Tehran, IRNA — A senior aide to President Masoud Pezeshkian says years of foreign sanctions on Iran and domestic policies that hindered their removal have turned poverty into a major social issue in the country.
“Sanctions have turned poverty from the exception into the rule,” Ali Rabiei, President Pezeshkian’s assistant on social affairs, said at a forum on poverty on Sunday. “I wonder how those who believed sanctions were blessings will have to answer to God. Policies that delayed the removal of sanctions led to widespread poverty,” he added, without naming anyone.
In rare remarks, Rabiei also said that a sense of inequality had spread among the Iranian population.
He referred to a wave of protests that erupted in Iran after the death of an Iranian woman in police custody in 2022 and said those who came out to protest were at first people who were after “self-expression.”
“Later came out those who sought values of survival,” Rabiei said.
President Pezeshkian ran in and won the 2024 election on a ticket of bringing different political factions in Iran together. His campaign motto of “national solidarity” continues to be a major guiding policy of his administration.
But the president has complained about internal political bickering and certain factions that he has said hamper engagement with the world.
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