Iran's Budget: The Growing Share of Supreme Leader's Representative Office in Revolutionary Guards
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 have found sufficient financial resources to substantially increase the funds for representatives of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei across the Iranian regime - offices that play a key role in enabling Khamenei to maintain a pervasive and direct presence in all state and parallel state institutions of the Islamic Republic.
A case in point is the Office of the Supreme Leader’s Representative in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps whose budget increased by 136%, or 2.4 times, during the 5 year period between 2017 and 2021.
This apparent generosity at the time of national hardship suggests the regime places a high value on this particular office, which in addition to separate funding streams from the IRGC and its numerous affiliates, has a specific line in Iran's annual budget.
What exactly does the Office of the Supreme Leader Representative in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps accomplish? It protects “the Islamic, revolutionary, jihadi, guardianship, and popular identity of the IRGC and Basij,” according to the former head of IRGC's political bureau, Brigadier General Yadollah Javani.
The Iranian government had initially appropriated 130,180,000,000 tomans (Around $31m USD) in the 2021 budget bill. But by the time the bill cleared various Majlis committees, the figure had increased by 58% to 205,180,000,000 tomans (Around $48.5m USD).
This raise during the parliamentary review process was not limited to 2021. In the past five years, the Majlis has increased their office's budget by about 136.3%.
The only exception is in 2020 when President Hassan Rouhani’s administration proposed a lower amount for the Office of the Supreme Leader Representative in the IRGC, but the Majlis eventually increased the government's proposed figure back to the previous 2019 levels.
The budget line for the Office of the Supreme Leader Representative in the IRGC is just one of the budget lines that are appropriated for the IRGC.
IRGC’s highest budget line, in 2021, is for the Office of the Joint Chief of Staff of the IRGC, which is about 41 trillion 200 billion toman.
Among IRGC’s other sub-budget lines are Imam Hussein University, Baqiyatallah University, Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters, IRGC’s Counterintelligence Office, Basij Organization, and Protection Guard.
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This article was originally published in Persian (available here).