Eye on Iran: Iranians Are Angry about Big Bonuses Paid to Bureaucrats

Join UANI               Top Stories BBC: "How much can you earn working for the Iranian state? That question is trending online in Iran, after the payslips of several employees were leaked online and published by several media outlets. They showed not just inflated salaries, but what appear to be bonuses, interest-free loans and significant overtime payments. In one instance, a bank manager at a state bank was shown to have received £50,000 in one month. By contrast, other public servants - including those who identified themselves as teachers, nurses and journalists - have published monthly payslips showing some of them are paid much more modest salaries of £300 a month or less. Media outlets backing conservative political factions have used the issue to criticise the moderate-leaning government of President Rouhani. But the government has said the practice of paying these salaries and bonuses goes back to the previous administration of former hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But what started as a conservative issue has now become a much broader protest on the Iranian internet, with the public blaming both conservatives and reformists for it. Conversations are taking place on the popular mobile chat app Telegram which, unlike Facebook and Twitter, is not blocked in the country." http://t.uani.com/290i0mP NYT: "Kurdish rebels and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps have engaged in armed clashes along the mountainous Iranian border with Iraq in recent days, raising tensions in the region, Iranian state television reported. On social media, there are videos that purport to show the shelling of positions held by the rebels, the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran. While both groups claim to have killed over a dozen of their opponents, there are no reliable figures as yet, Iran's state news agency, IRNA, reported. The Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran has been striving for decades for independence in the Kurdish areas of western Iran. While many of Iran's approximately six million Kurds feel strong connections to the nation, they speak a separate language and are mostly Sunni Muslims in a Shiite country. The Kurdish regions, like all Iranian border regions, are poor compared with Iran's larger cities. The rebels have clashed periodically with the Iranian armed forces, at times ambushing military patrols. Some of their leaders were assassinated in Europe in the 1980s and '90s. A German court concluded in 1992 that Iran was involved in at least one of those assassinations." http://t.uani.com/290abSM AFP: "Dog lovers in central Iran are in uproar after authorities began confiscating their pets in an apparent crackdown on the 'vulgar Western culture' of canine ownership, Iranian media reported Saturday. One unnamed dog owner in Shahin Shahr in Isfahan province told Iran's Shahrvand newspaper that officials had shown up suddenly at his house last week. 'We were shown a piece of paper indicating they were from the municipal veterinary office. They came in and took away our dogs under the pretext of vaccination,' he said. The owner was told he could recover the dog after its vaccination, but when he went to the vet's office they had no record of his case. Instead, the newspaper said the confiscations were the result of a crackdown launched by local prosecutor Mohsen Boosaidi. 'Keeping and caring for dogs is haram (forbidden) according to religious leaders,' Boosaidi told the Fars news agency on June 19. 'If we find out that anyone is keeping and caring for dogs and so is promoting vulgar Western culture, we will deal with them firmly.'" http://t.uani.com/293iNHU Sanctions Relief Reuters: "The U.S. government has extended through August 30 a reprieve to ZTE Corp on tough export restrictions imposed on the Chinese smartphone maker in March for allegedly breaking sanctions against Iran, the Commerce Department said on Monday. The renewed Commerce Department license allows ZTE to continue exporting equipment containing U.S. technology. The agency said in March that its first reprieve could be extended if the company cooperated with the government. Experts had said U.S. export restrictions were some of the toughest ever applied and would have caused disruption across ZTE's sprawling global supply chain. The restrictions would have banned U.S. companies from exporting to ZTE any technology, software or equipment such as chips and processors made in the United States. The decision would also have prevented software makers from selling typical office applications like Microsoft Windows - or even providing updates. But soon after imposing the restrictions in March, the agency offered the company a three-month relief from the restrictions, which was set to expire June 30. The Commerce Department announced the extension in a notice posted Monday. In an emailed statement, ZTE Chairman Zhao Xianming said the extension shows that the company is improving its compliance and cooperating with the government's investigation. The reprieve will allow ZTE to maintain its 'relationships with hundreds of American companies and our continued investment in the U.S,' he said." http://t.uani.com/290dWrl Foreign Affairs Press TV (Iran): "President of French National Assembly Claude Bartolone will pay an official visit to Iran to discuss ways of bolstering bilateral cooperation, months after the implementation of the nuclear agreement between Tehran and the P5+1 group of countries started. Bartolone will lead a delegation