Iraq Reiterates Plan For Legal Action Against Iran Over Water
Baghdad will file an international lawsuit against Iran over water disputes, a senior advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources said Sunday.
Baghdad will file an international lawsuit against Iran over water disputes, a senior advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources said Sunday.
Aoun Diab had forwarded a dossier to the government after Iran had failed to respond after requests to discuss its diverting six rivers flowing into Iraq. Diab criticized what he called a lack of cooperation and drew an unfavorable comparison with Turkey given a delegation from Ankara was due to arrive for a field study.
Iraqi officials have for months talked of filing a case with the International Court of Justice, while Iranian officials have suggested Iraq’s chronic water challenge – the United Nations in 2017 ranked it the world’s fifth most vulnerable country to water shortage and food availability – results more from Turkish dams.
In April, Minister of Water Resources Mahdi Rashid al-Hamdani accused Tehran of ignoring Iraqi water rights “even if its dams are filled with water."
Both the Tigris and Euphrates, Iraq’s most important sources of water, originate in Turkey, although tributaries come from Syria and Iran.
Across the Middle East, water shortages have fed tensions between countries and within countries. Iranian officials have warned of a further fall this year in precipitation.
With the deterioration of the economic situation in recent days and the danger of a social explosion, even state-controlled media publish interviews and comments about the mystery of oil revenues and higher taxes collected by President Ebrahim Raisi’s government.
According to official statements by the president and the oil minister, Iran has earned at least $45 billion in the past 12 months from higher exports and prices of crude oil and refined oil products. This is double of what Iran managed to earn in 2020, without any visible impact on the economy.
Hossein Raghfar a professor of economics in Zahra University in Tehran told the Iranian Labour News Agency, ILNA, that the money is being taken out of Iran by corrupt officials.
“The question now is why the impact these revenues are not being felt,” Raghfar said, and insisted, “One of the main reason is flight of capital from the country.”
He did not provide any details or evidence for his claim of massive capital flight, but a recent scandal surrounding the family of the parliament speaker traveling to Turkey for luxury shopping and reportedly buying two expensive apartments there for $1.6 million, speaks volumes about corruption and money taken out of the country by the elite.
A Turkish nationwide news channel, TGRT, not only confirmed claims by Iranian sources that Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (Qalibaf) family purchased apartments but reported that 500 luxury units in the same high-rise complex have been purchased by families of Iranian officials. That would mean around $500 million of illicit funds taken out of the country and invested in just one location in Turkey.
Raghfar said that if government claims of exporting around one million barrels of crude per day are true, Iran can expect around $100 billion of revenue from its traditional financial lifeline. That kind of money should stop the fall in the value of rial, which reached a four-month low on Saturday trading at 285,000 to the US dollar. Just in late 2017, before the United States pulled out of the nuclear agreement known as JCPOA, the rial was trading at 33,000 to the dollar – an almost ninefold fall in less than five years.
The former head of the central Bank, Abdolnaser Hemmati, issued a short video on Sunday saying that the Raisi administration can be called “The sultan of printing money.” Raisi has been claiming that he stopped his predecessor’s practice of generating money for the government by printing more banknotes, but Hemmati said that according to new central bank date the government printed close to $6 billion additional money from August to March, which fuels inflation.
Raghfar also drew attention to large quasi-government companies not paying any taxes, and instead receiving subsidies. These companies are run by political appointees who are friends or family members of top government officials and can easily share funds with others in their circle.
He went to say that currently all major government institution are controlled by conservative (loyal to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei) and the Raisi government has no excuse of disunity in failing to improve the economy. Why the government is eliminating subsidies for essential commodities, raising the price of bread fivefold, he asked, and said it is not clear what is happening to public wealth.
“Iran’s economy is hostage to various mafia interests, who spend a lot of [public] money and embezzling huge funds,” Raghfar said.
The Majles held a session behind closed door to probe into the cause of the problem, but the parliament's presidium member Alireza Salimi told the press that as questions put to Economy Minister Ehsan Khandouzi and Agriculture Minister Javad Sadatijejad dragged on and on, the Majles continued the debate in an open session.
The political scene appeared to be in chaos as parliament scrambled to appear active, demanding answers from the government, while officials seemed unable to present coherent explanations.
According to Salimi, the ministers told the parliament that reasons behind the recent flour price increase include the war in Ukraine, the draught in the region and Iran's problems in importing wheat as protests took place over the weekend in the oil-rich Khuzestan province.
Salimi added that lawmakers called on the government to clearly name the senior officials responsible for economic decisions. This was because of discrepancies in government statements about the cause the rising price of bread and about how to sort out the problem.
Meanwhile, Majles Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf told ISNA news websitethat price increases were unacceptable and the government should have first issued electronic coupons for underprivileged citizens to make sure they could still buy bread at a subsidized rate. Ghalibaf also revealed that the government will be issuing electronic coupons for other commodities such as cheese.
Ghalibaf said the way the government dealt with the rising prices of pasta and bread caused serious concern as people thought this was the beginning of more widespread price increases.
He also criticized first vice president Mohammad Mokhber for not showing up in parliament to offer explanations to lawmakers.
In a belated explanation on the state television late on Saturday night, Mokhber said that "The subsidy on bread and medicine will not be cut off." He added: "We have allocated a subsidy to traditional bread which according to legislation will be paid via electronic coupons. Subsidies have also been considered for other essential commodities to compensate for rising prices." Mokhber reiterated that these subsidies will be paid into the accounts of the heads of families before government raises prices."
While the vice president spoke about government assistance plans, bread prices have already risen fivefold in the past few days.
Mokhber's remarks convinced few people as others including Vice President for Economic Affairs Mohsen Rezaei offered a different explanation. Rezaei said on state TV that everyone in Iran will be getting 2 to 3 million rials (8-12 dollars) in cash handout from the government every month. However, he had to immediately return to the TV studio and deny his own statement on national television.
Remarks by Ghalibaf and Mokhber indicated that bread rationing is part of the government's plan to tackle rising prices, but officials disagreed about the size of the ration.
During Sunday, Iran International TV showed footage of Iranian Lawmakers at the Majles angrily reacting to the government's chaotic policy on pricing and distribution of bread.
According to Didban Iran website lawmaker Ahmad Hossein Fallahi charged that the ministers who reported to the Majles on Sunday had nothing new to say about the problem or its solution. The website quoted lawmaker Hojjatollah Firouzi as saying that the situation has given rise to concerns at the parliament, and another lawmaker Ebrahim Azizi criticized the government for not offering explanations to the people before the price rise.
Iranian journalist Solmaz Ikdar told Iran International that lawmakers have realized Raisi is unpopular, and his policies have failed, so they try to distance themselves from his administration.
