Home >> Middle East >> Iran

     Email   Print 

The leadership qualities of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Reza Hossein Borr - 7/7/2008

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been rated as one of the most incompetent and most inefficient countries in the world. It had scored between 10 to 30 points from 100 in areas of accountability, corruption, political instability, quality of performance and government effectiveness. It has possibly wasted more human and financial resources than any other country in the last 29 years. Its performance has declined gradually and steadily and corruption and violence have increased dramatically over the last ten years.

The World Bank assesses different countries every year in terms of accountability, political stability and absence of violence, quality of performance, government effectiveness, and rule of law and control of corruption. These indicators separate the countries who are the winners and losers. The assessments score is from Zero to 100. The countries that scored more than 50 are usually the countries that are nearly well managed and led and the countries that scored less than 50%, are the countries that are enormously mismanaged and misled. These assessments prove that Iran has scored 20 to 30 percent since 1996 in all of these areas. This demonstrates that the Islamic Republic of Iran is among the most incompetent and most ineffective regimes in the world. The countries which are worst than Iran are close allies of Iran like Syria and the Sudan. It shows that despite of huge financial and natural resources and human power, the regime has systemically wasted the kind of financial and human resources which were sufficient for transforming Iran into one of the developed countries of Asia. The financial and human resources of Iran clearly showed that Iran had the potential capability to achieve as much economic, social and political level of development as Taiwan and South Korea achieved in the last 30 years.

The countries that achieved high economic growth enjoyed scores more than 70 percent in the World Bank assessment. These countries included democratic countries of the West as well as the dictatorial regimes like China. The highest level of competence and effectiveness was secured by the Western countries and Japan. These figures show that there are more corruption in the dictatorial countries like Islamic Republic of Iran, Syria and the Sudan. The level of corruption is usually very high in these countries and it is managed by senior government officials as the recent statements by a researcher of the judiciary exposed.

Dr Abbas Palizdar honestly exposed in a television programme that the level of corruption among the high untouchable religious authorities of Iran is so profound that he claimed he wept for many days after coming across the unbelievable level records of corruption. He said, “Religious leaders who claim to represent God and his justice in the world are so corrupt that that it looked like a catastrophe has hit the country. The reason we can not fight corruption is because the top leaders of the country are involved. Another reason is that the Judiciary is protecting them." He was arrested few days later after the television show by the Judiciary.

Dr Abbas Palizdar who is in prison now and receives unbelievable torture, claimed that, " when I got access to some corruption files, I was shocked so much that I could not believe that these religious leaders that pretended to be so pure and sacred, could commit crimes of such high scale while our people live under so much poverty and duress. Dr Palisdar gave several corruption examples: "Mohammad Yazdi, the head of judiciary managed to buy Dena, a big company, worth $600 million dollars for only one million dollar. This company belonged to an entrepreneur who was established before the revolution but like many other successful companies, was confiscated by the Islamic Republic of Iran and later sold to the head of the judiciary. Mohammad Yazdi sold it in the market for more than its original price. He claimed that there are 123 large-scale corruption files in the Research Department of Iranian Parliament. Each of these files is related to one of the top clerics." (1)

Another research by the World Bank demonstrates that the level of accountability in Iran is among the lowest in the world. The Islamic Republic of Iran scored between 10 and 20 points from 100 points between 1996 and 2006. This clearly shows how the public funds have been plundered by the top clerics and their influential relatives. Most of the countries scored more than 50 points. Only the dictatorial regimes of Syria and the Sudan scored worse than the Islamic Republic of Iran. Although there is a national organization for investigating corruption in the country, it has not been able to make any fundamental difference in promoting integrity and ethical standards. The judiciary system has been identified as the worst and the most corrupt institution in the country. The political judges are the least accountable among other judges. This is while the clerics talked about virtue, integrity and moral issues at least three times a day and in Friday prayers. More than 50% of Iranian media coverage is about Islam and its promise of the best life in this world and the next. While the clerics preach about the benefits of Islam and how it can help people improve their daily lives, they have failed in delivering the minimum standard of living in the country. Above 60 percent of the Iranian people live under poverty line. In the provinces that are dominated by Sunnis and ethnic minorities the level of poverty and corruption is even higher. For example according to the official figure, 76 percent of the Baluch Sunnis are living under the poverty line and their life expectancy is 10 to 15 years lower than the national average.

The worst barrier to bringing people and authorities to accountability is the persecution of anybody who leaks corruption files or the investigators of the corruption of the top religious authorities. There is no one case where an investigator have been able to bring a top corrupt cleric to justice but the investigators usually have been put into prison for exposing the corruption of the authorities.

Another investigation by the World Bank demonstrates that political instability and violence has been among the highest in the world. This research shows that political stability is very low in Iran compared to most of other countries except for few countries like Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It shows that Iran scored 22 points out of 100 in 1996. This figure declined and reached the low point of 12 percent in 2006. It shows that political violence has been increasing gradually and steadily. The analysts inside Iran have observed that the violence is mostly instigated by the Iranian security forces to generate an atmosphere of fear and intimidation among the Iranians. On the other hand, poverty and deprivation have reached such a level that all workers, teachers, civil servants, ethnic and religious minorities have to demonstrate regularly to demand a descent level of income and the restoration of their basic human rights. This is while Iran had more than two hundred billion dollars of income in the last three years only from oil and gas. It is important to notice that Iran had about $120 billion dollars of income oil from the day that oil was discovered to the day that the Islamic public of Iran was established. The level of economic growth and social transformation by $120 billion had put Iran among the most developed countries in Asia before the Islamic Revolution. The level of violence in Iran is caused by the culture that the Iranian regime has developed during the last 30 years. The authorities have used violence as the only way of dealing with the people. Violence nurtures violence and therefore, everybody resorts to violence in dealing with others. The culture of violence has changed the attitude of the masses. The Iranians have become very angry people and violence is the most popular way of reaction.

The World Bank's report about the effectiveness of governments also demonstrates that the Islamic Republic of Iran is among the most ineffective systems in the world. It scored between 20 to 30 points from 100 during 1966 to 2006. The performance of the government is very compatible with this figure. The government’s statistics show that about 30 percent of the projects that have been initiated in Iran after the revolution have been finished on time. Seventy percent have been delayed or even abandoned after some time when their budgets were finished because of incompetence or corruption. Another government figure shows that Iran has lost every year about 12 billion dollars because the projects were not competed on time. This means that the Iranian people have lost $348 billion dollars over 29 years because of unfinished or abandoned projects. This figure is enough to transform a country completely into a developed nation.

End of part one of the analysis. The second part will be published soon.