Iran Minister Says Iraq Does Not Pay Cash For Its Energy Imports

According to the research published by The Lancet journal, currently, the number of “deaths due to global warming in the Middle East is 2·1 per 100,000 people”. However, the region “will have experienced substantial warming by the 2060s with the potential to reach the annual heat-related deaths to 123·4 per 100,000 people”.

In Iran’s case, this number is currently 11 deaths per 100,000 people, which is five times the average of the Middle East, but it will reach 423 in the next four decades.

“This death rate would be reduced by more than 80% if global warming is limited to 2°C, [but] Iran currently has the highest heat-related death rate and will experience the greatest impacts between 2021 and 2100.”

According to the report, the Middle East is one of the most vulnerable parts of the world to global warming and climate change.

The report states that the number of annual deaths due to global warming in Iran is around 1,703 people meaning six times more than that of Saudi Arabia.

The most important cause of global warming is the emission of greenhouse gases. International statistics, including those of the International Energy Agency and the Global Carbon Project, show that Iran has the highest emission of greenhouse gases in the Middle East and is ranked sixth globally.

Member of Parliament, Mohammad Sargazi, said most citizens consume water, tomato paste and bread as their main meal.

Sistan and Baluchestan is the poorest province of Iran with a population of around 4 million, including 700,000 Afghan nationals.

During the past years, this region has experienced many crises, including shortage of fuel, bread, and drinking water, as well as drought, widespread unemployment and increasing poverty.

Despite frequent promises to improve the situation, successive administrations have done little to invest in the region, create jobs, build housing or even decent schools. Some children study outdoors, while teenagers smuggle small quantities of fuel to neighboring Pakistan to make some money.

Narcotics smuggling from Afghanistan is also a serious problem in the region, with hundreds of small-time traffickers executed each year according to Iran's tough criminal laws.

In the recent popular protests following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, Sistan-Baluchestan has had the highest number of victims among 31 provinces.

The Islamic Republic has been struggling with high inflation since 2019, but the raging inflation in the past Iranian year which ends on March 20, was seriously different from previous years.

Food prices continue to climb as the national currency declined by 50 percent in the past six months. According to the report of the Statistical Center of Iran (SCI), in some months, the food and beverages inflation hit 87%.

The statistics, which cover the period since from March 20 to April 2, are dominated by two Iranian made cars, notorious for their poor quality, in addition to the poor infrastructure of Iran’s roads.

Deputy Commander of the traffic police, Teimour Hosseini said the two Iranian car manufacturers’ vehicles, made by Iran Khodro and Saipa, constituted half of the deaths.

While families drive long distances across the country to visit family and take vacations, Hosseini said other factors were also at play, attributing to the high death rate, typical of the holiday season.

He said “over speeding, not paying attention, tiredness and sleepiness" were the main reasons for accidents, but he ignored the issue of non-standard roads and unsafe cars made in Iran.

The regime in Iran tries to convince citizens that the “human factor,” or the drivers, is the main reason for this massive amount of fatalities on the country’s roads.

Iran has one of the worst world’s statistics in terms of road accidents -- at its worst during Nowruz.

Between March 2021 and March 2022, Traffic-related accidents claimed the lives of nearly 17,000 Iranians. Local media says One person dies in a road accident every half hour in Iran.

The semi-official ISNA news agency reported midday local time that the warehouses belonged to Electrosteel, a large and well-known company in Iran.

"There are currently 100 firefighters at the scene. Due to the extent of the fire and thickness of the smoke, there is no information regarding potential victims," added ISNA.

60 fire trucks and water tankers arrived at the site to prevent the fire from spreading to the nearby warehouses and the gas tank of the factory.

According to fire department officials, the warehouses occupy an area of approximately 2,000 square meters and part of them were destroyed due to the large volume of the blaze.

The official cause of the blaze has not been announced yet.

There have been a number of explosions and fires near Iran’s military, nuclear and industrial facilities in recent years.

