoubtedly destroy the key infrastructure on which Iran’s main source of wealth—its oil exports—depends, which is the Kharg Oil Terminal, located on Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf some 25 kilometers off the coast of Iran, through which more than 90% of Iran’s crude exports are shipped.
What will the people of Iran do? Rally round the regime that has brought them to this world of woe, or rise up against the ayatollahs and the IRGC? This time, unlike in the past, if Israel delivers such a blow, a humiliated, defeated, and impoverished regime will not be able to suppress its own people.
