UAE's Nuclear Plant 'Well Protected', Regulator Says Amid Houthi Threats

"Raisi, Ghalibaf, This is the last call. Teachers' movement is prepared for an uprising", teachers chanted in protests in Shiraz, Fars province (video), and Shahr-e Kord in Chahr Mahal province (video), as well as Ilam in Ilam province, and around 50 other cities.

The same slogan appeared on banners and posters in all rallies, including Tehran where teachers protested in front of the parliament.

There were also chants against the state broadcaster (IRIB), which has not covered earlier protests. "Enough Oppression and Injustice. There's Nothing on Our Tables" and "The Country Has Become A Thieves' Den. Sanctions Are Only an Excuse," chanted protesters in Najafabad in Esfahan province, dismissing any notion that Iran’s economic troubles were anything to do with United States ‘maximum pressure’ imposed in 2018.

A female teacher in Anzali (video), Gilan province, lambasted Iran’s authorities for teachers’ ills. "We weren't the ones who looted the Melli (National) Bank, we weren't the ones who pillaged the Teachers' Savings Fund, we weren't the ones who looted the Development Fund. We don't own villas and gardens in Canada [like some former officials]. We weren't the ones who smuggled important national documents out of the country. We are right here, beside you. We are easy to find, we are in schools, classes and with your children, brothers, and sisters.”

And it didn’t stop there. "Taking the teachers by the neck, dragging them on the ground, kicking them, is nothing you could be proud of,” she opined. “You must take the looters and pillagers if order in the country is important, if security in the country is important.” A teacher in Esfahan said in her speech Tuesday who also said that after thirty years of service she now must work as a cab driver to make ends meet.

Equal pay with other civil servants

This was the fifth nationwide protest by teachers in the past two months as they demand implementation of decade-old legislation that would bring the salaries and pensions of 750,000 teachers in line with other civil servants.

The budget bill that President Ebrahim Raisi presented to parliament December 12 proposes a 14-percent increase in the education ministry's budget but does not earmark resources for a teachers’ pay rise.

Food prices have risen by more than 60 percent this year, on top of high inflation in the four years since a jump from 9.6 percent in 2017 to 30.2 percent in 2018 and around 40 percent in 2021.

Some scuffles were reported during the demonstrations on Tuesday and security forces arrested at least two more teachers, Solmaz Feyzollahzadeh in Karaj in Alborz Province and Ali Hasan-Bahamin in Shiraz in Fars Province.

Teachers, whose rallies are organized by the Coordination Council of Iranian Teachers’ Union, also demanded the release of colleagues arrested in earlier protests. Shabnam Baharfar, a teacher arrested in Karaj Saturday, is still in custody but others arrested the same day have been released. Some scuffles were reported during the demonstrations on Tuesday.

Spokesman for Iran’s Armed Forces Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi told Mehr news agency on Tuesday that the smallest strategic mistake by Israel “will be met with our harshest response” without directly referring to the recent Israeli threats against the Islamic Republic.

He commented on Israel’s regional alliances without mentioning normalization of ties with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, saying, “We do not consider the Zionist regime to have capability to cause insecurity for the Islamic Republic.”

"We advise the countries of the region that in fact they should look at the powerful country of Iran as a very strong and independent neighbor and strengthen their relations with the Islamic Republic to preserve their dignity," Shekarchi said, adding that “The Zionist regime is hated by all nations no matter their religion.”

Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz warned on Sunday that even if a nuclear deal is signed, Iran must be stopped from becoming a nuclear threshold state.

Moreover, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid urged the United States on Monday not to remove Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) from its list of terrorist groups, as nuclear talks in Vienna near a conclusion.

Lapid said, “The terrible nuclear deal is about to be signed in Vienna. Iran is seeking to cancel the Revolution Guard’s listing as a terrorist organization. If they’re not a terror group, then what are they? A folk dancing troupe?”

Reuters last week reported that a “draft text of the agreement” to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action)m between Iran and world powers would begin with Iran restricting uranium enrichment to 5 percent, “the release of Western prisoners held in Iran,” and Washington lifting a threat to sanction South Korean banks over repatriating $7 billion Iranian assets.

The agency Tuesday cited a “senior Iranian official in Tehran” that "Iran has always and repeatedly expressed its readiness” to swap prisoners.

“Months ago we were ready to do it but the Americans ruined the deal," the official reportedly said. "Now I believe some of them will be released, maybe five or six of them. But those talks about prisoners are not linked to the nuclear agreement, rather associated with it. This is a humanitarian measure by Iran."

On Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said the Islamic Republic was ready for an immediate prisoner exchange. Tehran would like to see the release of Iranians jailed in the US, mostly over sanctions violations, including businessman Sajjad Shahidian. In 2018 foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, himself sanctioned by the US the following year, said Iranians were held in the US as “hostages.”

US special envoy Robert Malley has appeared to suggest it unlikely that Washington would return to the JCPOA, which it left in 2018, unless Tehran freed four American prisoners, including father and son Baquer and Siamak Namazi.

