ژورنال سایت خبری سیاسی ژورنال
English Journal is published on Fridays
PDF-English Journal-1 August 2025-No25
“I don’t know how we can survive on a monthly pension of nine million tomans.”*
This is the lament of a retired Iranian citizen. A citizen who has sustained life through years of labour and hardship. This citizen lives in a country where, they say, even if you place your hand on a rock, there’s wealth beneath it – a nation floating on an ocean of oil, rich in precious minerals, and one of the world’s most abundant sources of natural gas. And yet, in this land, people grapple with hunger, trapped in the grip of widespread poverty.
A country where proper healthcare and medical services are unavailable to the general public. A country where the unemployed receive no benefits. A country where being a woman is treated as a cardinal sin – one supposedly stamped upon their foreheads by the act of creation itself. A country that could have been a paradise for children has become a hell of child labour and street kids. A country where millions of students are deprived of education.
This country is called Iran. A nation seized by pharmaceutical mafias, by cartels of industrial and traditional narcotics. A country swept by a tsunami of prostitution out of necessity. And this misery, now voicing itself through the mouths of its people, is not the result of searing sunlight, nor natural drought, nor the bombing of its power stations.
All of this poverty and despair could have been eradicated swiftly – if only this society had not been held hostage by Islamic criminals. Renewable energy could have been produced from sun and wind. As in any other country struggling with water shortages, the problem could have been tackled through science and revolutionary solutions. Life could have been secured for all. The full range of social resources could have been deployed in the service of public welfare.
This is possible. But only if we rise to fight a regime whose very essence and purpose are rooted in inequality. The disparity between human beings, and the hoarded wealth of the top one percent, are a mirror reflecting the full extent of the injustice and cruelty that defines our lives. To truly live, we must wrest life away from the hands of the death-worshippers. Then, no one would need to worry about how to survive on a pension of nine million tomans. Wages would no longer be a matter of humiliation. Universal wellbeing would belong to all.
*9 million tomans is about 110 US Dollars
Editor: Patty Debonitas
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