Obviously, exploiting an economic crisis for profit is wrong, but the mullahs fail to admit that those who profit the most from the deprivation of the Iranian people are those in power.

Ahad, a worker at a glass factory outside Tehran, said: “Officials say the sanctions have no impact on the economy. They don’t feel the impact because their children live abroad and their salaries are astronomical. Our life is not even about the basics any longer. But theirs is luxurious.”

These charges against Iranian business people do, if true, involve fraud and deception, which no one wants, but the biggest criminals in the Regime are those who are responsible for it: the officials in the Iranian government and their hired guns in the Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). President Hassan Rouhani promised to root out corruption, but he hasn’t and he won’t. He is as corrupt as everyone else in that Regime.

Economist Hossein Raghfar said: “No part of the ruling system has been immune from corruption, which has contaminated all sectors, from the judiciary to the parliament and the government. Fighting corruption cannot succeed under the current circumstances, but public anger is putting unavoidable pressure on policymakers to deal with it.”

The trials of dozens of businesspersons began on Sunday and are the first in over two decades to be broadcast live in Iran, but this only reveals that the Regime believes that it is more important to seem like it is doing something to fix the crises, than to actually fix the crisis. This is natural, because the Regime has had many opportunities to investigate its own crimes over the past 40 years, but never have.

The crisis was already in full swing by the time Donald Trump from the 2015 nuclear deal in May, but it certainly grew since then. Some of the Regime is trying to put on a united front against US sanctions, but the Iranian Regime has only fractured further into rival factions, using corruption allegations to smear their enemies.

One thing is certain: US sanctions are working and soon may bring the fall of the Regime.