In recent years, after every problem or natural disaster that occurs in Iran, government experts who analyze the problem or disaster say one of the consequences that they count is the security of the regime and its consequences in the future.

In the meantime, in the aftermath of any problem or catastrophe, in recent years, there have been uprisings by Iranian society which was a clear sign of revolt against the Velayat-e-Faqih (clerical) regime: An uprising by the lower classes and the army of the starving.

In recent years, one of the problems that are being warned about in the Iranian urban society and the danger it poses to the regime is the problem of marginalization.

Marginalization, of course, has its own side effects, including the catastrophic living of people in graves or next to cemeteries.

Mohammad Reza Mahboubfar, a member of the Iranian Land Management Association, on 24 May, while announcing an increase in Iran’s marginalized population to 38 million, said, “7.6 million people live around cemeteries.”

Caption: People who live in graves due to extreme poverty and lack of home

Mahboubfar added: “In 2017, about 40% of Iran’s urban population was marginalized and homeless, but today, after three years, in 2020, along with inflation and high prices in the housing sector, rising rents, marginalization in the country has reached 45 percent.”

Official sources of the regime in 2018 acknowledged that there were about 19 million marginalized people in Iran. This means that the number of marginalized people in Iran has doubled in just two years.

According to Article 62 of the Sixth Development Plan, “the government is obliged not only to prevent marginalization in the country but also to reduce the population of the marginalized population by 10% annually.”

Poverty, inflation, and high prices in the housing sector and rising rents have been the main factors for the increase in marginalization in recent years.

The regime’s Statistics Center recently announced that the rental rate has risen by 31.6 percent. As housing rents have risen, so have housing prices.

The average price of housing in Tehran in May 2020 reached 17 million tomans per square meter, which has increased by 2 million tomans compared to April 2020.

As housing prices rise in the country, selling and rental sites are removing prices. ISNA news agency reported on the involvement of the “NAJA’s Production and Exchange Space Police” (FATA) in this incident and wrote that the organization has ordered the removal of prices from housing purchase and sale sites from 10 May 2020 to deal with “housing turmoil”, as it said.

Abolfazl Abu Torabi, a member of the regime’s 10th parliament, recently said: “We do not have slum people, and in the worst case, we have moved to kiln living (people), that is, old brick kilns with plaster and cement have become their place of residence.”

Despite the increasing expansion of marginalization in Iran, IRNA on 18 May announced a reduction of about ten percent in credits to deal with social harms in the 2020 budget, in the section on credits related to “combating marginalization and eliminating worn-out city areas.”

But the regime’s main concern is its security. Nader Ghaziapour, a member of the regime’s 10th parliament, had previously said that “the lack of attention to the villages has caused the villages of the country to become empty and the marginalization in the metropolitan areas to become larger. The system has serious security problems on the outskirts of cities.”

Shargh daily wrote on 11 May: “Challenges and sometimes super-challenges such as social inequality, unemployment, low economic growth, environmental degradation, climate change, insecurity caused by sanctions and threats from hostile governments, economic recession, high inflation and so on can be dangerous for the system, let alone all of them come together.”

Shargh added: “As a result of the Corona Crisis, between 4.6 and 8.2 million employees lose their jobs, 70 percent lack any insurance coverage, and this factor has profound effects on various other areas such as social, political, security, cultural, administrative and above all, it will be moral.

“Marginalized groups and working classes, in a situation where livelihood and health problems and the resulting problems are not resolved through politics, we must expect blind, violent, and out-of-the-ordinary actions.”

Seyed Mohammad Reza Mortazavi, Secretary-General of the House of Industry and Mining, in a video conference with Etemad online which was published on 25 May said: “As the day goes on, it is clear to me that one-day people will storm and take over Basty Hills. Poverty is the result of an unfair distribution of wealth.”

Morteza Mobalegh, former political and security deputy of the Ministry of Interior, warned: “The current situation is so difficult that social and security problems can be exacerbated not only for post-corona conditions but in the same circumstances, we may face acute social problems in society.”

 

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Iran’s People Live in Poverty; The Regime Does Nothing