Iranian Officials Appear Lost And Confused Amid Crisis

The accelerating exodus is not limited to medical and engineering professionals anymore as many business owners have also started to transfer their businesses to nearby countries where trade transactions are easier, especially to the Persian Gulf littoral states. 

According to a recent article in the Tehran newspaper Arman Melli, during the past year about 30,000 personnel of different medical professions, including doctors, nurses, and paramedical technicians, have applied for Certificates of Good Standing with intent to immigrate to Oman. The paper claimed that within the last four years, 16,000 general practitioners have left the country. The high number of emigrations has become so alarming that the officials of medical organizations have warned of serious shortages of doctors in the near future. 

In April, Iran's Medical Council said about 4,000 doctors have applied for Certificates of Good Standing in the previous 12 months with the intent to leave the country. Council spokesman Reza Laripour said that the annual number of such applications was less than 600 between 2013 and 2015.

Head of the Medical Council of the Islamic Republic, Mohammad Raeeszadeh, said, "The medical community faces fundamental challenges in some specialties, so that we may not have graduates in some fields in the future.” He warned of the risk of regression to 40 years ago when it had to hire foreign doctors to meet domestic needs.

Lack of a promising future is the main reason why professionals decide to leave. Incomes have sharply declined in the past years as Iran’s currency has lost its value by more than tenfold, and the state seems to become more inept and arbitrary in governing the country.

On the backdrop of Iranian doctors emigrating in droves, the health ministry in September increased the exit permit bond for medical, dental and pharmacy students to $5,000 per year. Deputy minister for education at the health ministry, Abolfazl Bagherifard, said that students in graduate levels should provide 1.5 billion rials ($5,000) to leave the country for a year and undergraduate levels should provide bonds worth $2,000. Students must provide an official letter of commitment to return as well as another person's guarantee by depositing a real estate bond or a bank guarantee.

Experts and social scientists in Iran and abroad have told the media that the brain drain in the past few decades, beginning with the 1980-88 war with Iraq, has been accelerated by lack of social freedoms in the clerical-dominated system, political upheavals, deterioration of the economy, and government repression.

The government has stepped up pressures and restrictions on students and graduates. Late in November, the parliament presented a proposal to ban students who participate in protests from traveling abroad for ten years. Recently, the Ministry of Science Research and Technology has also approved regulations that would increase the costs of receiving university degrees six to 10 times. 

All Iranians who study in government universities must work about twice the duration of their studies for a state institution before they can get their certificates. If they opt out of working for the government, they should pay the cost of their education to get their document. As per recent regulations, the fees to get their degrees have increased up to 10-fold. 

However, even those measures are not enough to stop Iranians from leaving the country, with many families deciding to either send their children abroad before starting university or forgetting about getting a degree altogether. Ali Sharifi-Zarchi, a professor at Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology, believes that the new measures would even accelerate emigration, saying that the new fees mean that the government is urging students to forget about Iranian universities and study abroad where they can find a job and help pay for their expenses.

Almost half of Iranian youth want to leave the country amid pessimism about their future, a recent opinion survey conducted from abroad shows.

Based on reports and videos received by Iran International Tehran students in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the University of Science and Technology went on strike to protest government persecution and arrest of students.

The students of Khajeh Nasir University in the capital also announced a three-day strike saying that “we all stand together for the freedom of our friends.”

At Tehran University's Faculty of Economics, students joined the three-day national strike saying it is “also an objection to professors who not only did not support the people, students and even their colleagues, but stood by the oppressor.”

Students in Esfahan, Shiraz, Rasht, Sanandaj and several others announced they will boycott classes on December 5, 6, and 7 to join the nationwide strikes.

President Ebrahim Raisi, who earlier announced he would deliver a speech at a university on Wednesday, has not revealed the name of the college yet in fear of protests and raliies which might target him.

Students have been at the forefront of demonstrations against Iran’s authoritarian regime within the past twelve weeks.

According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) at least 18,210 protesters have been arrested including 585 students.

Iranians embarked on a three-day action on Monday with the calls focused on strikes for December 5 and 6 and rallies for December 7, Student Day in Iran, which marks the anniversary of the 1953 murder of several students at University of Tehran. It is a traditional day of nationwide rallies. To coincide with Student Day, protesters have also called for strikes by businesses and a rally towards Tehran's Azadi (Freedom) Square.

Students in many universities across Iran did not show up for classes on Monday and in some campuses, they held sit-ins and rallies to protest against the Islamic Republic and its repression machine.

Meanwhile, many shops and businesses shut their doors in a nationwide action that was so stunning that the country’s judiciary had to come up with a new propaganda line to justify the strikes. Iran's Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei blamed "rioters" for threatening shopkeepers. Hardliners led by the Revolutionary Guard call protesters “rioters” and “thugs”.

Emphasizing that the death sentences of several protesters have been confirmed and they will be executed soon – apparently meant to scare the demonstrators to stop their movement to oust the regime -- he added shopkeepers who close their businesses would be swiftly dealt with by the judiciary and security bodies.

