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Iran’s Investment in South Korea in 1970’s Has Become 5th Largest Oil Refinery in The World August 2, 2022
In recent months, as the Russia-Ukraine war rages on and supplies of petroleum products become more critical for consuming nations, refinery margins around the globe have increased (i.e. operational profitability of oil refineries have improved). This...
Will Iran become an important player in the global ‘Energy Transition’? July 15, 2022
One of the key characteristics of the Iranian regime for the past four decades has been its fondness for crisis management. The Islamic Republic seems to thrive on wrestling with crises rather than planning for the future. In fact, the Iranian...
Iran Gas Export to Its Neighbors: Another Lost Court Case and A Lost Opportunity June 11, 2022
The Islamic Republic has long had the ambition of exporting gas to Europe via Turkey. During Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency (2005-2013), when the relations with the West soured, Iran lost its opportunity of exporting natural gas to European...
Iran’s Failure to Export Natural Gas April 27, 2022
As the site of the discovery of crude oil in the Middle East, Iran has had a long track record of petroleum production. It is easy to forget nowadays, but the first oilfield in the region was discovered in 1908 in Masjed Soleyman, located in Iran’s...
After Nearly Half A Century, Iran’s Gas Investment in the UK Pays Huge Dividends April 21, 2022
In the aftermath of the oil shock of 1973, Iran's oil revenue suddenly quadrupled to nearly $20 billion a year (equivalent to $130 billion in today’s money). Flushed with new petro-dollars, Iran’s then-leader, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, immediately...
Online Business in Iran: Instagram the Most Popular Money Making Platform April 13, 2022
The advent of the Internet has been one of the profound communications revolutions in the world: so much so that data has become one’s most important asset, and the world is, at the same time, rapidly moving towards blockchain technology, digital...
Marijuana Consumption Remains High in Iran April 11, 2022
Iranian media occasionally publishes astonishing data about drug use in the country. Quoting government officials, one report claims that Iranians consume more than 2 tons of illegal drugs per day, while another report states that around 5.3% of the...
Sex Work in Iran: Nearly Half of Survey Respondents Have Been Clients of The Sex Industry April 8, 2022
Despite the sporadic information available about sex workers, commonly known as prostitutes, there is little information about their clients in Iran. In a new survey conducted by Iran Open Data, more than 40% of participants stated that they have used...
Iran's Passengers of Light: All Government Bodies at the Service of a “Grassroot and Spontaneous” Movement April 7, 2022
The Islamic Republic has long sent thousands of people to visit the battlefields of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) in southwestern Iran. These pilgrims, more commonly known as Rahian-e Noor in Persian (the passengers of light), were at the outset part of...
Cohabitation: Iran’s Common but Unrecognized Phenomenon April 5, 2022
The phrase “White Marriage”, which was derived from the French term “Mariage Blanc” to refer to an unconsummated marriage, has become commonplace in Iran in the past few years. Some people in Iran believe that the term “white” has been employed to...
Child Marriage in Iran: More than A Million Cases in Eight Years April 1, 2022
Over the past 8 years, more than 1,077,000 female child marriages have occurred in Iran, according to the country’s official data. This figure represented more than a fifth of all marriages registered between 2014 and 2021. The religious city of...
Iran’s Budget: Share of Al-Mustafa International University March 30, 2022
Numerous entities, under the direct order of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are receiving a larger share of the country’s 2022 budget. One of such institutions is Al-Mustafa International University (MIU), which is a network of...
Surveying Iran’s 2021 Widespread Electricity Blackouts March 29, 2022
In a new IOD survey, a third of Iranian participants have stated that they had experienced power outages in the fall of 2021 when Iran faced sweeping blackouts. The average blackout for the respondents was three hours a day; the data also suggests...
Iran's Budget: The Growing Share of Supreme Leader's Representative Office in Revolutionary Guards March 25, 2022
Iran's economy is in decline: inflation is soaring to double-digits, and the government is badly short of cash because it can't sell much of its oil in exchange for hard foreign currency. Still, the drafters of Iran's annual budget in recent years...
Iran's Budget: ‘Security and Order’ Gets Six Times More Funding than ‘Water Resources’ March 15, 2022
In Iran's 2022 budget bill, President Ebrahim Raisi's administration allocated more than 54.8 trillion tomans (around $13 billion USD) for “maintaining public order and security.” The figure not only constitutes a 14% increase compared to the previous...
Iran's Caspian Sea Oil and Gas Performance: Zero Production Despite Real or Imagined Gigantic Discoveries January 25, 2022
The Caspian Sea has significant hydrocarbon resources. All Caspian littoral states, namely Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and the Republic of Azerbaijan except Iran have been making billions of dollars by producing the hydrocarbon resources of the...
IOD Survey: Coronavirus Pandemic and Its Death Toll in Iran January 6, 2022
In a new Iran Open Data survey inside Iran, half of the participants said they were infected by the coronavirus. Eleven percent said they, at least, had one death in their immediate family due to the coronavirus. Additionally, 70% of the participants...
Iran’s Budget: Money Flows to Friday Prayers Despite 20-Month Pandemic Break December 13, 2021
On October 30, 2021, Friday public prayers resumed in Tehran after a 20-month cancellation due to the Coronvirce pandemic. In his first sermon, Mohammad Javad Haj Ali Akbari, the head of the Friday Prayer Policy Council (FPPC) and Tehran’s interim...
Iran’s Budget: Share of Ayatollah Khamenei's Representatives in Universities Doubled December 9, 2021
Iran Open Data analysis of the country's 2021 appropriations bill indicates that the Iranian parliament, Majlis, has allocated twice as much money to the Supreme Leader Representation in Universities (SLRU) as the government had originally requested....
Iran: Another Day Another Cyber Attack December 7, 2021
Cyber attacks are fairly common these days, it happens to international banks and most governmental organisations. However, the Iranian government seems to attract a higher share of cyber attacks than most other countries. The recent cyberattack on...
Iranian Oil: Shadowy Middlemen Making a Fortune Amid Soaring National Poverty and Misery December 5, 2021
In recent years the Islamic Republic has broken with Iran's long tradition of closely supervising its oil and gas exports. This tradition, which dates back to the days of Mohmmad Reza Shah Pahlavi, was perhaps disrupted first during the presidency of...