gin to the syrian government and its allies off to heavy fighting this month. grace has gone to the silent to one of eight turkish soldiers who fled the country during last year's failed coup the cases of the remaining seven soldiers are still being considers his president type one has repeatedly asked for their extradition but so far great courts have refused saying the soldiers would not receive a fair trial russia's supremes court has upheld a ban on opposition leader alexei to valley running for president next year their valets been bald because of a fraud conviction which he says is politically motivated is calling for his supporters to boycott the vote egypt's former president mohamed morsy has been sentenced to three years in prison on charges of insulting me due to sharing morsi has been tried in several cases since he was deposed in twenty thirteen following

mass protests in a military coup stay with us inside story is next. demonstrations in cities across iran the biggest in nearly a decade but prices are too high and the government's corrupt in two thousand and nine unrest was met with a minister crackdown so how will the government deal with the people's today this is inside story.

hello and welcome to the program. death or freedom it's a chant that was heard around iran this week but angry of the high cost of basic goods the price of eggs for example has gone up forty percent in just six months some iranians say it's time for the government to focus on domestic issues and to forget syria and forget but a sign these protesters hope the iran nuclear deal in two thousand and fifteen would ease their financial struggles most international sanctions were lifted but life for many iranians has not improved government critics say the economic benefits of the deal haven't been passed on because of mismanagement and alleged corruption and the budget announced this month cuts vital social welfare programs while giving more money to religious and revolutionaries to. more than fifty arrests were reportedly made in iran's second largest city in mashhad with the

government saying the demonstrations were uncalled for and iran's vice president saying the protests could do more harm than good. as all economic indications in the country are good yes there is an increase in the prices of some products and the government is working on fixing the causes of the high prices some of the events that have taken place in recent days are said to have been because of the economy but there are other reasons the people behind what is taking place think they will be able to harm the government but when social movements and protests start in the street those who have ignited them are not always able to control them it's hard to hungary says the economic indicators are good but not everyone agrees youth unemployment stands at more than forty percent and in the wider population the number out of work has grown this year to more than twelve percent china has been investing billions of dollars in rows and trains in iran but foreign investment from the west and most international banks is stalled because of

u.s. sanctions and inflation has grown significantly this year let's go to our guests joining us here in doha. it is a visiting fellow at the brookings doha center into one gumba now do is the political analysts and journalists fork in hand international. and from munich by skype is afshin shah a senior lecturer in middle east politics of the university about ford thank you gentlemen for joining us mr nader did last year this the process that we see in iran they genuine outcry over bad economy deteriorating living standards or this is something which is politically motivated i think it's obviously both if you look at the real grievances in iran as well as to the slogans of a chartered all across the country what has been missed by many iran observers during the last few years is that the ranis economic policies have been

a failure because although we have experienced. g.d.p. growth this g.d.p. growth has not been exclusive inclusive so basically what economists have find out that during the past few years both poverty and income inequality have risen so basically the. promises that rouhani gave in terms of the revitalization of trade with the outside world being trickling down to the normal iranians has not materialized so very early on we've seen a lot of frustration from the lower and middle strata of society visibly those failed economic policies and so there was a simmering. low the surface simmering discounting below the surface that is now going you know there is a merging on the other hand when it comes to political repression also things have not improved so basically there are both socio economic and political in cases that we go to mr. dearie in mr no dearie it's

a movement which is building up momentum and a cross iran people are saying enough is enough but what we've seen is that a government is so in some sort of denial about what's happening saying these are just a bunch of people trying to destabilize iran world cup absolutely spot on i think the government actually prefers to look the other way because probably they. is to to fix the economy the sorry state of affairs in the country by signing a nuclear deal with the p five plus one group of nations we waited four years for that and after that when they signed it they said that we're going to fix it the economy in one hundred days and didn't happen actually we have this problem of runaway prices for the past thirty seven years or so so. this is an economic malaise that refuses to go away for the simple fact that we never had a powerful and. strong economic team in any of our current or previous governments or the current government economic team is rubbish they don't

