End of Rationing and Start of Single-Price Policy; Gasoline Prices Liberalized

The newspaper Etemad reported that the price of "gasoline has been liberalized," describing this government action as "the end of rationing and the beginning of a single-price policy." According to the newspaper, Abbas Kazemi, Deputy Minister of Oil and CEO of the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company, officially announced the removal of rationing on Sunday evening, stating that "the 700-toman gasoline quota will no longer be deposited, and regular gasoline has been set at a single price of 1000 tomans." The newspaper Ebtikar, in a report titled "Mr. Argument's Shout Over Mr. Negotiator," wrote about the sidelines of the closed session of the parliament, noting that "what attracted the most attention on Sunday was the scene that unfolded when the session was opened to the media, where journalists faced loud shouts from Mehdi Koochakzadeh, a member of the parliament from the Front of Steadfastness, directed at Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Minister of Foreign Affairs." The newspaper Shargh reported on the "argument between the minister and the Steadfastness faction in the closed session" of the Islamic Consultative Assembly on Sunday, stating that in this session, Mohammad Javad Zarif was labeled as a "traitor." This newspaper assessed the verbal conflict on Sunday as stemming from a "scenario" by a minority in the parliament, writing: "Regardless, the minority group in the parliament has been consistently discordant and is constantly playing a contrary tune. The hardliners have not limited themselves to insults in security commission meetings and closed sessions, and now they have advanced their scenario just as they desired at the moment of changing the session from closed to open." The newspaper Vatan-e-Emruz, close to the Front of Steadfastness, reported with the headline "Creating Sidelines on the Day of Confessions," stating: "On the very day of confessions, where Javad Zarif and his deputy, Abbas Araghchi, had to confess before parliament representatives in a closed session about some of their illegal commitments to the American side, their psychological operations for creating distractions also began to overshadow the news of their confessions regarding illegal commitments." The newspaper Shahre Vahdat has a report about "the reopening of the parasitic case," noting that this unresolved case has been reopened by Masoumeh Ebtekar, while "the results of the special committee's investigation into the parasitic issue were never announced due to the unclear number of centers and locations sending parasites." The newspaper Qanoon published an interview with Abdollah Safi al-Din, a representative of Hezbollah Lebanon in Tehran, discussing "the social origins and financial resources of Hezbollah." Abdollah Safi al-Din stated in an interview with Fahimeh Mohammadi, a reporter for Qanoon, that "Hezbollah Lebanon receives annual financial assistance from Iran through two channels. Part of the financial assistance from Iran to Hezbollah comes from foundations and institutions managed under the Supreme Leader, which have independent budgets from the government, and the second part is provided through the Iranian government and its official organizations to Hezbollah." The end of rationing and the beginning of a single-price policy: gasoline has been liberalized. The newspaper Etemad reported that the price of "gasoline has been liberalized," describing this government action as "the end of rationing and the beginning of a single-price policy." According to the newspaper, Abbas Kazemi, Deputy Minister of Oil and CEO of the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company, officially announced the removal of rationing on Sunday evening, stating that "the 700-toman gasoline quota will no longer be deposited, and regular gasoline has been set at a single price of 1000 tomans." The Deputy Minister of Oil also stated that "in the meeting held regarding the determination of gasoline prices, it was decided that gasoline would be set at a single price of 1000 tomans, and holders of the 700-toman gasoline quota deposited in previous months can use their quota until September, but according to the decision made, "after the end of September, the 700-toman gasoline quotas will be invalid." Abbas Kazemi also mentioned that the price of super gasoline has increased from 1100 tomans to 1200 tomans, and the price of each liter of diesel is now 300 tomans. The newspaper Etemad wrote: "The government, aiming to prevent increased consumption and also to avoid budget deficits in the targeted subsidy discussion, has acted to change the process of depositing the 700-toman gasoline quota into cards," while "investigations show that there are about 10 million private vehicles across the