stock market bubble bursts.

A member of Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei’s faction in parliament, Ahmad Naderi, has stated that when the stock market bubble bursts, it will cause riots that will make those of 2017 and November 2019 look like child’s play. The prediction was made in an interview with the state-run Fars News Agency.

Naderi surmised that the stock market in Iran has been allowed to boom unrealistically and is ripe for bursting. He says that this phenomenon is typical of the sort of neoliberal economics pursued by President Hassan Rouhani. “The transition from industrial and productive capitalism to commercial capitalism is a familiar pattern in neoliberalism,” he said. “The stock market bubble will burst, and I am worried about its social and security implications for the near future: bigger riots than 2017; 2019, and certainly bigger than the 1990s”

One of the most obvious signs that the Iranian economy was in the process of collapsing was the recent move to change the official currency from Rials to Tomans, simply by removing four zeros.

The move was highlighted by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), who said it was a clear sign that the economy was going bankrupt.

Changing the currency is just one economic reform that the regime has put in place. It is expected that these measures will simply add to inflation and pile more misery on the Iranian people.

The state-run Aftab-e Yazdi thinks that the tolerance of the Iranian people is being sorely tested. The daily newspaper pointed out that European nations were struggling to cope after only 2 months of grappling with the effects of the pandemic and were showing signs of depression and desperation. “We have been grappling with problems for months and will experience more incidents and crises shortly,” the paper reported. It went on to say that the decision to change the national currency was misguided. It meant too much negative news for people to handle and officials should have waited.

The latest financial scandal involved the listing of the Social Security Investment Company (Shasta) on the stock exchange. This listing meant the largest sell-off of public assets in recent economic history and a clear sign of embezzlement as the money raised is hardly going to be used to help ordinary Iranians grappling with the epidemic and increasing poverty.

There has been a triple economic whammy in Iran. The unforeseen decline in oil prices (caused by the pandemic), the extension of economic sanctions, and the pandemic itself have all contributed to a severe downturn in the fortunes of the Iranian economy, impoverishing millions of ordinary Iranians. It seems inevitable now that these changes will lead to a huge uprising and series of protests across Iran shortly.