know how to handle the economy didn't know how to take advantage of this new opening. up to the world economy and they just keep looking at each other that is the problem at the end of the day we have to we should also not forget the fact that these people are our businessmen they only think about themselves they funded the sponsored president rouhani to win the election the both elections they spend millions of dollars and now they want something in return saw they get you know rolls and positions in his cabinet in many other areas of the of the government and all they think about is their own. interests and those around them that's why people are paying the price because nobody thinks and cares cares are right the people that's where you are i think you're right to say that the government is in the night mr sharkey vice president. seems to be blaming ultra conservatives particularly in message for financing trouble and you

know as we know that measure these are some of the most prominent conservatives some of them vocal critics of to what extent. is very accurate about this of his of the which has been triggered by the conservatives it is extremely difficult to determine exactly what happened in. mattia on and on thursday but only a few hours after the beginning of the protests we started to see kind of uranium in political fashion in a sense in every sense of the. authors of the government and people who work from the government like mr john blamed the other faction and blame basically the conservative segment of the union political establishment to the heart of the protests in order to undermine the government and at the same time kind of the iranian government trying to kind of blame current iranian political faction

dissent primary for a deal the level of instability that we see in the country at the moment but just like going back to the point it was raised by your guest from tehran he blamed the government of mr rouhani of thought the current economic failure without any doubt if you want to look at kind of the situation with a level of fairness of course and the last year yes has been extremely difficult for the iranian economy but to be frank and to be fair there east emailed to what the government of president rouhani can do according to some estimates between fifty to sixty percent of that meeting in the economy is controlled by i r g c and this is an area that president rouhani cannot control according to transparency international iran as one hundred seventy one out of one hundred

seventy. iran is president as one of the most corrupt countries in the region and in the world that a lot of these problems are a structural a lot of these problems are beyond the ability of this jurisdiction or folk president ok honey let's talk about some of these debt problems in detail mr there is. unemployment which is on the rise inflation is a huge problem the general sentiment among people is that the benefits of any deal particularly two thousand and fifteen deal is not trickling down to us has little hani failed to deliver on the promises he made for his own people so basically what we have to be aware of that blame has to be put on both the government and the hardliners who control the bulk of iran's state institutions and was a lead alluded to basically what. he was saying exactly so the problem with mr rouhani is economic policies as they have been the liberal so they have not been really wanting to address the social question that is quite huge in iran you have

almost half of the iranian population that lives around the poverty line so and this has been not within the interest of the rwandan government to tackle with on the other hand we have the right wing conservatives and populists who pretend to be caring about poor iranians lives but in reality when they assume you know powerful positions they do not engage in the distribution of wealth that would be beneficial to larger sections of society so basically both sides are to blame for this problem for this socio economic malaise that iran is finding itself and also the chance for many of the protests this reflects this discredits isn't these of you all factions of the iranian regime. i mean you've listened to what mr there's other so who are basically saying you cannot fairly lay the blame just on the harley because and you porton chunk of the economy has

historically been under the control of the conservatives in iran and therefore they use it sometimes for political reasons to undermine their own opponents so what you respond to that well the government has been very smart and successful in putting there in blaming others for what is going on in this country politically economically. socially unit whatever it is the i.r.g.c. it is true that it is in charge of construction projects of this country but they don't have access to to us down which is the central issue and it is controlled by the government by the government that is you know that is in charge of you know the balancing the value of national currency against us dollar which by the way has been has gone through the roof over the past six years or so so that is just one of the things that we should keep in mind but the blame game here you know blaming this and that or at least in this protest or that process is not going to fix our country i think we have to start asking the government to kick out some of those

