2019-07-11

TEHERAN - It is now more than a year since the US unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear agreement with Iran. Since then, the Iranian economy has suffered the stiff sanctions, while unemployment and poverty in the country are rising. Whatever the Americans want to achieve with this, their policy doesn't only create losers, but also winners.

Our reporter is guided by an Iranian political scientist in Tehran to visit the construction site of what should once be the largest mosque in the world. This place is the starting point of the story of how the Revolutionary Guard - the guards of the Iranian Revolution - has been able to emerge from a shadow army to an economic power that holds the entire country in a stranglehold. Not only the economy, but also politics, army and police are being annexed step by step by the dreaded Guard. Only President Rouhani seemed to resist a total takeover of the Guard. But that resistance has now been definitively broken, thanks to the American sanctions.

The author wishes to remain anonymous for security reasons.

Photo on the right: Imam Khomeini Mossalah, the largest mosque in the world in (eternal) construction.
Photo bottom left: Street art in Tehran: "to remind us that people are looking over our shoulders".
Photo below right: Rouhani's struggle for more equality between men and women, whether or not sincere, is now lost.

 

Missing file.Missing file.
Supported
€ 4.675, allocated on 07/04/2017.
ID
FPD/2017/1366

ONLINE

En op het einde wint...de Revolutionaire Garde, MO.be, 11/07/2019. (in Dutch)

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