Iran’s oil exports have declined by more than half just in the last six months of 2018. If Washington, next April, refuses to extend the exemptions currently granted to eight buyers of Iranian oil, how low can those exports go? The Trump administration has said that it aims to reduce those exports to zero.
Because of the drought, Iranian agriculture is a disaster. The most important agricultural crop in Iran, by far, is pistachios, before the drought bringing in more than $5 billion annually. The province of Kerman produces 70% of Iran’s pistachios. Officials at the Agriculture-Jahad Ministry in the North of Kerman say that the production of pistachio has fallen by 80% in 2018. In the city of Rafsanjan, which is the pistachio capital of Iran, production fell in 2018 by 90%. And not only has production fallen by 80%-90% as compared with 2017, but the pistachios that are now produced are of poor quality due to drought and heat, and consequently fetch far less on the market than did crops in previous years. Furthermore, the pistachio trees have been so damaged by the heat and drought that they are expected to produce far less in 2019 than in 2018, which was for Iran’s pistachio growers the worst year on record.
Iran gives an impression of strength because of its foreign aggression. Those Revolutionary Guards in Iraq and Syria, those 140,000 missiles supplied to Hezbollah in Lebanon, those weapons transferred to the Houthis in Yemen, are cause for alarm. But they are not signs of economic strength. The very adventurism that makes Iran appear powerful has increased its economic weakness in several ways. First, had Iran ceased its aggressive behavior abroad, the Americans would not have felt compelled to reimpose sanctions on its oil sales. Second, that aggressiveness has cost the Iranians more than 18 billion dollars, in money and weapons used on behalf of, or transferred to, allies in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and “Palestine.” That is money Iran needs at home. Third, had the Iranian rulers thought more of their own country’s interests and less about being the champions of the Jihad against Israel, they could have benefited from Israel’s offer to help Iran in the management of its water resources.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has suffered a moral collapse, as both Khomeini’s grandson and Rafsanjani’s daughter have charged. People are fed up with the morality police constricting their daily lives. Iranians are tired, too, of the corruption and hypocrisy of the regime — rife with nepotism, privatization of government assets, and insider deals — that are on maddening display. Having had their fill of the clerics, Iranians are as a result even leaving Islam. Some have abandoned religion altogether, while others have made Christianity the “fastest growing religion” in Iran.
Iran has also suffered an economic collapse, the result of expensive foreign follies, financial mismanagement, misallocation of resources, geopolitical miscalculation (Washington’s sanctions have exacted a steep price), and the historic drought.
What has not yet arrived is the political collapse of the regime. But this is the Muslim Middle East, and anything could set it off. A rise in the price of bread and other staples. A higher tax on gasoline. An Instagram of the morality police in Tehran, shows them grabbing a girl for not wearing her hijab, while she yells at them, and even delivers a swift kick to her persecutors — an Instagram that goes viral. Or a different Instagram, this one of Ayatollah Khamenei’s luxurious villa, inside and out, never before seen by the public, that every second Iranian has now seen.
Whatever the outrage that prompts them, thousands of protesters show up in Revolution Square in Tehran, to denounce the morality police, Ayatollah Khamenei and his villa, the Revolutionary Guards, the clerical lords of misrule. The police manage to finally disperse the crowd by firing tear gas and beating into bloody submission the front ranks of protesters. But the next day, ten times as many protesters show up in the same square, and not only there, but in another dozen Iranian cities. The Instagrams of these protests go viral. The police are not able to hold the crowds back. The army is called in, and the soldiers do not hesitate to use live fire, killing more than 2,000 people around the country. When the news of these killings spreads across the social media, all hell breaks loose. Now there are more protests, in 80 cities across Iran. Soldiers who are told by their officers to fire on the protesters, in Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, Karaj, Shiraz, Tabriz, as they had done previously, now refuse to obey. Some soldiers join the protesters instead. Instagrams of soldiers marching with the protesters spread everywhere. The crowds keep getting larger, throughout the country, and now they start to attack the local headquarters of the religious police. Not even Qom is quiet. “The army is with us!” is the message on social media. Throughout the country, the quarters of the Revolutionary Guards are surrounded by units of the army. In a few places, the IRGC try to fight their way out, but the soldiers fire on them, killing many. The Guards realize that resistance is futile and, as the army demands, they surrender their weapons.
After several weeks of protest marches around the country, the regime is toppling. Orders from the top are being ignored. There is one final, gigantic march in Tehran. More than one million Iranians, with Hassan Khomeini among them, are marching toward the government offices. The army, where is the army, to halt the marchers, to save the regime? But the soldiers do not appear, the generals having countermanded the orders given them by the clerics to “crush the protesters.” Or rather, many soldiers do appear, and so do some high-ranking officers — look, there is General Tabatabai! — not to halt, but to join the protesters. Now the marchers are closing in on the offices of the Supreme Leader, where white-turbaned clerics are seen attempting to flee, and now they’ve entered the building, but Ayatollah Khamenei himself is nowhere to be found, and the marchers are now joking about “the Hidden Imam” and….
Well, that’s a possible scenario for the regime’s downfall. Maybe not this year. Or the next. And maybe not as in my fantasy above. But one way or another, it soon will happen.

cornelius says
One hopes this essay reaches some in Iran and inspires them to begin contemplating the possible….not in a generalized, wistful way, but in a tangible, organizational one. Often times, dreams are the catalyst for action.
