Iran: a review through policies . . . Do you get it?

1. Iran: a review through policies . . . Do you get it? Policy making in an authoritarian sate? A theocratic state? A Republic? Factors influencing: elections http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoRRqvqStD8

2. #BBCtrending: Iran food aid backfires in 'shame' The Power of Social Media http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26076612

3. ???? Definition: national, ethnic, linguistic, and religious divisions that affect political allegiances and policies. • can be cumulative or cross-cut. • Cumulative cleavages pit the same groups of people against one another on many issues, such as religion and class in Northern Ireland. Catholics tend to be poorer, while Protestants tend to be wealthier. • Cross-cut cleavages feature groups sharing common interests on some issues, but opposing one another on

4. Cleavages in Iran Religion • ______89% • _______ 10% • 1% Jewish, Zoroastrian, Christian, Buddhist Ethnic Groups • _______ (51%), • _______(24%) North), • Gilaki (and Mazandarani (8%), North) • K_____7% (northwest) • Balochis (southwest) • Arabs ( 3% southwest Bashu)

5. Bahais • largest non-Muslim minority in Iran • A heavy concentration in Tehran • Bahaism stresses the brotherhood of all peoples, equality of the sexes, and pacifism • Persecuted

6. U.S. House of Representatives resolution condemns Iran's persecution of Baha'is . 3 January 2013 WASHINGTON D.C., United States — The United States Congress has called on Iran to release Baha'is imprisoned solely for their religious beliefs. In a resolution passed on 1 January, the House of Representatives expressed its condemnation of Iran's "state-sponsored persecution" of Baha'is. "Ordinary Iranian citizens who belong to the Baha'i Faith are disproportionately targeted, interrogated, and detained under the pretext of national security," said the resolution, which was the 12th such measure approved by the US Congress since 1982

7. Reserved seats Majles-e Shura-ye Eslami (Islamic Consultative Assembly), consists of 290 members, who are elected for four-year terms. The Majles approves the national budget, drafts legislation, and ratifies international treaties. All Majles candidates and all legislation from the assembly must be approved by the Guardian Council. Five seats are reserved for the representatives of the officially recognized religious minorities: two for Armenian Christians and one each for Zoroastrians, Jews, and Assyrian Christians. The Majles can propose and pass legislation and cannot be dissolved by the executive branch. Cabinet ministers can also present bills. The current speaker is Ali Larijani (since 3 May 2008) NOT for the Bahai

8. Iran is a young country (see chart): two out of three people are below the age of 30. On the streets of affluent north Tehran, young people dress in the latest fashions—even if the jeans-clad women are obliged by law to wear the Islamic headscarf (the hijab). The audience at prayers, however, is older: shabbily dressed men well into their 40s, regime stalwarts who have trekked uphill from the poor southern suburbs

9. COMPARE

10. A picture of Iran’s youth • http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/16/youth-in-iran-inside-and-out/

12. Population Policy See the latest . .. .http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19052458

13. TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Iran's new message to parents: Get busy and have babies Iran urges baby boom, slashes birth-control programs 7/29/2012 In a major reversal of once far-reaching family planning policies, authorities are now slashing its birth-control programs in an attempt to avoid an aging demographic similar to many Western countries that are struggling to keep up with state medical and social security costs. The changes — announced in Iranian media last week — came after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described the country's wide-ranging contraceptive services as "wrong." The independent Shargh newspaper quoted Mohammad EsmailMotlaq, a Health Ministry official, as saying family planning programs have been cut from the budget for the current Iranian year, which began in March.

14. The policy shift brings the country full circle. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, families were strongly encouraged to contribute to a baby boom demanded by leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who wanted fast population growth to contribute to a "20 million member army" in support of the ruling theocracy. In 1986, toward the end of the eight-year war with Iraq, census figures show the population's growth rate reached 3.9 percent — among the highest in the world at the time and in line with Persian traditions that favor big families.

