A member of Iran’s parliament, the Majlis, implied that widespread unemployment and the gap between the rich and poor would lead to the regime’s downfall.
“Our internal enemy is not America,” Hossein Maghsoudi said speaking at Majlis on Saturday.
“Our internal enemy that is a bigger enemy than the US is youth unemployment, marginalization, the gap between the rich and poor, inflation, despair, depression among young people and ethnic and religious differences in the country,” he added.
Unemployment is a major problem in Iran as factories and business close down due to the economic crisis.
In a report on May 14, the state-run Emtiaz Daily said that “3,900,000 people born in the ’80s were unemployed”.
“According to the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare Center of Statistics, of the 8.16 million people born in the ’80s, about 4.7 million people are employed while 3.9 million are unemployed,” the newspaper wrote.
It is noteworthy that millennials, who are around 37 years old at most have families and have to be able to provide for them. If we consider that each household has around 4 persons, it could be estimated that 16 million people who have millennials as their sole breadwinners are deprived of normal life and live in poverty.
According to the IRGC affiliated Tasnim News Agency, a total of six million people are unemployed in Iran.
Also, new figures released by the Iran’s Ministry of Health show that 21 million Iranians suffer from mental disorders which means that one in four Iranians are affected.
According to the findings of a recent Gallup report, Iran ranks among the top five miserable countries in the world.
Maghsoudi also targeted regime elites and said that the “wealth of officials who have trillions in savings” were also a bigger threat than the US, adding that regime elites were “flaunting their wealth inside and outside of Iran”.
Despite heightened tensions between Iran and the US, this is not the first time a regime official explicitly acknowledges that the biggest threat that the regime faces is its own people.
Before this, the head of the Tehran City Council said that popular dissent in Iran was far more dangerous than foreign threats for the regime.
“The people’s dissatisfaction in the current situation is the greatest threat to the system and is more dangerous than foreign threats,” Mohsen Hashemi said during the Council’s meeting.
Iran’s First Vice President, Eshagh Jahangiri also recently said that the society was like a room full of gas which would explode with a spark.
It is under these circumstances that many believe that the regime is sitting on a time bomb and despite not listening to what ordinary Iranians are saying, they have very clearly heard the alarm bells.
Source » irannewswire