With the announcement that Iran’s nuclear deal with the world powers will take effect Jan. 20, and reports that on Feb. 1 Iran will receive the first $550 million installment in previously blocked overseas funds totaling $4.2 billion, there appears to be optimism that Tehran is taking the slow and necessary steps to address many of the issues its economy is facing. Prominent Iranian economist Fariborz Raisdana, however, believes the changes taking place under President Hassan Rouhani’s administration will not succeed in addressing the country's structural economic problems.

Fariborz, outspoken and with leftist views, was jailed in 2012 for criticizing changes in subsidy payments. He asserts that based on statements made by Rouhani’s ministers, the government appears to be pursuing the economic policies implemented during the presidencies of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami. These, he contends, will ultimately not address inequality in the economy. After several phone conversations with him from his home in Tehran, I emailed him questions about his take on Iran’s economy. The text of the interview follows.

Al-Monitor:  Previously, you had criticized the economic policies of President Rouhani. Can you please clarify why you disagree with his economic policies? What do you think his economic plans should be?

Raisdana:  You know, I did not only criticize the Rouhani administration. When it comes to the economy, I criticize all previous administrations. They were all capitalist administrations with semi-governmental monopolies. All these administrations were basically opposed to any effective form of welfare, scientific planning or democratic and cooperative programs that would increase equality. For all of them, making more profit by relying heavily on petroleum revenue, heavy capital investment, trade and real estate has always been the number-one goal. The fact that the Rouhani administration is moderate and neoliberal, that Hashemi’s administration was also moderate and neoliberal, that [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad’s administration was conservative-populist and used radical policies against internal and external opposition groups or that Khatami’s administration was also neoliberal with a bit of tendency toward planning and organizations does not take away their common denominator. These small differences do not change the fact that these administrations all have had one major element in common: All of them were radically market oriented and were against any form of cooperative planning or democratizing the economy. It means that they were against the idea of increasing the share [going to] the workers, service personnel and government employees with middle or low incomes. Under the supervision of all these presidents, with the exception of the first few years of Ahmadinejad’s presidency, distribution of wealth either worsened or stayed the same.