into Tehran on July 15 at the invitation of Iran's Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani. During his four-day stay, the top French parliamentarian will hold talks with Larijani and other senior Iranian officials. The visit will come in less than a month after Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif traveled to Paris and held meetings with French authorities, including President Francois Hollande, his counterpart Jean-Marc Ayrault, the president of National Assembly and Senate President Gerard Larcher." http://t.uani.com/291libk Terrorism Daily Star (Lebanon): "Hezbollah's Secretary-General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah Tuesday met with Iran's new deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs during his first official visit to Lebanon. Hezbollah's press office released a statement saying Nasrallah discussed the latest regional developments with Jaberi Ansari, who was appointed just over a week ago. He was accompanied by Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon, Mohammad Fathali. One day earlier, Ansari met with Prime Minister Tammam Salam, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil. His predecessor Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has been appointed as an adviser to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif." http://t.uani.com/290POkm WT: "Hezbollah's terrorism finance operations are thriving across Latin America months after the Drug Enforcement Administration linked the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group to drug cartels in the region, U.S. lawmakers were told this week. Former DEA operations chief Michael Braun said Hezbollah is 'moving [multiple] tons of cocaine' from South America to Europe and has developed 'the most sophisticated money laundering scheme or schemes that we have ever witnessed.' The agency announced in February that it had arrested several Hezbollah operatives accused of working with a major Colombian drug cartel to traffic drugs to Europe and launder money through Lebanon. Those arrests come against a backdrop of rising fears in Washington about smuggling connections between Middle East terrorist groups and the Western Hemisphere. Hezbollah has 'metastasized into a hydra with international connections that the likes of [the Islamic State] and groups like al Qaeda could only hope to have,' Mr. Braun told the House Financial Services Committee." http://t.uani.com/2918FwF Domestic Politics AP: "The Iranian president on Tuesday called for 'transparency' in the upcoming trial of 48 suspects who stormed Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran in January, an attack that prompted the kingdom to cut ties with Tehran and left relations between the regional powers badly frayed. Hassan Rouhani said the Iranian people are looking to see how the country's judiciary will handle the case of those who ransacked the missions, reiterating earlier remarks that the attack went against Iranian laws. The trial of the 48 suspects in the case is due next week. Transparent proceedings would show that Iran cares for 'securing embassies and will increase international trust in our country,' Rouhani said." http://t.uani.com/2912nyh AFP: "Eleven Kurdish rebels and three of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards were killed in clashes near the Iraqi border, the Fars news agency reported Tuesday. 'A group of 11 counter-revolutionaries linked to the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), who were attempting to infiltrate the country were immediately detected... and were eliminated after 10 days of pursuit in the Sarvabad region,' said General Mohammad Hossein Rajabi, commander of the Revolutionary Guards in Kurdistan province. He added that three members of the Revolutionary Guards were also killed. It followed reports Sunday that five rebels had been killed in the region. It was not clear if these were included in the 11 reported dead Tuesday. The commander the Revolutionary Guards' ground forces, General Mohammad Pakpour, threatened Sunday to launch cross-border attacks against rebel bases in northern Iraq." http://t.uani.com/293hDMs RFE/RL: "Simmering anger in Iran's hard-line media over official salaries has forced President Hassan Rohani's administration onto the defensive with a likely reelection bid for the relative moderate on the horizon. The purported pay slips from earlier this year of executives from government-owned insurance agencies and banks were recently leaked online, and appear to show inflated salaries, bonuses, and other benefits that could prove politically divisive in a country where roughly 30 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Instances cited by conservative media suggest an insurance executive received about $30,000 in monthly compensation and a bank manager was paid more than $65,000 for a month's work, as much as 200 times what modestly paid government employees make and more than 100 times the official average household salary. The original source of the leaks remains unclear. The scandal has already prompted the resignation of Iran's state insurance regulator, Mohammad Ebrahim Amin, and a reported jail term for an unnamed government executive who was said to have refused to explain and document his income to the head of the General Inspectorate Organization, Nasser Seraj. Some Iranians have taken to social media to criticize the officials' salaries and post their own pay slips to highlight the disproportion." http://t.uani.com/290SWwO Daily Beast: "After decades of financial and technological