Enemies fomented protests in Iran to derail “progress” that his government was making, Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi claimed in an interview with state television.

While sharp criticism about the deteriorating economy and “mismanagement” by Iran’s hardliner government has increased by both friends and foes, Raisi tried to present an acceptable picture of his performance by making claims and citing misleading or cherry-picked statistics. 

The televised interview Tuesday evening was aired on the second anniversary of his win in the 2021 presidential vote that had none of the attributes of a competitive race. His most serious rivals were disqualified by the Guardian Council, a non-transparent body controlled by regime insiders loyal to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Raisi repeated the regime’s unsubstantiated claim, first made by Khamenei, that the nationwide ‘Women, Life Freedom’ movement was a conspiracy by enemies to derail the success of the regime.

“The esteemed leader of the revolution indeed correctly proclaimed that the basis of the riots was the fact that enemies felt the country was moving toward progress and hope was returning to the people,” Raisi said about Khamenei drawing the line and defining the cause of the protests.

Regime officials never use the word ‘protest’ when it is about Iran. All anti-government demonstrations are ‘riots’.

The head of the Revolutionary Guard intelligence organization, Mohammad Kazemi claimed this week that 20 foreign secret services were involved in planning and organizing the protests that began last September when a 22-year-old woman was killed in ‘hijab police’ custody.

Raisi even claimed that nuclear talks with the West came to a halt because of the protests, while these negotiations hit a snag in the end of August or early September 2022, weeks before the anti-government movement began and the extent of the violence against protesters was revealed.

The United States said many times in 2022 that the Islamic Republic had presented “extraneous” demandswhen the European Union mediators presented a compromise draft agreement in mid-2022.

The bloody government response to protests that eventually took more than 500 civilian lives did become part of the US reasons for not pursuing a return to the JCPOA nuclear deal, but the first signs from Washington emerged in October and had nothing to do with the initial impasse in negotiations.

Raisi also made a series of misleading statements on the economy, including a claim that inflation dropped during his presidency, while Tehran media in May reported an inflation rate close to 70 percent.

Worse of all what he ignored to mention was a devastating drop in the value of the currency, rial, since September 2022. The rial, which was trading at around 280,000 to the US dollar in mid-2022, dropped to as low as 550,000 in early May. It is now trading at around 490,000. In short, the rial’s value almost halved in less than a year, with an incalculable damaging impact on the inflation rate in the months to come.

But the president in his interview tried to blame the war in Ukraine, which did have an inflationary impact on global prices, but nowhere near 70-percent inflation.

Iranian observers are at a loss to explain extravagant and demonstrably false statements by officials. Is it ignorance of facts, rosy reporting by bureaucrats to senior politicians or an outright and deliberate attempt to justify their failures?

Raisi’s statements come against the backdrop of reports about direct and indirect talks with the United States to reach an unwritten deal so the Tehran can receive some badly needed foreign currency if Washington agrees to allow its frozen funds in Iraq and South Korea to be released.