Well done Hugh!
mortimer says
Hugh Fitzgerald’s imaginary counter-revolution may soon come to pass. But, they will have to organize this revolution with great secrecy.
However, Fitzgerald has left out the Iranian equivalent of ‘Brownshirts’, the Basij which is a one-million-strong group of hired thugs that crack heads, spy on everyone and burn people out.
The Basij has several branches. There are three main armed wings:
•Ashoura and Al-Zahra Brigades are the security and military branch tasked with “defending the neighborhoods in case of emergencies.”
•Imam Hossein Brigades are composed of Basij war veterans who cooperate closely with the IRGC ground forces.
•Imam Ali Brigades deal with security threats.
The force also has multiple branches with specialized functions. They include:
•Basij of the Guilds [Basij-e Asnaf]
•Labor Basij [Basij-e Karegaran]
•Basij of the Nomads [Basij-e ‘Ashayer]
•Public Servants’ Basij [Basij-e Edarii]
•Pupil’s Basij [Basij-e Danesh-Amouzi]
•Student Basij [Basij-e Daneshjouyi]
Each specialized branch of the Basij functions as a counterweight to non-governmental organizations and the perceived threat they pose to the state. Basij of the Guilds, for example, is a counterpart to professional organizations. The Labor Basij provides a counterpart to labor organizations, unions and syndicates. And the Student Basij balances independent student organizations.
Buraq says
And when the swivel-eyed Mullahs eventually swing from Tehran’s lamp posts in the breeze, Islam’s grip will also be fatally weakened. Who will be able to persuade a newly wised-up public that Islam can save them when it was Islam’s representatives who brought the good people of Iran nothing but economic disaster?
Give Islam enough rope …………. !
Walter Sieruk says
The US sanction ban on oil exports from this the “mullah regime” of Iran is a grand and wise plan. This jihadwatch article informs the reader that “The Trump administration has said that it aims to reduce those exports to zero.”
As for those current economic sanctions that are being held against that Islamic tyranny of Iran Is very good and appropriate. This Islamic rough state of Iran inappropriately has the word “Republic” in its title. America’s National Security Adviser, John Bolton, had said that goal of the sanctions is not to make a “regime chance” but to cause charge for the better in the actions and polices by the heads of state in Iran.
For mullahs and the others in power in Iran are so thoroughly deceitful, demonic, wicked, vicious and cruel that they will not change their malicious ways. As explain in the Bible “What is crooked cannot be straightened; which is lacking cannot be counted.” Ecclesiastes 1:15. [N.I.V.] Indeed, Those malice -filled and hateful Muslim clerics who have much power in Iran along with the other Islamic stooges who rule Iran “cannot be counted” to make any chances for the better . The ayatollahs and mullahs in their likeminded Muslim partners in total governmental control of Iran are very anti- female m as in extremely misogynistic and oppressive ruthless to both girls and woman as well as all of the Iranian people who are trapped in forced to existed in this diabolical Islamic regime. As it is written in Proverbs 15:15. “All the days of the oppressed are wretched.”
Likewise, Ecclesiastes 4:1 reads “ I saw the tears of the oppressed – and they have no comforter; power was in the side of the oppressors …” Furthermore ,Proverbs 28:15 very well describes such wicked characters who rule Iran as president Rouhani and ayatollah Khamenei . For it reads “Like a roaring lion or a charging bear is a wicked ruler over a helpless people.” Furthermore, such a vicious mindset of heinous arrogance of Rouhani, Khamenei and the other hateful and spiteful Islamic clerics in this “mullah regime” of Iran is reflected in the words from the Bible describing tyrannical villains in power of an oppressive regime. For Psalm 73:6—9 read “Therefore pride is their necklace:: they clothe themselves with violence. From their callous hearts comes iniquity; their evil ;their evil imaginations have no limits. They scoff and speak with malice; with arrogance they threaten oppression. Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth.”
Walter Sieruk says
On Tuesday, 2/5/ 19 in his second State on the Union a speech President Trump spoke of that Islamic tyranny of Iran as well as those in total power and complete of that tyrannical rogue state. For the President declared “It is a radical regime, they do bad, bad things.”
Moreover, an author of an article on a Freedom Site, Dariush Afshar, had explained the reality of the situation well when he wrote that the “People of Iran who fight for freedom in Iran and abroad put a huge gap and draw a prominent line between Iran and the Islamic regime in Tehran.”
This is sadly and tragically the terrible reality of this Islamic tyrannical regime of Iran. This Islamic tyranny has been well nicknamed “the mullahs regime” in which them mullahs and ayatollahs as well as other fiendish and fanatical Muslims in power have a strong and awful control of the Islamic regime of Iran and through their band of Islamic state “police” , who are called the “Revolutionary Guards “come down hard human rights of the Iranian people . Therefore, the Iranian people who are trapped and forced to exist in this Islamic tyranny live in terrible fear of the mullahs and others in power in Iran. This is a tragic and sad reminder of the wisdom that was printed in the periodical of Benjamin Franklin which is entitled POOR RICHARDS’ ALMANAC that reads “Those who are feared are also hated.”
gravenimage says
Hugh Fitzgerald: Iranian Degringolade (Part Three)
……………….
I hope the Mullahs are on their way out.
As for pistachios, in the wake of the Iranian revolution you could not get good-quality nuts here in the US. Most of the pistachios grown here in the 1970s were low-quality nuts meant for cheap candies and snacks.
Well, American farmers got to work, and now the US grows some of the finest pistachios in the world.
These are some of the best:
https://www.heartofthedesert.com/