incompetent cabinet members that don't know what to do they are just as i said because of their money they don't have any expertise their own do only have political affiliations and financial affiliations to do those interest groups around them and they don't give a damn about people let's not blame the i.r.g.c. or the hardliners the hardliners don't have a lot of power anymore they don't have even budget because the government doesn't have enough money to pay them how can you say if the people are out there they have every right to. say because they're dearly how can you say they don't have power when every single commentator of the iranian political life knows that they have absolutely the ultimate say over politics in iran the problem is not the sea or the hardliners the problem is those who are taking advantage of the chaos that we are now in using you know us sanctions to. smuggle goods into the country to to to steal and smuggle oil and gas or whatever else is outside the country one of the

many things there is going on here i think this is a huge mafia they are all together they are using these politicizing everything you know there to make money and they will give a damn about people as i said people have every right against run of the uprising against unemployment and they don't produce anything anymore and the government has to take. responsibility before things get out ok and. we have a fundamental problem when it comes to discussing the iranian politics the issue of factionalism is quite overblown so you know we tend to think of iran of having you know different factions of the lead someone being the reformist or the centrists that are now seem to be in power on the other hand we see the right wing conservatives and populists but in reality both factions are in the same boat and they are for the survival of the islamic republic as a system so they have more common ground than differences and the prime example of

this is are the budgets of president rouhani because they give also a lot of money to his so-called opponents so for example the i.r.g.c. has seen you know massive increases in in funds and also other so-called religious foundations or have also benefited from the budget tearing of president drawn so all this talk of factionalism is quite overblown and at the end of the day all factions sit in the same boat and this boat is called survive it's been quite interesting element go to a that during the protests people were saying stop interfering into the affairs of other countries we don't care about yemen syria or palestine you should care more about us here in iran how significant is this discontent this art cry from the average iranians it is very significant simply at the same time but what we heard yesterday and today is not anything new more or

less. similar slogans. no no no to lebanon or no to intervention here and there in the middle east so more attention to what is happening at home so. despite the fact that of course we haven't heard anything like beef at least in the major public demonstration since that out of the nine but what was said yesterday and today you know where it's not new in any sense of the term and the other point i need to raise because we've been talking about political factions and and your first guest there accurately said that actually when it comes to a kind of division survival borth the conservatives and reformists have a lot in common and actually what happened in months ago there was

a big important and kind of telling at the same time we could kind of make us understand what is happening right now and the level of tension and the level of abundant didn't see that it had a regime basic in months ago there was a kind of there was an earthquake in in chairman sharp and in the matter of if you will our as we saw this kind of incredible national mobilization people are kind of more polite and want you guys in in order to respond to that problem because they thought if the little trust exists between government and this it will society i think give up the give up on can at the state institutions in order to address it just a problem and the actual celebrities like football is as the people who could be kind of the bridge between what the country butte what they donate and those people that mean if i see your point in in cancer i said there do there is a way i ask the question about the. people being very critical of the foreign

intervention is that it's an intervention of the comes at a huge price because you need to spend money to maintain regimes in syria in yemen and also in different parts of of the region and people basically have been using slogan anti establishment anti or honey and also anti. so how. how how serious is this discontent taken by the by the establishment let's not care to get carried away with the politicize ition of the situation there would always be some people who will try to take advantage of the situation to politicize matters and and i'm afraid they have been successful in doing that for the past two days or so we have similar protests taking place across the across the globe will things get tough in economy when people cannot make ends meet but the only difference there and here is that they don't politicize matters here they are trying to politicize these kind of things and i'm afraid i think i have to make it absolutely clear that iran has every right to protect and promote and support its allies in the region for the

simple fact that if we don't defeat. al qaeda and other terrorist groups in places like syria yemen and iraq did we will have to be we will have to fight them here in the capital we have to fight them here because they will be here so it pays when you it pays off when you spend money on your own national security those who are trying to to question the presence of iran in these countries don't have any idea what terrorist groups like dias could do to ok so iran has every right to send their weapons and spend money in order to protect itself and its own borders here u.s. president donald trump has long been critical of iran's government he says the world is watching how iran responds to the demonstrations in a tweet he says there are many reports of peaceful protests by iranian citizens fed up with the regime's corruption and its squandering of the nation's wealth to fund terrorism abroad he added that the iranian government should respect their people's

