Iran Islamic republic was established in 1979. From the formation of religious government until now, the Iranian country has been run by sharia rules and law. Religious based law is very old and it is not capable of modern and democratic standards. For this reason, there are a lot of problems in a country that pulls the country towards strangulation and anarchism. The root of the problems is in the traditional governmental system and dictatorship. However, corruption, human rights violations, and poverty are the main problems of Iranian society that have had severe negative effects on people daily lives.

Generally, whole governmental systems, such as the supreme leader office, ministries, official institutions, military and security forces, and the justice system is corrupt. In other words, the majority of government income is illegally shared between those organs. According to Transparency International reports, Iran has been considered one of the most corrupted countries in the world for decades. For this reason, governmental corruption prevents economic growth and development of the country in different sectors. In addition, the corruption inside the government has been caused the inability to manage crises like flooding, earthquake, sand storming, air pollution, water resources management, environmental degradation, and the outbreak of contagious diseases such as spreading of Coronavirus throughout the country. Also, officials do not feel any responsibility for these crises, and often they don’t pay attention and they do not make plans to resolve Iranian society problems. For this reason, corruption and existing social crises have caused public discontent in the country against government. Besides corruption inside the system, the Iranian government is known as one of the main human rights violators in the world. Because of this, Citizens, especially women, different ethnic groups, religious minorities, and general labors are subjected to a different kind of discrimination in the country.

Furthermore, people do not have any freedom of speech or opinion. Media and press are also not free and not independent from the government. In fact, all information and communication technology are managed under the authority of the supreme leader. Because of the oppressive character of the Iranian regime, all the peaceful protests against the government have been strongly oppressed by the security forces. For instance, in December 2019, according to the Reuters report, more than 1500 protestors were killed by government militia. Additionally, a lot of people who are executed in prisons and public areas under different types of charges, do not have the right of fair trial. Consequently, human rights violations have contributed to a crisis of legitimacy for the government in both across the nation and internationally, also have had negative effects on the Iran Islamic republic’s international relations at political and economic levels.

Furthermore, poverty is the most challenging problem in Iranian society. The country’s economy is not private but it depends on oil and natural gas. The government, in particular the supreme leader and security forces control oil exports. It is not transparent and the spending of that income is not clear. Likewise, all factories and major economic sectors directly or indirectly are dependent on the government. For that reason, the majority of people do not have any benefit from the oil sale and live in economic hardship. According to the world bank report in 2019, approximately 70 percent of Iranian people live under the poverty threshold. Thus, the lack of responsibility of the government for people’s lives, poor economic management, and corruption in high levels have led to an extreme increase in the poverty rate in Iranian society.

In brief, because of the characteristics of Iran’s religious dictatorship, the whole country is under the authority of the supreme leader and the forces that are dependent on him. All the power has been gathered in the supreme leader’s hands. For that reason, it has made the government more oppressive and government officials think the interference in people’s lives is the main role in their duty to protect the regime. As a result, the root of the main problems of the country such as corruption, human rights violation, and poverty can be traced to Islamic fundamentalism, oppression and violative behavior with citizens, lack of responsibility in solving the problems, discrimination in the structure of the government, different social classes and levels and the corrupt judiciary system. Those problems have caused an exponential increase in public dissatisfaction and it is also expected that, with continuation of the miserable situation, regime change by revolution is inevitable in the future.

Source » moderndiplomacy