country." The newspaper reported that "thus, the government will stop depositing 600 million liters of 700-toman gasoline into the cards of private vehicles each month, and given that free gasoline is currently sold at 1000 tomans, the government was paying a subsidy of 180 billion tomans to private vehicle owners by distributing 60 liters of 700-toman gasoline per vehicle each month," and with the elimination of rationing, the government will not pay this subsidy and "with the elimination of the subsidized gasoline, a subsidy of 2160 billion tomans annually will not be paid to private vehicle owners." Etemad reported that with the "removal of the 25-liter quota for motorcycles, considering the existence of four million units in the country, it will reduce the government’s paid gasoline subsidies by 30 billion tomans each month and 360 billion tomans annually." According to this newspaper, "thus, the government will spend 2520 billion tomans of gasoline subsidies on other matters annually." The newspaper Etemad recalled that "previously, when the budget bill was on the agenda of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, and representatives insisted on reforming the cash payment process, the government proposed the elimination of gasoline quotas and the payment of 10 months of subsidies instead of 12 months of subsidies, which ultimately did not receive the representatives' approval." This newspaper evaluated the "policy of eliminating gasoline subsidies" as being "in line with the targeted subsidies of the country and achieving goals such as preventing wasteful energy consumption and smuggling of this commodity" and wrote: "By eliminating fuel subsidies for private vehicles and motorcycles, the government retains 2520 billion tomans instead of paying it to vehicle owners," and if this figure is "alongside the obligation to eliminate the three thousand billion tomans of cash subsidy credits equivalent to removing six million people from the list of subsidy recipients," "the government will eliminate a total of five thousand five hundred and twenty billion tomans from the total cash subsidies over the course of a year, which is equivalent to 13.3 percent of the government's subsidy commitments this year." The argument between "Mr. Argument" and "Mr. Negotiator"; the day Zarif was called a "traitor." The newspaper Ebtikar reported in a piece titled "Mr. Argument's Shout Over Mr. Negotiator," stating: "The Islamic Consultative Assembly began its session on Sunday with a closed meeting; a meeting where Mohammad Javad Zarif and Abbas Araghchi, the head and senior member of Iran's nuclear negotiation team, were supposed to answer representatives' questions." This newspaper pointed out that "it is customary for the Speaker of the Parliament or one of the members of the board to provide a report on what happens in these closed meetings to the media after the meetings," writing: "What attracted the most attention on Sunday was the scene that unfolded when the session was opened to the media, where journalists faced loud shouts from Mehdi Koochakzadeh, a member of parliament from the Front of Steadfastness, directed at Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Minister of Foreign Affairs." The newspaper Ebtikar emphasized that "given the writing of the final text of the 'JCPOA' in the coming weeks and the proximity to the day of reaching a result in the nuclear negotiations, the challenges posed by the hardliners for the nuclear negotiation team will increase day by day, and we will witness more attacks on Zarif and his companions than ever before." This newspaper also stated in its editorial titled "Zarif in a Pinch," that the actions of the representatives close to the Front of Steadfastness on Sunday "indicate that the purpose of summoning Zarif to the parliament is not for clarification but rather for media manipulation and political maneuvering intended by these representatives, and who does not know that these behaviors not only do not carry any signs of national interests but can also harm them." The newspaper Shargh, while publishing a report about "the argument between the minister and the Steadfastness faction in the closed session" of the Islamic Consultative Assembly on Sunday, stated that in this session, Mohammad Javad Zarif was labeled as a "traitor." Ameneh Shirafkan, a parliamentary reporter for the newspaper Shargh, described the verbal conflict between representatives close to the Front of Steadfastness and Mohammad Javad Zarif at the end of the closed session on Sunday, stating: "They stood face to face, eye to eye, and with scarves around their necks. They stared intensely at each other, one being the man of the difficult days of nuclear negotiations and the other among the opponents. Mehdi Koochakzadeh does not hesitate and without any tolerance, calls the Minister