Parastate Kleptocracy. Iran

Parastate Kleptocracy.

The Supreme Leader Appoints and Controls Board Chairs and Chief Executives.

Bonyads operate as giant private monopolies that guarantee cash flows into the office of the Supreme Leader and funds his priorities. The Bonyad-e Mostazafen va Janbazan (Foundation for the Oppressed and Disabled) for example, employs 200,000 Iranian employees and shares management with the IRGC. This tax-free entity “controls 20% of the country’s production of textiles, 40% of soft drinks, two-thirds of all glass products and a dominant share also in tiles, chemicals, tires, foodstuffs.”

Yet another significant bonyad, the Martyr's Foundation (Bonyad-e-Shahid), continues to be subject to U.S. sanctions under Executive Order 13224 for alleged funding of groups that conduct acts of international terrorism. According to Dr Kenneth Katzman, Iran’s Bonyads may employ as many as 5,000,000 Iranians and control as much as 20% of Iran’s GDP. One prominent bonyad is EIKO or Setad, (Headquarters for Executing Imam Khomeini's Order) and is run by the office of the Supreme Leader. Formed with assets taken over after the Shah fell, EIKO controls or holds stakes in at least 70 Iranian companies across the spectrum of Iranian industry, with assets of nearly $100 billion. In October 2016, Iran's Oil Ministry awarded $2.2 billion in contracts to an EIKO subsidiary under Iran's new model of energy sector development called the Iran Petroleum Contract. Iran’s recently deceased president is Ebrahim Raisi, who was the former Chief Justice of Iran’s Supreme Court. Before his appointment as Chief Justice by Khamenei, Raisi served as the Supreme Leader’s chief executive officer of the multi-billion USD valued Astan Quds Razavi Foundation, whose primary purpose is the manage the Imam Reza Shrine. Since the revolution the Astan-e-Qods bonyad has grown from a "modest concern" into a conglomerate employing 19,000 people and running auto plants, agricultural businesses, and many other enterprises. These Bonyad foundations are intimately associated with; often familial-connected with; and/or even part of, the Majles Legislature, the religious assembly of experts (or the religious parties they are drawn from), the president’s cabinet, and the IRGC. These parastates appear to be familial in ownership and closely tied into government members and the political parties and interest groups that they are part of. The organizations are both commercial ventures and powerful charitable foundations that seem to control the bulk of the available capital flows and surviving industry in economically sanctioned Iran. The visible Iranian beneficiaries of these economic parastates have become something of a nemesis-fascination for the target audiences in my research as they illustrate the outlines of a modern kleptocracy. The respondents we interviewed, watched the elites’ purchases of wristwatches, choice of cars, clothes, vacation destinations, and even the fresh fruit available to them that is otherwise unavailable to the public. Implicit in the government and Bonyad messaging is that equal socioeconomic opportunity does in fact exist but that failure to achieve is based on good or poor bloodlines (remember, these foundations are mostly family entanglements which help the regime maintain discipline over them. For the rest of the Iranian population, the resulting psychological dynamic of alienated frustration was/is expressed in both the conscious and subconscious and is the result of the mind’s inability to attain a goal or objective that the individual has or is putting significant effort into accomplishing. The more that the subconscious and conscious mind is presented with the implied and expressed messaging from both government and elites of the possibility or likelihood that the failure to achieve their goals is the fault of its own inadequacy (as demonstrated by the public behaviour of the elite segment of peers who are blessed with “good genes”), the greater the feelings of alienation, shame, and left unintegrated, rage. Victim fantasies of aggression are a useful defence mechanism at first, because they allow the subconscious mind to repair its ego-self-esteem and continue to function, albeit more aggressively focused than before. Fantasies of aggression release creative energy to construct and then play out scenarios of passive revenge against the objects of their alienation: the “aghazadeh” (noble born) ‘elite’ who have succeeded where the ‘ordinary’ have failed, justified by the spectre of enhanced DNA.

"I'm proud that [my] capabilities come from good genes, from two good bloodlines -- my mother's side and also from my father’s … I think the reason is that many are trying to escape from reality; we're used to putting the blame on others." Hamid Reza Aref, son of former Vice President and Communications Minister, Mohammad Reza Aref. Figure 7 "The Little Prince: do you have good genes? The fox: no, that belongs to aghazadehs. I have intelligence.”

Iranian Twitter user in response "Bringing up the issue of good genes means that we're entering the issue of racism and tribalism, that's the view of kings and sultans." Iranian sociologist Gholamreza Alizadeh The ongoing nepotism of Iran’s military, political, and religious elites has been a well known fact for many years in Iranian society. When the son of a former vice president tried to attribute his success to innate capacities that were inherited, a firestorm erupted that is ongoing. The latest casualty is President Rouhani’s son (Kambiz Mehdizadeh) and his appointment to become the head of Iran’s Geological Survey, while still a PhD student in petroleum engineering. Several social media campaigns with the cultural symbolic objects of #goodgenes and #WhereisyourKid eventually resulted in Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to recall his children from their overseas study locations.