Modern governments are constantly seeking to reform their governing system in order to find better paths for development.

Their criteria ensure that the will of the people and the national interests are reflected in their decisions. Countries such as South Korea and Singapore, among many other countries, have emerged as economic powerhouses in the past few decades, having chosen successful models for their development.

In today’s world, at the other end of the spectrum, there are authoritarian regimes that have based their rule solely on coercion, tyranny, and the acquisition of illegitimate wealth, and have nothing to do with or are even interested in, their country’s development.

Religious fascism in Iran is the latter case. These authoritarian regimes not only neglect to improve the development of their country, but they also destroy the future for the coming generations, leaving behind scorched earth so that even those generations to come would be unable to regenerate the country’s development. This has left Iran’s development far behind even second-world countries.

The manifestation of development is the political freedom of the people, and there is a close relationship between the two. These freedoms include political freedoms and transparency in public relations, freedom of access to opportunities, financial credit, and the protection of the population from poverty through supplementary income and unemployment benefits.

Political freedoms and the balanced distribution of wealth are preconditions for development; something which has not been seen in the Islamic Republic for the past 43 years. Instead, what has happened is political obstruction, the repression of Iranian citizens, and the unfair distribution of national wealth.

The rule of Velayat-e-Faqih (absolute rule of the clergy) is the root of the totalitarian governments that have taken control of all political and economic institutions and, by ruling an oligarchic network, it has squandered the national wealth, and used it to promote and expand its medieval ideology instead of using it towards development.

This regime, with its security and intelligence organization, chokes even the slightest protest and criticism of the citizens.  As a result, most experts and economists. even those who are affiliated with the regime, are reluctant to explain the reasons for the country’s underdevelopment.

Experience shows that undemocratic and illegitimate regimes, such as the fascist regime in Iran, form broad apparatuses and try to divide and distribute the windfall wealth among a network of loyal individuals by setting up dysfunctional bureaucratic institutions.

The regime has benefited from petrodollars over the past four decades. has periodically increased the number of its administrative apparatuses and hired as many employees as they can so that two-thirds of Iran’s annual budgets are now going towards current expenses or wages.

Several trillion rials are paid to 2.5 million employees, while the useful working hours of government offices are disappointing, with the labor inefficiencies being more prevalent in the public sector than in the private sector.

The regime’s Research Center has predicted that in the most optimistic case, the useful working hours in Iran are about two hours a day, and the average in the public sector is only 22 minutes.

The worst case of this wealth waste belongs to the regime’s religious organizations who receive large budgets, despite not providing any public services and are a huge blow to the country’s economy and development.

The Iranian regime is sacrificing millions of Iranian citizens due to their behavior and the following sanctions, isolation, and poverty due to unreasonable hostility with this order.

Such behavior has subjected Iran to the most severe international sanctions for over 40 years, dragging Iran’s economy to its weakest point ever. High inflation, widespread recession, negative GDP growth, unemployment, and widespread poverty are among the characteristics of Iran’s underdeveloped and isolated economy.

In addition to the sanctions, which are a major obstacle to Iran’s political and economic development, the severance of ties with the modern world and lack of interaction with developed countries has also left Iran far behind in technology, manufacturing, industry, and modern science.

At present, Iran is blacklisted for not cooperating with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), and therefore most modern countries are reluctant to conduct financial transactions with Iran. This has led to high costs for the regime and has forced them to waste the country’s wealth to circumvent financial sanctions in unconventional and costly ways, which is destroying the country’s national resources which are considered for development in most countries.