rights including the why to express themselves. you've heard the statement from president trump and we know that trump is yet to certify by me generally if iran is complying with with the nuclear deal you know that the american position itself has to. many problems for the for the international investors and also for the iranian economy because no one is excited about going out to iran to invest to what extent the american factor has been very quick to kill in destabilize and under by the iranian economy. let me first say a few one thing about the combination of international and domestic slogans that were chanted throughout the protests and i think a lot of iranians are more critical of the version that iran presents when it comes to foreign intervention particularly in syria when and when it comes to supporting the assad regime and i think what iran is doing in syria is far beyond fighting

terrorism and it's actually supporting a dictatorship and i think a lot of iranians do understand that they don't want to see so much bloodshed also from the iranian side you know so much money billions of dollars being spent on those adventures on what president trump has tweeted is a disservice to the iranian people and you know i mean mr trump is certainly not a torch bearer of democracy by any account and any kind of you know so-called support for the you know iranian citizens rights protest is sheer hypocrisy when it comes to the decertification or the decertification that is probably going to happen by mid january this will be accompanied by the and of sanctions relief from the u.s. side so and this would put the entire nuclear deal on the verge of survival on the

verge of collapse. so we'll see if we're going to see a lot of economic sanctions but when it comes to the current problems of iran so we have also to look at the governor's economic policy there is a way of asking the question about the american factor mr shays basically the iranian government saying that we have fulfilled our commitments we are come so the two thousand. and fifty nuclear deal however the americans are back stabbing us by threatening to desert if i by putting more pressure on the international donors and investors to come along and invest in iran to work to what extent this is very accurate statement by the iranian government. i mean this is completely a different issue but what is important that we need to kind of. beer in mind that over the last year or so message from single handedly has contributed immensely to dissent and a new wave or anti americanism among various segments of iranian civil

society and one of the main factors behind this new sense or anti anti american sense is basically tranced i do look to an approach to basically. one plus five and of course there are definitely some shortcomings when it comes to economic policy then economic development by the government of mr romney but at the same time we should not completely ignore the international dimension over the last two years the government in this that it has been trying to kind of invite more international investors when it comes to kind of the energy sector where they had a degree for success but given the current american kind of antagonism towards iran and given what is happening right now in in washington iran has not become a big attractive distillation of spot for international investment so of course we have to

a scrutinize kind of the current oks of the government when it comes in front of development but this international dimension and the tramp back there is equally important to all let us basically have a better understanding of the climate going to underpin and how things will evolve mr no duty i mean over the last forty eight hours we've seen many people basically drawing some parallels between these protests and the two thousand and nine green movement to what extent this is really true. i think this is overblown exaggerated let's not get carried away people have every right to demonstrate and ask for some answers from the government and the government is responsible to to to to to act on them and fix and meet their legitimate demands you know like creating jobs keeping prices down and this kind of influence inflationary you know things that are happening in our economy but at the end of the day these are just small people mall groups of people or that are protesting at the same time some people

are so true are trying to politicize this kind of. this kind of situation but it has nothing to do with the two thousand and nine post election on race and everything to do with people who are legitimate demands to have a you know a simple life that they can go and work and make money and make ends meet that is not illegal the government should stop this thing these people should stop blaming others the government should start acting on on what people are wanting which is you know i see a poignant good life a living standard ok. you want to sort of the comparison to the green movement in less than twenty seconds please so that the green boomers failure was not least because of the fact that they did not address the social question and now the social question is out there on the streets and the dream aims to be seen if it can be organized thank you thank you very much indeed. d.d. and afshin thank you very much indeed for your contribution and thank you too for watching you can see the program again any time by visiting our web site as you

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