from HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works to world@lemmy.world on 25 Feb 23:02
https://sh.itjust.works/post/55916108
Members of Iran’s ruling elite have been accused of brazen hypocrisy by allegedly using the state’s wealth to help to fund their adult children’s lives in the west while presiding over growing economic misery and repression at home.
Opposition campaigners made the accusation against some of the clerical regime’s most powerful figures as a military confrontation with the US appears increasingly likely. Donald Trump has deployed a vast armada in the Middle East and confirmed he is considering strikes.
Those singled out for criticism include Ali Larijani, Iran’s top national security adviser, who has a daughter living in the US and two nephews in Britain and Canada, despite having long been one of the Islamic Republic’s most vocal critics of western values.
Larijani – a former parliament speaker and senior Revolutionary Guard – is believed to have played a key role in the deadly crackdown against opposition protests that gripped the country in January. Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, is reported to have tasked him with coordinating preparations for a possible war with the US.
Anger at the aghazadehs, as the scions of the elite are known, is acute after the crushing of the protests resulted in a death toll that some sources put in the tens of thousands.
“People are upset that the aghazadehs are getting dollar stipends to go to the west – the United States, Europe elsewhere – to study essentially on the state’s dime,” said Alex Vatanka, the Iran programme director at the Middle East Institute in Washington.
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