strangulation, the Iranian air force-at one time among the most advanced in the world-finally has an opportunity to modernize and potentially become a serious aerial opponent for the United States and other rivals. The gradual lifting of international sanctions on Iran that began in January-a reward for Tehran agreeing to scrap its nuclear program-means the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force could, in theory, buy new jet fighters to replace its existing, mostly antiquated planes. Don't hold your breath. Sure, sanctions are ending. But Iran's own bewildering internal politics could prevent the Iranian air force from re-arming any time soon-or ever." http://t.uani.com/29bDjnW Opinion & Analysis UANI Advisory Board Member Olli Heinonen in FDD: "This January, Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) embarked on the difficult road towards Transition Day - October 18, 2023, or earlier if the IAEA can reach a Broader Conclusion that all of Iran's nuclear materials and facilities are for peaceful purposes and it is not engaged in any undeclared nuclear activities. There are several incentives for Iran to try to reach Transition Day long before the eight-year mark. Depending on Iran's level of cooperation and the IAEA's findings, a Broader Conclusion could technically be achieved in less than four years. At that point, Iran will be a nuclear-threshold state, with all the regional and international security implications that entails. Tehran will be able to produce enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon quickly, and at a time when elements of the JCPOA monitoring regime are being rolled back. To achieve a Broader Conclusion, the IAEA needs to be assured that all nuclear material in Iran is under Agency safeguards and that there are no indications of undeclared nuclear material and activities in the country. Since 2003, the IAEA has gained inroads into Iran's past and current nuclear program. During the Agency's investigations between 2003 and 2005 - a period during which Iran also provisionally implemented the Additional Protocol - the IAEA mapped the historical production of nuclear materials at installations owned or controlled by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. It then raised additional questions in its Iran Work Plan in 2007, but Iran halted this cooperation the following year. Even more problematic, Iran terminated its provisional implementation of the Additional Protocol in 2005, meaning that between that year and the interim agreement in November 2013, the IAEA was not able to closely monitor its uranium mining, centrifuge research and development, and nuclear equipment manufacturing activities. Gaps in the Agency's knowledge therefore remain. The most challenging element of efforts to reach a Broader Conclusion will be addressing the Possible Military Dimension (PMD) of Iran's nuclear program. In 2015, the IAEA and Iran concluded a Road Map  to address the PMD issue. However, in its December 2015 report, the Agency was unable to determine the full picture of Tehran's efforts and left a number of questions unanswered. Although its Board of Governors has declared  the PMD as an agenda item closed, the IAEA should pursue answers to outstanding questions. It needs to provide assurances, with high confidence, that Iran has indeed terminated all weapons-related activities. The Agency must have direct access to all weaponization-relevant people and sites - including military sites - in order to verify the correctness and completeness of Iran's declarations. This includes access to the Parchin military facility (and all relevant personnel), where the IAEA has found man-made uranium particles that could indicate undeclared nuclear material and activities in the country. Without this access, the Agency will not able to issue a credible Broader Conclusion." http://t.uani.com/291kgfI Economist: "On the face of it, last July's nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers (known as the Joint Comprehensive Programme of Action) looks to be in good shape. Last weekend Iran announced that Boeing, an American aircraft maker, is to sell 20 airliners to its national carrier for around $25 billion. That followed a deal in January to buy 118 planes worth $27 billion from Boeing's European rival, Airbus. Nothing could better symbolise the transformation of Iran's relations with the outside world than the re-equipping of its state airline with Western aircraft. However, both deals depend on the US Treasury issuing export licences (Airbus planes have many American-made parts, including engines). The approvals will probably be granted. But the uncertainty feeds a growing Iranian perception that America is using its remaining sanctions to stop Iran from getting its reward for meeting its nuclear obligations. On that front, the news is mostly good. A month ago, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued its second report on Iran's compliance with the deal. The impression it gave was of Iran acquiescing in all the verification and monitoring procedures required. It also appeared to be meeting its commitments in terms of freezing work on its heavy-water reactor at Arak, maintaining its stock of heavy water at permitted levels and continuing to abide by agreed levels and quantities of uranium enrichment. Mark Fitzpatrick, a proliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, says the IAEA found 'little to complain about'. Yet some worry that the IAEA is giving Iran too easy a time. David Albright of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security