15. But the leadership just as quickly hit the brakes in the 1990s, fearing a galloping population could overwhelm the economy. Iran became a regional leader in family-planning options, including offering free or subsidized condoms and other contraceptives, and issuing religious edicts in favor of vasectomies. One clinic in Tehran promoted its vasectomy services in huge letters atop a water tower. Banners at public health care centers urged smaller families as a path to a better life. By 2011, the most recent period for which figures are available, Iran's population growth had fallen to one of the lowest in region — 1.3 percent.

16. Ahmadinejad offers Iran couples cash to have babies bbc 2010 The official policy changes began in 2005 after the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who called the birth control measures ungodly and a Western import. In 2009, he unveiled proposals for each new baby to receive $950 in a government bank account and then get $95 every year until reaching 18. On Wednesday, Khamenei said contraceptive policy made sense 20 years ago, "but its continuation in later years was wrong." "Scientific and experts studies show that we will face population aging and reduction (in population) if the birth-control policy continues," said Khamenei a day after the Statistical Center of Iran said the country's population had reached more than 75.1 million — more than double its 33.7 million in 1976.

18. Iran’s Economy/ Economic Policy • reflects the dilemmas of • late modernization, • authoritarianism, • war • and “the curse of oil”

19. Oil still accounts for 80%-85% of Iran’s export commodities • Resource Trap Revenues from oil exports - projected to reach at least $45bn dollars in the year to March 2007, according to reports in the Iranian press - fund about 50% of Iran's annual budget. • Worlds’ fourth largest producer; third largest reserves

23. After the Revolution • Clergy lacks experience governing • Khomeini's famous statement” economics is for donkeys” • “red vs Expert” problem • Massive emigration of skilled professionals and entrepreneurs (approximately a couple of million) • Bazzaris still imp

24. Iran Iraq war • devastated by the long war with Iraq, which destroyed infrastructure, drained the national treasury, and killed many of its young men. By 1988, when the war ended, Iran’s per capita GDP had fallen to just over half of its 1979 level • The eight-year Iran-Iraq war resulted in USD$350 billion in damage in Iran alone.

25. Iran’s application to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1996 had failed in part because of its legal impediments against foreign investments and in part because of U.S. opposition

26. Their most important supranational organization membership has been with the________________ of ____ ____________ ________ which was formed in 1960, with Iran as a charter member

27. B_____________ sixty percent of the economy is directly controlled by the state, while another ten to twenty percent is owned by the______________ Set up ostensibly to help the disadvantaged, such aswar veterans or the poor. However, over time they have become major economic players in their own right, controlling substantial assets and industries while operating independent of any government oversight (other than the Supreme Leader).“cleric fiefdoms,” key PATRONAGE mechanism

28. Reduced State Subsidies December 2010 the legislature passed President Mahmud AHMADI-NEJAD's Targeted Subsidies Law (TSL) to reduce state subsidies on food and energy. The bill over a five-year period will phase out subsidies that previously cost Tehran $60-100 billion annually and benefited Iran's upper and middle classes most. Direct cash payouts of $45 per person to more than 90% of Iranian households have mitigated initial widespread resistance to the TSL program, though this acceptance remains vulnerable to rising inflation. This is the most extensive economic reform since the government implemented gasoline rationing in 2007 CIA World factbook Dec 2 2009 Shoppers at a bazaar in north Tehran. A research group connected with Iran's Parliament has estimated that the removal of price supports would instantly quadruple the price of gasoline, and could result in similar increases for basic goods

29. Iran's bold economic reform Economic jihad Economist June 23, 2011 Iran has undertaken reforms that other governments in the region should envy GOOD news from Iran is rare, and the IMF is seldom a font of happy tidings about anything. So when a mission from the Fund cheered the Islamic Republic’s economy earlier this month, heaping praise on the policies of its ruthless government, eyebrows spiked upwards as in a comic scene in a Persian miniature. The shock was even sharper given that the IMF, whose biggest shareholder happens to be the Great Satan, America, is a pillar of global capitalism, a system that Iran’s maverick president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, gleefully lambasts as evil . . . The reason for the praise is Iran’s exemplary execution of a task dear to the IMF’s heart: structural reform. The Islamic Republic describes things differently. Speaking on the occasion of Nowruz, the Iranian new year in March, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared this to be the “year of economic jihad”. Whatever its name, the sweeping reform of a ruinous, three-decade-old system of state subsidies that Iran began last December seems to be radically reshaping the country’s economy for the better