"Six years ago the Iranian government arrested Baquer Namazi and they still refuse to let him leave the country," Malley tweeted on Tuesday. "The Iranian government can and must release the Namazis, Emad Shargi, Morad Tahbaz, and other unjustly held U.S. and foreign nationals."

State Department issued a statement Tuesdaysaying that Baquer Namazi had been arrested six years earlier to the day “solely for the purpose of using him as a political pawn” and that both father and son had been “sentenced to ten years in prison on baseless charges.”

Key issues to be fixed

Britain has been seeking the release of British-Iranians Anousheh Ashouri, jailed on espionage charges, and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, under house detention in Tehran.

Both Enrique Mora, chairing the Vienna talks, and Mikhael Ulyanov, Russia’s lead negotiator in Vienna, tweeted Tuesday that the negotiations were near to conclusion. Mora, however, noted that “key issues need to be fixed.”

Reuters cited “several Iranian officials” who said that while “some minor technical issues were being discussed in Vienna” and while “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed," they expected a deal “before the end of the week.”

Speaking to a conference of gas-exporting countries in Doha Tuesday, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said that the world should refused “cruel” US sanctions, which would no longer be effective “in today's world.”

The bill, ironically titled Legislation to Protect Cyberspace Users’ Rights, was passed by the so-called Joint Siyanat Committee on Tuesday.

Instead of voting in a general session, the bill was sent for final approval to the committee, as has been the case with many recent controversial legislations.

Many internet users and some media outlets in Iran have said that the implementation of this plan has practically started in in recent weeks as the authorities reduced bandwidth and slowed broadband as a means of censorship.

Reza Taghipour, former communications minister and a Tehran representative, who heads the committee on cyberspace, said on Tuesday that foreign companies should abide by the new Iranian law to remain active in the country.

The new law would require foreign and domestic social-media networks and messaging applications to register with a regulatory and supervisory board, including representatives of the intelligence ministry and the intelligence organization of the Revolutionary Guards.

The ministry of communications and information technology would be charged with blocking social networks and messaging applications that failed to gain approval.

Iran has restricted access to the internet for two decades and popular social media platforms such as Facebook and You Tube for the past ten years. An overwhelming majority of Iranians routinely use circumvention software to go around government blockages.

In January, the minister of economy ordered all government-owned banks to pay up to $4,000 in small loans to salaried people without a guarantor or collateral. The decision came as four years of high double-digit inflation has impoverished the middle class and the new government, having had made lofty promises last year, felt obliged to make a gesture.

On Monday, Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf informed lawmakers that he received a letter from Khamenei asking the legislature and the presidential administration not to demand payments by banks that are beyond their financial resources to fulfill.

Ghalibaf said that when the government or parliament make decisions asking banks to undertake additional obligations, it simply forces the financial institutions to turn to the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), which in turn must print more money. This leads to even more inflation, which has already been hovering around 40 percent since 2021.

The Speaker pointed at CBI chief’s remarks on Sunday that the banks and the central bank are not able to finance new programs without pushing inflation higher.

Banks in Iran are kept afloat by the CBI and in most cases are heavily indebted, while the government also has a 50-percent budget deficit.

Just in the past six months, liquidity jumped by $14 billion, CBI announced earlier this month. Last October, the CBI reported that liquidity had increased eightfold since 2013. In those 8 years, Iran was either under international sanctions or United States sanctions for a total of 5 years, losing hundreds of billions of dollars in oil and other revenues. The CBI during this time had to print money to pay the government’s bills.

President Ebrahim Raisi pledged upon assuming office last year that his government would not overburden banks by borrowing. However, it later issued bonds that are mostly sold to government-owned banks, which must turn to the central bank for money. In a vicious circle of borrowing from itself, the government simply prints more money – a practice that is not unique to the current administration.

Ghalibaf warned that the country cannot produce more oil – let alone export – and the current budget is already based on exporting 1.4 million barrels per day. The presidential administration wants even more money and that would demand daily crude production of 4 million barrels, which is an impossibility, he said.

Iran has failed to sufficiently invest money and technology in its oil and gas infrastructure in the past decades. Oil minister Javad Owji said last November that the country needs $160 billion to upgrade its oil and gas production.

But some economists in Iran ask why the financial situation has not improved despite higher oil sales in the past one year. Reports indicate that Iran has been exporting much higher volumes of crude to China, totaling more than $20 billion in 2021.

One explanation can be that China is not fully paying cash for its purchases. Another possibility is that Iran is replenishing its currency reserves depleted during sanctions instead of spending the money. A third possibility is that the additional sales have already financed close to $50 billion in imports in the past one year, without the government being forced to touch the remainder of its currency reserves.

The lifting of US sanctions in case of a nuclear agreement will not drastically change this picture, except raising oil revenues closer to $40 billion a year, which would ease the pain but not finance an economic reconstruction.