Ahmadinejad: I Did Not Make Any Wrong Decisions as President

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of the ninth and tenth administrations, in a detailed interview with the Shargh newspaper published in Tehran, stated that during his eight years as president, he "did not make any wrong decisions as President." In this interview, despite acknowledging many weaknesses and claiming to be the "weakest and most mistake-prone," he emphasizes: "I did not make any wrong decisions as President" because he "spent hundreds of hours on every national decision." Regarding the FATF, he suggested that the issue of related bills be put to a public referendum. According to Ahmadinejad, "International commitments must be addressed with transparency and the people's vote due to their sensitivity." The former Iranian president believes that since these bills affect people's lives and have caused disputes among political factions, "the people's vote should be taken. The best way is to refer to the people's vote." A similar proposal has been made by some reformist political figures, including Mahmoud Sadeghi and Majid Ansari. The determination of the Palermo and CFT bills, part of the four government bills to satisfy the FATF, has been pending for months after being approved by the parliament but has been referred to the Expediency Council due to objections from the Guardian Council, which has yet to make a decision on these bills. Ahmadinejad criticized the decision-making structure in the Islamic Republic of Iran, asserting that "our decision-making system has been distorted." He attributes the first reason for this distortion to the Iranian constitution, claiming that "the framework of the constitution is derived from the constitutions of other countries, and the drafters lacked executive experience." The second reason he mentions is the "trends and processes" that emerged during the implementation of the constitution. The third factor he points out is the "ordinary legislations" that, according to him, have somewhat diminished the government's role in decision-making. In another part of the interview, Ahmadinejad criticized the parallelism and formation of informal structures in the decision-making system, stating: "You see in the ministry that there is a minister, but someone else makes the decisions. We have a minister, but the place where employees and decision-makers refer is somewhere else, which is the informal structure. The minister should decide, or any decision should be matured and ultimately executed by the minister, but we see that there are others who are influential." This member of the Expediency Council expressed regret that in the country, "there is both an informal structure and its influence is very high," stating: "There are people in the country who have no responsibility in the sense of being accountable by law, but they have authority. They interfere, make decisions, are present in various forums, and even with a phone call can change or stop decisions, yet they are not accountable." Ahmadinejad calls this situation "a fundamental problem" and believes that "partial perspectives" are also among the other obstacles and problems of the decision-making system in Iran. According to the former president, based on this "type of division of labor and partial perspectives, everyone tries to elevate their related section while for balanced and coordinated progress, the growth of agriculture should be balanced with the growth of construction and industry, but with the existing partial perspectives, each economic sector only wants to elevate itself." He believes that "there should be another parliament to operationalize demands that are reflected in a partial and local manner within a broader and national framework so that everyone benefits; however, we currently have this deficiency. The government should become national and truly exit from being insular." Ahmadinejad emphasizes that "there should also be another parliament like the Senate that has a national perspective. This Senate should gather regional and local demands and make major decisions based on national interests and benefits in a way that responds to local demands and allows the country to progress harmoniously. The absence of this type of institution-building has prevented us from making significant economic decisions at a macro level." Parts of Ahmadinejad's interview with Shargh also focused on economic issues, including the currency crisis of 2012 and 2018 and their similarities, privatization, and unauthorized financial institutions. The former president criticized the methods of dealing with individuals to organize the economy, recalling the case of Jamshid Bismillah in the currency market, stating: "In a system where 85 percent of the economy and decision-making powers are in the hands of governmental institutions, including the government, parliament, judiciary, and other governmental sectors, what can a person without connections to the system do? They are at most an operator of part of the system." Ahmadinejad himself had previously identified 22 individuals as the "ring leaders of the currency market chaos" after the currency price increase during his presidency. In this context, Mohammad-Reza Rahimi, his first deputy, also announced on October 22, 2012, the arrest of an individual named "Jamshid Bismillah," who, according to him, was a disruptor in the Iranian currency market and "determined the price of currency in Iran on a stool." Jamshid Mirabi, whom Rahimi referred to as "Jamshid Bismillah," denied the allegations against him in an interview with the economic newspaper Te'adol in July 2014, stating that he was arrested in October 2012 along with 90 others. However, Ahmadinejad stated in this interview: "If we convey to society that there are some people disrupting the economy and we gather them, and then the economy is corrected, now you gathered them and the economy did not improve, you still say no! There are other people; how long and where will this vicious cycle continue?" The former president rejected the accusation that unauthorized financial institutions expanded during his administrations, stating that these institutions operated legally based on their own laws and with the permission of the police and law enforcement, and credit cooperatives received their operating licenses from the Ministry of Cooperatives. According to Ahmadinejad, "The licenses for all these credit cooperatives that later caused crises were issued before 2004 and were granted during previous administrations." He emphasized that "not a single license was granted to these credit cooperatives during his administration, but unfortunately, the current president is blaming me for it." Ahmadinejad's statements come at a time when, according to Central Bank statistics, many of these institutions were licensed during his presidency. He also criticized the privatization that took place in Iran, stating: "Privatization is a broad and extensive issue that became limited to transferring government assets to a specific group." Ahmadinejad continued: "We say we want to make the economy popular, meaning we want to hand it over to the people. This means that opportunities and business environments should be created for the people, but we legislate three days a week in the country and continuously increase the responsibilities of the government. Well, when you increase the powers for the government, it means the government is getting bigger. The bigger the government becomes, the smaller the space for people’s activities becomes. On the other hand, we say people should be empowered! This is a contradiction." The former president emphasized that "over 80 percent of Iran's economy, including natural wealth and actual wealth and powers, is in the hands of the government and governmental institutions." Ahmadinejad stated that the foreign exchange revenue of his administrations was $592 billion, with an additional $22 billion in receivables. According to the former president, "The total amount of rials that his administrations earned in eight years was 646 trillion tomans, while the rial amount that the government of Hassan Rouhani has received from the same source of currency in the past six years is close to 1,200 trillion tomans." Officials in Hassan Rouhani's government have reported Ahmadinejad's government revenues to be between $700 and $950 billion. Mohammad-Baqer Nobakht, the spokesperson for Hassan Rouhani's government, had previously stated that $700 billion of the country's assets had been "eaten and swallowed" over five to six years. The Iranian Ministry of Economy also announced that at the end of Ahmadinejad's presidency, the treasury balance was 37 trillion tomans and the required credits were 78 trillion tomans, meaning the "net balance of the government's public budget" had a deficit of 41 trillion tomans. Ahmadinejad claimed that the increase in oil prices during his administrations was "the result of his government's efforts." The former president stated that if the government were handed over to him today, he would raise the oil price back above $100 per barrel within six months. According to Ahmadinejad, "The current government has sold $30 billion worth of oil but has not received the money." He questioned the oil ministry officials, asking, "Why doesn't the oil ministry complain about that guy living in Dubai who has taken $5 billion worth of oil for four years and has not returned a dollar?" The oil ministry denied this part of Ahmadinejad's statements in a statement. The former president, while emphasizing the need for economic reforms, stated: "The basis of economic reforms is the return of ownership to the people." He stressed that "we must de-privatize the government for the benefit of the masses. All these institutions should be returned to the people. The second part is land. In the country, we have 180 million hectares of land, of which only 10 million hectares are in the hands of the people. We must give all this land to the people."