Rather than focusing on the country’s development and economy, including industrial development, the government has focused on its warfare in the region.

Under the backward approach where the government spent all of the Iranian people’s wealth on war and exporting terrorism and interference in the region, there is nothing left to spend on the Iranian people and the country’s macroeconomics including its industries, according to experts following the situation in Iran. As a result, many factories and industrial centers are faced with stagnation and closures.

Iran’s industry is underdeveloped while this country is rich in oil, gas, mineral resources, and especially metals such as iron ore, copper, and chromium, which make up about 60 percent of the industry’s raw materials.

However, many firms are closed or semi-active in small and medium-sized industries, and large industries are only working at half their capacity.

The so-called privatization policy, according to government media and economic experts, has been a major blow to the Iranian industry and has pre-empted the country’s economy and industry.

Lack of transparency in the privatization of factories and production facilities and their transfer to government entities that do not have the capacity to operate them have disrupted the production wheel of many factories and manufacturers and have made many workers inactive and jobless.

The entity that privatizes the factories yields them without any serious oversight to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).

According to the head of Iran’s privatization agency, “80 percent of the transfer were never in the real yield to the private sector and only 18 percent of the transfer were genuinely yielded to the private sector.” (State-run Hamdeli newspaper, 27 June 2019)

In this regard, a government economist, Mohammad Tabibian, told the state-run newspaper Resalat on 13 August 2019: “As a result of privatization, many large factories were lost and the privatization plan failed. People affiliated were using their connections in the government to get to the factories at a bargain price. ”

According to Saeed Mohammad, head of the IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbia base, 35% of petrol production, 20% of gas production, 22% of gasoline production, 32% of oil and gas transmission pipe lines and 50% of dams in the country are owned by this IRGC base.

He continued that this camp is active in areas such as oil, gas, petrochemical, industrial and mining projects, transportation areas such as freeways, intercity rail lines, subway lines, oil pipelines, dam projects, oil and gas transmission pipe lines, wharfs, ports projects, and in almost every field of engineering.

This IRGC base does not allow any non-governmental entity to grow since it confiscates much of the country’s wealth while having the most possessing proprietary facilities. Wherever it comes to government biddings, because of its clout, this base has the upper hand.

The policy chaos and the lack of a clear solution for industrial development has not only seriously damaged modernization and regeneration of industries, but has also slowed down many existing industries and factories.

The government and some economist specialists are trying to confiscate the backwardness of industrial development in Iran by various historical factors, while this government with its looting policies has brought Iran’s industry to its present state. Mehdi Ghazamfari, who was President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s minister of industry, said seven years ago, “The country’s industry is falling.” (State-run ISNA News Agency, 5 May 2012)