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[webfact]

Ayatollah Khamenei criticises Iran's president on economy ahead of vote

By Babak Dehghanpisheh

 

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks live on television after casting his ballot in the Iranian presidential election in Tehran, Iran June 12, 2009. REUTERS/Caren Firouz/File Photo

 

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Iran's president must do more to improve the economy, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday in a rare public criticism from the supreme leader three months before Hassan Rouhani runs for re-election.

 

Unemployment, recession and inflation - issues that could win or lose an election - all remain major problems in the final month's of Rouhani's first four-year term, Khamenei said in a speech, according to the state broadcaster's website.

 

Rouhani, who secured relief from economic sanctions in exchange for checks on Iran's nuclear programme, may face a hardline candidate in May's election who could swing the Islamic Republic back away from such international engagement for which Khamenei has never expressed huge enthusiasm.

 

"I have asked the honourable president to advise his executive managers that management must take place with transparency, supervision and follow-up," Khamenei said.

 

"Otherwise if managers say 'This should take place' and another person says 'Of course' there will be no progress and no visible work will get done."

 

Rouhani is likely to run a campaign highlighting the economic benefits of the nuclear deal which opened Iran to international investment that had been lacking for years due to sanctions.

 

Many Iranians, however, say the benefits have yet to trickle down to them and any gains could be at risk due to President Donald Trump's dislike of the deal as well as U.S. rhetoric that hints at some kind of military confrontation.

 

Khamenei's comments could give hardliners, who have not yet named an election candidate, a green light to more harshly criticise Rouhani.

 

In the speech, Khamenei also said calls for national reconciliation were "meaningless", a reference to comments by former reformist Mohammad Khatami who said the country should unite in the face of a hostile Trump administration.

 

Khamenei's rebuff may have been because Khatami's words were interpreted as a call to release Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, former presidential candidates who have been under house arrest for six years.

 

Reform-minded voters, many of whom supported Rouhani as well as Mousavi and Karoubi, are likely to see Khamenei's comment as aimed at them.

 

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2017-02-16

[rijb]

This 'holy man' is as evil as they come.

[humqdpf]

The Supreme Leader talks as if the economy is a machine with controls and that all that the President has to do is hit the controls in the right way.

 

This is not true except in command economies, such as the former Soviet Union and even then it was not that successful.

 

However, Iran has a very strange economy and government. Some of the economy, judiciary and government is controlled by the "revolutionary guards" who are very conservative and powerful and don't want modernisation as it will affect their position. Meanwhile there is also a very young demographic that wants to learn and move forward - a kind of old duffers who want to hold onto their goodies and young bloods who want their piece of the action.

 

This split personality also plays out in the placards and large notices of "Death to America" and others with related theme while at the same time huge numbers of Iranian students go to the USA to study and many young people yearn to study there or work there.

 

What would really help the economy would be if the revolutionary guards stopped firing off ballistic rockets in test firings (allegedly with Death to Israel written on the side in Hebrew!) and allowing Western economies to trade with them.

[Srikcir]

5 hours ago, webfact said:

any gains could be at risk due to President Donald Trump's dislike of the deal

 

5 hours ago, webfact said:

Rouhani is likely to run a campaign highlighting the economic benefits of the nuclear deal which opened Iran to international investment that had been lacking for years due to sanctions.

Trump needs to be careful with his campaign promise of more sanctions against Iran that could change Iran's leadership to the more hard-line former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.