Mohsen Rezaei on the campaign trail
Read quick updates on what Mohsen Rezaei says on the campaign trail below. Check routinely for new content.
[Tuesday, June 15, 2021]
Iranian presidential candidate Mohsen Rezaei said economic development in Iran is impossible without reforms in its power structure, declaring “reform from within” and a “novel economic architecture” as two of his goals.
Rezaei said he planned “a bid change to and surgery on Iran’s politics and economy.”
“Economy and politics are the two sides of the same coin. Without economic reform, politics cannot go far enough; and [economic] power without an economic plan will [only] result in what we have been seeing for the past 50 years,” he said.
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[Saturday, June 12, 2021]
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[Thursday, June 10, 2021]
In an exclusive interview with Iran’s English-language Press TV and Arabic-language Al-Alam news networks, Rezaei presented his views on a series of foreign policy issues ranging from the fate of the 2015 nuclear deal to ties with neighbors.
He said Iran would not wait for any agreement in the talks on Vienna, Austria, on a potential revival of the 2015 nuclear deal, pledging that he will work instead to keep the country moving forward by activating its national economy, if he wins the June 18 election.
“By activating our national economy, we will try to be independent of having to have relations with the Americans…so that they would feel the more they waste time, the more they will lose,” said Rezaei. “We’ll start [boosting] our national production, and they are the ones who’d be following us.”
Rezaei said the Americans should know that Iran “will never go back to the unilateral, one-sided ties with the United States,” which existed prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
“Our administration will welcome any relations that provide for national interests in practice, not on paper,” said Rezaei. “It’s [thus] in their interest to stop animosity. Antagonism will get nowhere.”
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[Wednesday, June 9, 2021]
Rezaei defended his plan to increase cash handouts to the Iranian people from the current monthly 455,000 Iranian rials (1.9 US dollars) to 4,500,000, and said the handouts would go to 40 million people in the first two years, and the number would then reach 60 million Iranians.
He said the Iranian economy has been “raising mafia kings,” who “number at 10” and wastefully spend the country’s resources, criticizing the administration “having no supervision citing freedom in the market.”
“Is that really how free market is defined? Free markets have their own rules and systems of control and supervision. Anyone who engages in more bargains than the cap set [by law] is [normally] be dealt since the individual has entered the realm of monopoly.”
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[Wednesday, June 9, 2021]
Rezaei called trade “the missing link in the chain of the country’s economy” and said he would boost trade with Iran’s 15 neighbors, as a priority.
To facilitate such trade, he said he would grant certain authorities to local officials in the country’s 16 border provinces.
“Our administration would be the that of action and change,” said Rezaei, adding that he would activate economic diplomacy by dispatching attachés to the country’s embassies and missions worldwide on a market finding mission.
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[Tuesday, June 8, 2021]
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[Monday, June 7, 2021]
Rezaei told reporters that he would be able to provide the financial resources to pay 4,500,000 rials (10.9 dollars) in monthly cash handouts to the Iranian people by eliminating the well-off classes from the handout program and saving the sum that would have gone to them.
Rezaei also said he would pay salaries to housewives, who he said should firstly sit six-month courses in child education and family health.
He said his potential administration would give out loans to every young couple with installments of 40 to 50 years. “The land needed would be offered at a low price or free of charge to the couples… As that plan is implemented, a massive financial burden will be taken off the shoulders of the people.”
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[Saturday, June 5, 2021]
During the first TV presidential debate that was intended to revolve around economy, Rezaei attacked the administration of President Hassan Rouhani — under which Hemmati served as governor of the Central Bank until recently — for causing the national currency to sharply lose its value against the US dollar.
He said he had already warned of such circumstances at the same place eight years ago in front of that “worthless key,” Rouhani’s campaign symbol. The Rouhani administration, he added, resorted to unlawful means to reduce the budget deficit in the stock market.
Rezaei said they took advantage of the “people’s pockets” by encouraging them to invest en masse in the stock market, but later left them in limbo in the wake of the stock market’s crash.
He added that he would “definitely” act on his pledge to increase cash handouts to the Iranian people from the current monthly 455,000 Iranian rials (1.9 US dollars) to 4,500,000 — an increase of ten times.
This makes it easy to access the Press TV website