Iranians also fighting inequality
Anger arises against ‘noble-born’ children of the elite while U.S. sanctions take hold
ISTANBUL — The lives of Iran’s privileged youths — including expensive holidays, glitzy parties and access to cash and jobs — have sparked public anger in recent months as U.S. sanctions squeeze the economy.
The young elite, some with government connections, flaunt their wealth on Instagram and in the streets of the capital, Tehran, sporting designer clothes and flashy cars and vacationing at posh resorts.
They are promoted to state jobs, granted lucrative scholarships and travel with ease. Even the granddaughter of the late leader of Iran’s Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was photographed last year in London with what appeared to be a $3,800 handbag, though some have speculated it was fake.
But few in Iran can afford such comforts. And Iranians have started speaking out against inequality and a culture of nepotism that they say favors what are called the “aghazadeh,” or “noble-born” children of the elite.
Last month, President Hassan Rouhani’s son-inlaw, Kambiz Mehdizadeh, was forced to step down after just two days as head of the Geological Survey of Iran following a public outcry and online accusations of cronyism. Mehdizadeh, 33, had previously served as an adviser to Iran’s Oil Ministry, but for many Iranians, his ties to Rouhani were proof that favoritism was at play.
That followed a similar campaign last summer, when Iranians on social media urged politicians to publicly acknowledge any privileges enjoyed by their children because of government influence.
“I thank God that after my mission at the United Nations, my children ... have returned to Iran and are living and working with their families in Tehran,” Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was quoted as saying by Iran’s Donya-eEqtesad newspaper in August.
Around the same time, however, a conservative cleric popular on Instagram blasted Rasoul Tolouei, the son of a retired Revolutionary Guard commander, for posts that featured a pet tiger and lavish party he threw for his 2-year-old daughter.
“It’s not possible for a 25-year-old to be this wealthy on his own!” the cleric, Mahdi Sadrossadati, wrote on Instagram. “People are struggling to buy diapers for their babies,” he continued. “Which state do you live in?”
By all accounts, Iran’s economy is crumbling, and ordinary people are feeling the pinch. Unemployment is high, shortages are rampant, and the currency lost more than half its value last year.
In November, the United States reimposed sanctions that have since battered Iran’s oil and banking sectors and crippled its outside trade. The sanctions follow the Trump administration’s decision to abandon the nuclear pact Iran negotiated with world powers in 2015. That agreement curbed Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for major sanctions relief.
But even before sanctions were reimposed, inequality was on the rise in Iran, the result of years of government austerity, said Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, a professor of economics at Virginia Tech.
“Iran’s economic system does not treat people at the bottom of the economic ladder as well as those at the top,” he wrote in his blog on Iran’s economy.
According to Reza Akbari, who researches Iranian politics at the Washington-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting, dire economic conditions have bred “extraordinary resentment toward corruption, nepotism and the aghazadeh, who seem immune to the country’s topsy-turvy realities.”
While members of Iran’s ruling class once kept their opulent lifestyles under wraps, today’s elite Iranians boast brazenly of their wealth online and in the media.
A shamelessly named Instagram account, “The Rich Kids of Tehran,” showcases the lives of some of Iran’s most glamorous youths, with footage of raucous pool parties and retreats in the mountains.
A video posted last year — in the midst of nationwide protests over poor living conditions — included footage of the young elite partying and on private jets, with dollar bills superimposed on the images. Other posts feature bikiniclad women drinking beer poolside or, in one case, someone taunting a pet cheetah.
A post this month featured photos of two luxury cars, including a MercedesBenz G-Class SUV. The “price tag of these whips in #Tehran would blow your mind,” the caption said.
Akbari, the researcher, noted that “the lives of the elite and their statements about their good fortune are plastered all over the internet ... and are being witnessed by the masses in a much more ubiquitous fashion.”