A Fifth of Iran’s New Budget Goes to “Maintaining Public Order and Security”
In the 2023 fiscal budget, the Islamic Republic allocates about a fifth of the total of its monetary resources to defense and maintaining “public order and security”. These resources are funded by oil exports, auctioning off government assets, levying taxes, and borrowing money.
Iran Open Data investigations show that, in Iran’s 2023 appropriations bill, the “defense and security” budget increased 38.5% compared to last year’s budget bill.
In total, the government allocated 272.6 trillion Tomans (about $5.35 billion, at an exchange rate of 50,800 Tomans/$1) for defense and security affairs in the next year's budget bill. This figure is about 1.4 times the appropriations for public education.
It should be noted that the mentioned figures are only the overt budget for defense and security affairs. Due to the wide range of economic activities of military and security institutions and their complex and non-transparent structure, it is not possible to get an accurate estimate of the actual budget of these institutions. The budget documents only show the overt funding allocated to military and security institutions based on the proposed government bill.
Even though the total defense and security budget increased, the share of this budget of the total appropriations bill has actually decreased by 1.2 percentage points to 17.8%; its percentage in the 2022 budget bill was 19%.
The defense and security affairs budget has three sections: “Maintaining order and public security”, “Defense”, and “Defense and security affairs research and development”.
Most of the “defense and security affairs” budget is spent on “defense”. In the following year's budget bill “defense” takes up 70.3% of the total “defense and security affairs” budget, which equals 191.6 trillion Tomans (about $3.75 billion) and has increased about 38.3% compared to the previous year.
The “maintaining order and public security” budget is also 4.29% of the total “defense and security affairs” budget, which equals 80.2 trillion Tomans (about $1.5 billion) and has increased 38.7%.
The remaining 0.3%, allocated to “defense and security affairs research and development,” equals 632.5 billion Tomans ($12.3 million).
Six main defense institutions receive the bulk of the budget. Table 1 shows these institutions’ names, their budget, and the change in their budget.
Among these institutions, the “Qorb-e Baqiyatullah” budget warrants attention. This organization is known as the “soft war” headquarters; its activities are defined as cultural. Major General of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) Mohammad Ali Jafari took over the command of this institution one day after handing over the control of the IRGC Hossein Salami in May of 2018.
“Khatam-ul-Osiya” is a subgroup of this institution which has offices in all provinces. But the most controversial of its subgroups is the Seraj Institution. Among its responsibilities are: Producing cultural content, investing in films, music videos, computer games, social network content production, and advancing the IRGC’s interest. .
The 2023 budget increase of 54.7% in 2023 indicates the importance of this organization.
The number of security organizations is so high that it is impossible to get sufficient details about them. But some of those organizations’ budgets are in the following two tables. Table 1 shows military organizations and their budget is under that category. Intelligence organizations affiliated with military institutions are also included.