Iran oil minister says industry continues to bypass US blockade
Iranian Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad said in an interview with semi-official ISNA that the country’s oil industry continues to circumvent the blockade imposed by US forces.
“We had restrictions on transferring oil beyond the blockade line. In some cases we managed to get through, and in some cases that was not possible,” Paknejad said.
He said Tehran had adopted measures to get around the blockade and had been able to sell and deliver oil to customers “perhaps thousands of kilometers” from the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman.
“After the 12-day war, we were able to increase oil production by about 70,000 barrels per day,” Paknejad added.
Shortages of foreign currency and raw materials, unpaid insurance debts, difficulties transferring money, disrupted imports and rising production costs have increased concerns about the pharmaceutical supply chain, the Iranian news outlet Rouydad24 reported.
“The alternative routes for supplying raw materials and imports are time-consuming and can increase drug costs by up to three times,” Hadi Ahmadi, spokesman for the Iranian Pharmacists Association, told the outlet.
Shortages of raw materials, Ahmadi said, were hindering domestic pharmaceutical production at the same time that imports were facing disruption.
Rouydad24 described the problem as extending across the pharmaceutical supply chain rather than being confined to individual medicines or pharmacies, leaving patients to absorb higher costs.
Iranian citizens have also told Iran International in recent months that medicine shortages and rising prices have disrupted treatment for many patients. Some said difficulties obtaining conventional medicines had prompted people to turn to traditional medicine.
Domestic production depends on imports
About 99% of medicines by volume are produced domestically, but imports account for roughly 13.86% of the market by value, according to figures cited by the website.
The disparity reflects the pharmaceutical industry's dependence on imported raw materials, equipment and specialized products even when finished medicines are manufactured inside Iran.
Disruptions to foreign-currency transfers or shipments of raw materials can therefore affect factories before shortages become visible in pharmacies weeks or months later.
Iran's Food and Drug Administration has said raw materials and medicines are being moved through alternative routes because wartime conditions have disrupted transportation.
Those routes take longer and cost more, Ahmadi said.
Economic pressures have also changed how some Iranians pay for healthcare. Eghtesad News reported in July that installment payments had increasingly spread through the health sector, including for dental treatment and medicines.
Not enough currency
Iran's pharmaceutical sector requires about $2.2 billion in foreign currency for medicines and raw materials this year, but only around half of that amount has been supplied, Ahmadi said.
Changes to Iran's subsidized foreign-exchange system have added another source of pressure on medicine prices.
The Food and Drug Administration has said a complete removal of subsidized currency for medicines is not planned this year, although the allocation has been reduced for some products, including insulin.
The agency said the changes did not amount to ending subsidized currency for all medicines or necessarily signal a new wave of price increases.
Ahmadi offered a different assessment of the impact on medicines affected by the changes, saying the removal of subsidized currency for some pharmaceutical groups had pushed the cost of their raw materials up more than fivefold within several months.
Iran International reported in July that patients' out-of-pocket costs for insulin had risen more than 24-fold over about 50 days.
Higher prices fuel informal drug market
Shortages are only part of the pressure facing patients because medicines that remain available may become financially inaccessible as prices rise, Rouydad24 reported.
“If medicine is available on the market but its price increases several times over, for a patient who needs medication every month and permanently, the price increase can effectively be just as problematic as a shortage,” Rouydad24 wrote.
“If insurance cannot increase its contribution in line with price rises, part of the cost will be paid out of the patient’s pocket.”
The combination of shortages, rising prices and inadequate insurance coverage places particular pressure on people with chronic illnesses, older patients and those who depend on expensive or imported medicines, the outlet added.
While two of those players are building new lives in Australia, thousands of kilometers from their families, having received citizenship there, the Islamic Republic's football federation has summoned their former teammates to record the state's account of the same events.
Farideh Shojaei, the federation's vice-president for women's football, has confirmed that a documentary about Iran's participation in the AFC Women's Asian Cup will be filmed at the camp. She described the purpose as completing the tournament archive and setting down part of the history of Iranian women's football.
The outlet Football 360 had reported earlier that the project belongs to a body outside football, and that most of the players who returned from Australia have no wish to sit in front of the federation's camera and recount what happened on that trip.
A camp that does not add up
The camp has pushed back the start of Iran's women's premier league by a week, and the federation's explanations for holding it have not been consistent.
According to Iranian media, when club coaches objected to the timing, Shojaei assured them the players would not be put under any football training load, because the point of the camp was to film the documentary. Later, explaining why a camp was being held outside a FIFA international window with no fixture ahead of the national team, she said it had been convened at the request of Marzieh Jafari, the national coach, to prepare the players.
Jafari does not currently hold an active contract with the federation. She is head coach of Khatoon Bam, the club that supplies the core of the national squad, which has just come through Asian Champions League qualifying and now needs to prepare for a new league season.
So a camp that has forced clubs to rearrange their calendars is attributed to a coach with no active federation contract, and was described to the objecting coaches as not being about training at all.
The version the state told first
The documentary is being made several months after Iranian officials gave their own account of what happened in Australia.
In the team's final days there, federation president Mehdi Taj claimed Australian police had separated the women from the men in the delegation and pressured the players into staying and claiming asylum. Esmail Baghaei, the foreign ministry spokesman, went further on television, accusing the Australian government of "taking members of the team hostage."
While those claims were being made in public, according to one club executive, money was being raised inside Iranian football to encourage the players to come home.
Alireza Babaei, chief executive of Chadormalou Ardakan, told a Football 360 live program that while the federation was working to bring the whole delegation back, its general secretary Hedayat Mombeini asked Chadormalou to pay 30 billion rials, about $15,000, for the women's national team. Chadormalou does not have a women's team.
According to Babaei, Mombeini also mentioned a payment of 50 billion rials, roughly $25,000, from the Gol Gohar club, and named Sepahan of Isfahan, a club that at that moment was weighing whether to continue fielding teams at all because of war damage to the steel industry.
In Iranian women's football, 50 billion rials from a single club is not a sum to be waved away. Afsaneh Chatrenoor, the national team forward who plays for Gol Gohar, was the premier league's leading scorer last season. She is also the player who sat across from Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei a few months ago and asked the head of the judiciary to help her find work for when her football career ends. At the top level of the Iranian women's game, the contracts of prominent players are still measured in a few billion rials.
What the tournament was always about
For the Islamic Republic's officials, the Women's Asian Cup in Australia was never only a football tournament.
Several members of the delegation applied for humanitarian protection from the Australian government during the war and after the killing of Ali Khamenei. Some later abandoned their asylum applications and returned to Iran under pressure from security forces on their families.
In those same days, Iranian officials were assembling their own version of events. They spoke of hostage-taking and of players being deceived, while simultaneously turning to threats, intimidation and financial inducements to get the asylum seekers back.
Now some of the same players who returned after that pressure are to sit in front of a camera, in a project belonging to a body outside football, and describe those days again.
It looks less like archiving history than like producing a state edition of it.
This time the Islamic Republic is not only constructing its own account of Australia. It wants the players inside the rewriting.
