While more than 70% of Iranians live in poverty, billions are poured into religious propaganda, corrupt foundations, and institutions of repression.
In today’s Iran, under Khamenei’s rule, billions of tomans are stolen from the public purse and thrown into the black hole of deception, propaganda, and clerical corruption. More than 70 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Millions battle unemployment, homelessness, and despair, while state-funded institutions gorge themselves on the nation’s wealth with no accountability and no tangible results.
Even regime officials cannot hide this looting. On September 12, 2025, state media quoted President Masoud Pezeshkian admitting: “We have countless institutions and foundations that have no output, but we still give them money. Why should we pay them when we cannot secure people’s livelihoods?” His words, however, only salt the wounds of a nation crushed by Khamenei’s dictatorship, because nothing in this regime will change.
The real answer came from former presidential adviser Hesamodin Ashna, who brazenly warned Pezeshkian not to follow through, reminding him of the fate of past presidents who dared challenge these corrupt networks. This exchange lays bare a regime in which even acknowledging the theft of public wealth is forbidden.
The Endless List of Parasites Feeding on Iran’s Wealth
The regime has constructed a vast network of institutions — religious, cultural, and security-linked — designed not to serve the people, but to cement Khamenei’s grip on power. A glance at the 1404 budget reveals staggering theft:
- Khomeini’s Mausoleum and Related Bodies: Over 595 billion tomans wasted on glorifying a dead dictator while the living suffer in poverty.
- Islamic Republic of Broadcasting (IRIB): The largest devourer of funds, with nearly 43 trillion tomans in 1404, used to pump out propaganda and lies instead of serving society.
- Islamic Development Organization: More than 6,2 trillion tomans, funneled into enforcing clerical dogma and suppressing cultural freedoms.
- Baqiyatollah Cultural-Social Headquarters (linked to the IRGC): About 5,3 trillion tomans, including 30 million euros in hard currency, for a military propaganda arm disguised as “cultural.”
- Al-Mustafa International University: Nearly 2 trillion tomans to recruit foreign clerics and export the regime’s extremist ideology abroad.
- Saadi Foundation: Over 100 billion tomans under Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel, justified by claims of teaching Persian abroad, with no evidence of real results.
- Council of Seminaries and Sub-Institutions: A monstrous 9 trillion tomans, feeding an endless clerical bureaucracy that drains the nation.
- Other “cultural” bodies: From the Encyclopedia Foundation to the Office of Islamic Revolution Studies, hundreds of billions are scattered to sustain useless bureaucracies.
This is only a partial list. Almost none of these institutions publish any transparent report of their activities. Their budgets are black holes, designed to fund loyal networks, buy silence, and spread repression inside and outside Iran.
A Nation Starved to Feed a Dictatorship
While billions vanish into Khamenei’s ideological empire, ordinary Iranians endure worsening misery. Inflation, unemployment, and skyrocketing housing costs drive many into despair. Families are forced into child labor, women are pushed out of work, and suicide rates rise with each passing year.
If even a fraction of these stolen funds were spent on jobs, housing, or healthcare, Iran could be transformed into a prosperous society. Instead, the regime spends the people’s money on promoting forced veiling, building propaganda series and cartoons, exporting extremism to Africa and Asia, and glorifying the tomb of a tyrant.
The Real Purpose: Survival of the Regime
Every toman wasted on these foundations is not accidental — it is survival strategy. Khamenei’s dictatorship does not exist to govern; it exists to suppress, indoctrinate, and maintain absolute power at any cost. The billions poured into clerical institutions are the price of buying loyalty and sustaining an apparatus of repression.
The regime knows that without this network of propaganda and corruption, its rule would crumble under the weight of public anger.
Conclusion: The Only Solution
This is not mismanagement. It is systemic theft. These institutions are not harmless “cultural” projects — they are weapons in the regime’s war against its own people.
As long as Khamenei’s dictatorship stands, Iran’s wealth will be drained into graves, propaganda, and repression. The suffering of the people will deepen, and no reform or new president can change it. The only path to reclaiming Iran’s wealth and dignity is to end this corrupt rule altogether.