On January 28, a huge fire erupted at an Iranian military industry factory following a suspected drone strike in the central city of Esfahan.

Iran blamed Israel for the drone attack vowing revenge.

On the same day, another large blaze also engulfed an industrial area near the city of Tabriz, northwest Iran. The government said the fire started at a refinery producing motor oil.

The situation has been grave in the past several years but since the administration of Ebrahim Raisi assumed office in 2021, the entire energy management system is going haywire even faster, drawing backlash from people and even regime officials. 

Iran has one of the biggest reserves of oil and natural gas and its economy is chiefly dependent on the revenues from crude oil exports. But due to sanctions and mismanagement it has failed to modernize its electricity sector and the country faces power shortages most of the year.

The regime has a hypocritical approach about the sales of fuel to foreign buyers. While it boasts about the growing level of sales, which mainly occur through vast networks of smugglers under the unofficial supervision of the Revolutionary Guards, it periodically claims to have stopped traffickers from smuggling some shipments of gasoline and diesel out of the country. 

The oil-rich country has been facing a serious scarcity of gasoline in its domestic energy market because fuel is subsidized in Iran and much cheaper than in neighboring countries, which leads to small and large scale smuggling.

The country also faces gasoline and diesel shortages due to a lack of refining capacity, but millions of liters of fuel is smuggled out of Iran daily, which betrays a large-scale smuggling networks.

In a recently released video, Iranian lawmaker Malek Shariati said "Perhaps we are ashamed to admit that 1.5 billion liters of liquid fuel are smuggled from our power plants per year.” He added that the tankers carrying government-supplied cheap fuel are not unloaded at the power plants and documents are forged to cover for that. Even if the regulatory body finds out about it, the fine is so low that it is still worth it, Shariati noted, adding that most of the country’s diesel smuggling happens in power plants, implying that the owners of the power plants are responsible for the fuel smuggling in the country. 

According to Mir-Ali-Ashraf Abdollah Pourihoseini, a former vice president of Ministry of Economic Affairs and head of the Iranian Privatization Organization, in recent years, many key power plants have been handed over to insider investors because the government did not have the needed budget to overhaul them. However, the new owners did not take any steps to overhaul the aging plants. 

But who are these new owners? For instance, Abadan power plant with a capacity of 814 megawatts was handed over to the Headquarters of Imam's Directive, or simply Setad, parastatal organization under direct control of the Supreme Leader.

Zagros power plant with a capacity of 656 megawatts was handed over to the Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs at the price of less than 8 trillion rials – or about $16 million dollars in today’s exchange rate. Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarter -- the engineering arm of the IRGC – acquired Sabalan power plant with a 960-megawatt capacity at a price of about $8 million. The Armed Forces Pension Fund and Social Security Investment Company bought Gilan power plant, and the list goes on.

Public property has been “privatized” by giving away key infrastructure to powerful cliques of military men and bureaucrats who easily enrich themselves.

Moreover, In the budget bill for the current Iranian year, which started March 21, the government has granted new permits to some departments such as the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic to sell oil on behalf of the government and earn some of the income. Based on the legislation, the General Staff of the Armed Forces is allowed to export three billion euros worth of crude oil and oil products through small private refineries after the approval of the country's budget organization.

Iran, which is under US oil export sanctions, has used this method before to make illicit oil shipments. However, in the past this has led to large corruption cases.

A well-publicized scandal broke in 2013 when authorities arrested Babak Zanjani, a businessman, for embezzling at least $2.7 billion from illicit oil sales during international sanctions from 2009-2013. According to legal experts, this method of allocating money to government entities violates the constitution.

Many members of Iran's hardliner dominated parliament are former members of the IRGC. Moreover, the government has started a new privatization plan to sell public assets presumably to well-connected regime insiders. Iranian media and economic experts have characterized the new privatization plan by the government as "a plunder of public property" and "economic apartheid."