Skip to content

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 year but has also amounted to 25 times more than what the government has allocated for various environmental protection programs - nearly six times more than what Iran intends to spend on its acute water crisis. 

Among the identifiable security initiatives, the largest funding increase has gone to Shahid Ebrahimi program - an initiative of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Office of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The budget of the program whose stated mission is to "strengthen the security infrastructure" of the country has grown by about 386% compared to the previous year.

In recent years, Iran has faced a full-fledged water shortage crisis with far-reaching political, social consequences, and environmental consequences. For example, water protests erupted last year in the provinces Khuzestan and Isfahan provinces, which were brutally suppressed. 

In light of the regime's heavy reliance on brute force to maintain domestic control over, the country's 2022 security budget is about six times more than the amount set aside for “water resources,” which is estimated at about 9.2 trillion tomans (around $2.2 billion USD). 

Below, we will examine the funding variations of known intelligence organizations based on the figures provided in the appropriations bill of 2022.

The Ministry of Intelligence has six main spending categories.

Two categories are new in the 2022 bill: “Shahid Ashuri” and “Information Exchange Security Center”.

But three of the Ministry of Intelligence spending categories that exist in the 2022 budget bill either do not exist in last year’s bill or have been merged into existing categories. These three categories are: “performing governance and security duties in the information technology field”, “manufacturing biometric passports” and "anonymous martyrs", which are not mentioned in the 2022 bill.

 

Table Link

The Intelligence Ministry also controls a network of Herasat (literally: protection) branches in all civilian departments and university campuses. They are tasked with monitoring employees, hirings and firings practice, as well as identifying potential security threats. Herasta's budget, however, has been cut from 9 billion to 6 billion tomans.

 

Table Link

A large portion of the bill’s Security chapter is related to various entities belonging to military intelligence programs, most notebly IRGC Intelligence Organization (IRGC-IO), whose power and budget have continuously grown in recent years.

Multiplicity and diversity of the spending categories in this area is remarkable. In addition to being funded in Table 7 of the appropriations bill, some of these organizations reappear in Table 21 under Strengthening Security Infrastructure and receive additional funding.

 

Table Link

It is safe to assume that, in addition to aforementioned spending categories, there are other security-intelligence related categories that are secret and therefore not listed in the budget bill. A case in point in the Judiciary Information and Protection Center, which is one of the biggest and most controversial parallel intelligence agencies in the country.

This article was originally published in Persian (available here).