Overview: Iran Analysis Weekly Report Feb 14, 2016
Feb., 2016
Vistar Business Monitor
The Guardian Council approved 1,500 additional candidates to run in the parliamentary elections, bringing the total number of approved candidates to 6,300. It remains unclear what proportion of these newly approved candidates are Reformists, however.
The Guardian Council will investigate complaints from disqualified candidates before submitting a final list of approved candidates to the Interior Ministry on February 16. Many prominent reformist-inclined politicians remain disqualified.
The Guardian Council approved 161 candidates to run in elections for the 88-seat Assembly of Experts, which is charged with selecting the next supreme leader. Hojjat ol Eslam Hassan Khomeini, who had formally appealed his earlier disqualification as a candidate in the Assembly of Experts elections, was once again rejected. The Guardian Council stated that Khomeini was disqualified because he did not possess an adequate level of Islamic knowledge “in order to discern the qualifications for the next supreme leader.”
President Hassan Rouhani and his allies have been hoping to ride the wave of the nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions to increase their influence in these powerful bodies. Those efforts appear to have fallen short and possibly backfired, as the Guardian Council members have used their powers to vet candidates to exclude thousands who would probably have support Rouhani.
Iranians commemorated the 37th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution with rallies across the country. On February 11, 1979, Iranians ousted Shah Reza Pahlavi. This year’s commemorations follow the implementation in January of a landmark nuclear agreement with world powers.
President Hassan Rouhani called for Iran’s various political factions to remain united during remarks commemorating the anniversary. He stated, “True Reformists, true Principlists, and true moderates are all revolutionary.
Rouhani also focused on domestic issues in the post-sanctions period, stating that Iran now needs a national program, which he referred to as a “JCPOA 2,” that concentrates on domestic development. Rouhani identified $30-50 billion in foreign investment as a requirement for achieving eight percent economic growth.
On the economic note, the Statistical Center of Iran, the average price of land or residential buildings in the first half of the current fiscal year (March 21-November 21) was 11.7 million rials ($389) per square meter, marking a 0.7% decline compared to the previous six-month period but a 0.5% surge year on year.
In a quarterly report the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) released, the government’s debt to the Central Bank reached 263 trillion rials, while its debt to banks exceeded one quadrillion rials in the second quarter of the current Iranian year.
According to the report, the government debt to the CBI increased by 71 percent in Sharivar (the sixth month of the fiscal year) compared to that of last year, when the debt stood at 180 trillion rials. The government debt to the CBI increased by 34.6 percent in the first quarter and 43.7 percent in the second quarter compared to that of last year. This is the fact while the debt had increased 20.7 percent in the first quarter last year and reduced 2.7 percent in the second quarter last year compared to that of a year before.