Authorities also sealed a jewelry shop and restaurant belonging to Iranian football legend Ali Daei after he closed his businesses to join antigovernment strikes. Since the beginning of the uprising sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in custody of the hijab – or the so-called “morality” police -- in mid-September, strikes have been staged in support of street protests. The authorities have kept threatening businesses that if they close in support of the protests, they will be fined, or their businesses will be sealed as punishment. 

Despite Internet restrictions in many regions of the country, social media is exploding with videos of closed shops in bazaars and markets in a lot of cities and towns. Stores were shut in Tehran's Bazaar, and other large cities such as Karaj, Esfahan, Mashhad, Tabriz, Shiraz, Bojnourd, Kerman, Sabzevar, Ilam, Ardabil and Lahijan. The list of cities goes on as more videos are still being shared online. 

The strikes were especially widespread in Kurdish-majority cities. Hengaw, a Norway-based rights group which monitors abuses in Kurdish areas, reported that 19 cities had joined the strike movement in western Iran, where most of the country's Kurdish population live.

When night fell, however, the same streets that sounded so calm during the day became scenes of antigovernment protests with people chanting slogans against the regime. People in several neighborhoods in large cities, such as the capital Tehran and religious city of Mashhad, blocked roads while chanting slogans and waiting for the security forces to appear. The first rain and snowfall in many cities have led to slippery roads, which protesters relish as a hurdle for the regime’s agents riding on motorcycles. In some social media videos, shots are heard with people saying that security forces opened fire at them. 

ISNA news agency reported Monday that the ex-footballer’s shop and restaurant in northern Tehran was shut upon official orders.

“Following the support for anti-government groups’ call on social media to disrupt peace and business of the market, a judicial order was issued to seal Noor Jewelry Gallery,” ISNA reported.

It also added that a restaurant belonging to Daei had also been ordered shut providing no further details.

Last week Daei revealed threats against him after throwing his weight behind the protests triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini in mid-September.

The nationwide protests in Iran have continued for 80 days with regime forces killing hundreds of people and detaining thousands of others, including football players and celebrities.

Earlier, Ali Daei decided not to travel to Qatar to attend the current World Cup due to the brutality and deadly force used by the government against unarmed protesters.

Many other legendary Iranian soccer players such as Mahdi Mahdavi-Kia, Karim Bagheri, Ahmad Reza Abedzadeh, etc., are supporting the protest movement.

Shargh daily reported Monday that it had contacted the head of public relations of The Greater Tehran Law Enforcement, Colonel Ali Sabahi to verify the claim by Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri who suggested December 3 that the so-called morality police has been abolished, but the official refused to make any comments.

“It’s not time for us to discuss this. The Police will comment whenever it deems is necessary. Don’t tell [anyone] you have contacted us,” Sabahi told the Shargh reporter. “I’m not the attorney general, go ask him!”, he added before insulting the reporter. The newspaper said further enquiries were also ignored but threats were made, through a third party, against the newspaper, its reporters, and its managing director.

“The morality police has nothing to do with the judiciary and was shut down by the same authority that had established it,” Montazeri had said in response to a reporter at a press conference.

The only comment on Montazeri’s controversial remarks came from Iran's state-run Arabic-language TV channel, Al-Alam, on Sunday [Dec 4] which referring to international media reports on its Persian-language website wrote that officials of the Islamic Republic have not “confirmed the disbanding of the morality police patrols.”

“Some foreign media have tried to present the attorney general’s remarks as the Islamic Republic’s retreat from the matter of [compulsory] hijab and chastity due to the recent riots,” Al Alam wrote.

Meanwhile, judicial authorities shut down a children’s amusement center at a Tehran mall Sunday because its staff had flouted the hijab and published their photos on social media. Judicial authorities have also been summoning celebrities such as actress Shaghayegh Dehghan who published a photo of herself without the compulsory veil on a Tehran street.

The indirect denial by the authorities comes a day after Montazeri’s suggestion made headlines in many major international media and even made US Secretary of State Antony Blinken cautiously comment on it in an interview with the CBS.

“And so, if the regime has now responded in some fashion, to those protests, that could be a positive thing. But we have to see how it actually plays out in practice. And what the Iranian people think. This is about them, and it's up to them,” he said when asked about the reported abolishment of the morality police.

At a joint press conference with Serbian officials in Belgrade, Iran's foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian alleged that the United States “and a few western countries” were encouraging “riots and terrorism” in Iran and claimed that Iranian authorities are “listening to people’s demands and responding to them” but will not allow anyone to foment such activities. “We enjoy a strong democracy in our region,” he claimed.

Some social media users have suggested that Montazeri’s remark was a publicity stunt meant to appease protesters and keep them away from the streets during the planned three-day strikes and protests starting December 5.

Disbanding the morality police, others say, will make no difference to protesters who want nothing less than toppling the Islamic regime. As underground activists in Iran formally joined forces and issued calls for protests, their aim was clear – putting an end to the Islamic Republic.