laments a lack of technical detail in the agency's reporting, and a consequent loss of the promised full transparency. Mr Fitzpatrick reckons that the absence of specifics reflects a new co-operative relationship between Iran the IAEA, and that member governments are getting more information than is being put into the public domain. Mr Albright is less confident. He thinks that the IAEA has given in to Iranian pressure for secrecy and that the White House has not pushed back. His fear is that by cutting Iran too much slack, for example over the cap on low-enriched uranium, the calculations on the time it would take from 'breaking out' of the deal to producing a nuclear weapon (the deal aims for at least a year) could be affected. Mr Albright is particularly worried about reports that Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation has been shopping on the sly for carbon fibre, a material it would need if it were planning to build advanced uranium centrifuges. He says: 'They could be stockpiling for a surge in enrichment when the [nuclear deal] starts to expire in 10 to 15 years; or they could be planning for a breakout capacity at a clandestine facility if the deal collapses.' Mr Fitzpatrick agrees America must ensure that the IAEA provides rapid notification of any backsliding." http://t.uani.com/298hgBt Diane Katz in The Daily Signal: "To complete the sale, Boeing still must obtain an export license from the U.S. Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control. Should a U.S. bank or investment firm wish to finance the purchase, it, too, would have to obtain a license from the Office of Foreign Asset Control. (Officials of the U.S. Export-Import Bank have said the bank charter prohibits financing for Iran, but they aren't the most credible bunch.) This 'licensing' procedure seems downright silly considering that Iran has been designated for years by the U.S. Department of State as 'the leading state sponsor of terrorism globally.' As noted in the 2015 edition of the Country Reports on Terrorism, 'Iran continues to provide support to Hizballah, Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza, and various groups in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.' ... To their credit, Reps. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, and Peter Roskam, R-Ill., aren't quite as trusting of Iran as the Obama administration. In a June 16 letter to Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg, the lawmakers said they 'strongly oppose the potential sale of militarily-fungible products to terrorism's central supplier,' and sought assurances that the company would repossess or remotely disable aircraft if Iran violated the nuclear deal. Meanwhile, Roskam has introduced the No Dollars for Ayatollahs Act, which would impose an excise tax of 100 percent on any transaction that involves Iran conducting a financial transaction in U.S. currency. According to Roskam, 'It's tragic to watch such an iconic American company make such a terribly short-sighted decision. If Boeing goes through with this deal, the company will forever be associated with Iran's chief export: radical Islamic terrorism.' In addition, Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., has introduced the Preventing Investment in Terrorist Regimes Act, which would deny U.S. tax credit to Boeing for the foreign taxes it would pay on the income derived from the Iranian deal. Both measures are co-sponsored by all six subcommittee chairs of the House Ways and Means Committee. But whether either measure would prove effective in halting the sale, using the tax code to steer the actions of a multinational corporation is a lousy way to set policy. Besides, Boeing generated more than $96 billion in revenue last year, and its market cap exceeds $86 billion. It also paid a lot of money to lobby in favor of the nuclear deal, including hiring Thomas Pickering, a former ambassador to Israel and the United Nations, to testify before Congress, write letters to high-level officials, and submit op-eds in support of lifting the sanctions. All of which is perfectly acceptable-except that he systematically failed to disclose his relationship with Boeing. Boeing executives say the proposed sale is necessary to remain competitive against Airbus, the European aviation manufacturer that has struck a $27 billion deal with Iran for 118 planes. But that's the same lame argument Boeing made in lobbying for reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank-from which Boeing was the top beneficiary of export subsidies. The fact is, projected demand for commercial planes is forecast to rise for years to come, and both manufacturers are carrying huge backlogs that will take years to fulfill. Rather than tweak the tax code, Congress should, at the very least, explicitly prohibit financing from the Export-Import Bank for the sale of Boeing planes (or any other product) to Iran. Additional actions are needed as well. The administration has already increased the risk of yet more death and destruction by the terrorist state. Lawmakers should ensure that Boeing and other U.S. companies don't become tools of Tehran." http://t.uani.com/28XQA0A         Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please email Press@UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a non-partisan, broad-based coalition that is united in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons.  UANI is an issue-based coalition in which each coalition member will have its own interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of nuclear weapons.