30. Iran's Ahmadinejad pushes subsidy reform as antidote to economic woes Wed, Jan 16 2013 DUBAI (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appeared in parliament on Wednesday, urging lawmakers to allow government plans to cut subsidies to go ahead as a way to revive the economy, struggling in the grip of tightening Western sanctions. Parliament suspended the second phase of the government's subsidy reform plan in November, saying that reductions in subsidies, which began in 2010, had contributed to higher inflation. Further cuts would harm an economy already battered by Western sanctions on the banking and energy sectors, they said. But Ahmadinejad on Wednesday defended the reforms, also called the targeted-subsidies plan, saying they had reduced income inequality between the rich and poor and were key to combating the effect of sanctions. The reforms are aimed at easing pressure on state finances by cutting tens of billions of dollars from government subsidies on food and fuel, while offsetting the impact on Iran's citizens by giving them monthly cash payments.

31. Iran's $12-billion enforcers From road-building to laser eye surgery, the Revolutionary Guard dominates the economy. August 26, 2007|Kim Murphy | Times Staff Writer Iran's Revolutionary Guard has quietly become one of the most significant political and economic powers in the Islamic Republic, with ties to more than 100 companies, which by some estimates control more than $12 billion in business and construction, economists and Iranian political analysts say. The Guard was created in 1979 as a military and intelligence force to protect the ideals of Iran's Islamic Revolution. But the 125,000-strong force has used the massive military engineering capability it developed rebuilding the country after the 1980-88 war with Iraq to take over the strategic highlands of the Iranian economy.

32. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at a military parade in Tehran last month, with the Guards’ leader, Mohammad Ali Jaafari, and a former leader, Yahya Rahim Safavi, directly right of him. CAIRO — As Iran continues to manage the aftershocks of its contested presidential election, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has moved aggressively to tighten its grip on society, most recently with its takeover of a majority share in the nation’s telecommunications monopoly. The nearly $8 billion acquisition by a company affiliated with the elite force has amplified concerns in Iran over what some call the rise of a pseudogovernment, prompting members of Parliament to begin an investigation into the deal. “It’s not just a matter of the Guards dominating the economy, but of controlling the state,” said Alireza Nader, an expert on Iran and co-author of a comprehensive RAND Corporation report on the Revolutionary Guards. The Guards was created as an elite military force at the founding of the Islamic republic, but its broad mandate — to protect the revolution — has allowed it to reach far beyond its military capacity and evolve into the nation’s most powerful political and economic force. Its ability to enhance its status even further since the election has important implications for the future of Iran’s domestic politics, decisions on its nuclear program and prospects for long-term relations with the West, said Iranian analysts inside and outside of the country. Increasingly, it is the interests of the Guards and its allies that are driving the nation’s policies, and those interests have often been defined by isolation from the West.

33. The takeover of Iran’s telecommunications system followed a familiar pattern. A private firm, initially approved by Iran’s Privatization Organization, was excluded as an eligible bidder because of a “security condition” one day before shares were put on sale. Mobin Trust Consortium, affiliated with the Guards, then won the bidding. Until this case, the most striking instance of the Guards’ muscling into a business involved management of the Imam Khomeini Airport. In May 2004 the Guards shut down the airport and evicted the Turkish company that had the contract to run it. The Guards then put its own firm in place. The Guards also appears to have defied an edict by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to privatize its many holdings, which run from laser eye clinics and car dealerships to control of oil and gas fields, according to the RAND report.

34. Nuclear program see BBC Q & A. . . Men in traditional uniforms danced Tuesday during a parade in Mashhad and lifted containers said to hold uranium enriched by Iran. NYT 4/12/06 Iran's lead nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, right, meeting in Tehran with the ambassadors of the five United Nations Security Council veto powers (France, Britain, Russia, China and the U.S.) plus Germany. NYT 8/23/06