of Foreign Affairs a traitor, while Zarif's protests rise, the atmosphere is heavier than that the calm words of Larijani could extinguish the flames of these arguments. A few intervened, and Zarif was pulled out of the turmoil of Baharestan." The newspaper Shargh assessed the argument on Sunday as stemming from a scenario by a minority in the parliament, writing: "Regardless, the minority group in the parliament has been consistently discordant and is constantly playing a contrary tune. The hardliners have not limited themselves to insults in security commission meetings and closed sessions, and now they have advanced their scenario just as they desired at the moment of changing the session from closed to open." This newspaper recalled that "security commission meetings are always full of arguments and verbal conflicts between the Front of Steadfastness and Mohammad Javad Zarif, but the verbal conflict on Sunday escalated to the point of calling the Minister of Foreign Affairs a 'traitor,' and the words of Mehdi Koochakzadeh and his aggressive tone towards Mohammad Javad Zarif were so strange that even Hamid Rasayi, standing right next to him, lowered his head and had a grim face. Nevertheless, Ali Asghar Zarei, with a mobile phone in hand, was filming Koochakzadeh's attack on Zarif." Shargh noted that "the Front of Steadfastness has not rested since the day of granting confidence to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Mohammad Javad Zarif has been consistently caught in the twists and turns of Baharestan, and the closed session with the parliament has not been lacking." Quoting Abed Fattahi, a parliament representative who is among Zarif's allies, about the events of Sunday, it wrote: "Mr. Koochakzadeh approached Zarif and insulted the minister with language that was inappropriate. He said, 'I say with the language of the Leader that you are a traitor.' Zarif raised his voice, stating that the Leader has his own eloquent tongue and this is not his statement." This newspaper also reported that during the Foreign Minister's presence in the parliament, Alireza Zakani and Ali Asghar Zarei from the Steadfastness faction and Mansouri Arani and Aladdin Boroujerdi from the followers of the Wilayat discussed issues regarding the nuclear file, and at the end of the decisive remarks by Ali Larijani, the bumpy road of the closed session and its ups and downs were smoothed out, as the Speaker of the Parliament stated: "Supporting the nuclear team is considered a duty of the parliament," but "the Additional Protocol must be approved by the parliament, and that support for the negotiating team should be in such a way that the demands of the nation are realized." The newspaper Vatan-e-Emruz, owned by Mehrdad Bazrpash, a representative close to the Front of Steadfastness, reported with the headline "Creating Sidelines on the Day of Confessions," stating: "On the very day of confessions, where Javad Zarif and his deputy, Abbas Araghchi, had to confess before parliament representatives in a closed session about some of their illegal commitments to the American side, their psychological operations for creating distractions also began to overshadow the news of their confessions regarding illegal commitments." This newspaper wrote: "On Sunday, in the closed session of the parliament, it was officially confessed that in the nuclear negotiations, commitments were made to allow inspections of Iran's military sites. They also confessed that during the negotiations, the American side presented a list of nuclear scientists and requested interrogations of them. Both of these cases, namely military inspections and interrogations of scientists, occurred under the commitments of the gentlemen for implementing the Additional Protocol, and this is an illegal action, and it is unclear on what basis and while the implementation of the Additional Protocol is under the authority of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, Javad Zarif promised the Western side to implement it." The newspaper Vatan-e-Emruz emphasized that "the parliament representatives strongly protested against these irresponsible actions on Sunday," writing: "The Islamic Consultative Assembly has not yet taken any official action during the nuclear negotiations in Rouhani's government, and unlike the American negotiators, the Rouhani government's negotiating team is negotiating with a sense of ease from the Iranian parliament." However, the newspaper Iran reported on the denial of these news by Abbas Araghchi, stating that he described the published quotes attributed to him regarding accepting inspections of military sites as "completely incorrect" and emphasized the need to pay attention to the sensitivity and complexity of the nuclear negotiations and to avoid publishing incorrect news and also news from private and closed sessions.