The Is A Scapegoat Of Hassan Rouhanis Government

death sentence, which was handed out last year to Mah-Afarid Khosravi, a businessman linked to a $2.8 billion fraud case (Bozorgmeh, Najmeh). These rare occasions of cases that are brought to court are not part of the effort to fight corruption, but are actually for show. Put on to relieve people’s frustration over their economic difficulties. Despite the fact that these cases are often closed, or the sentences are kept hidden from the public, people are still punished for corruption. Some believe Zanjani is a scapegoat of Hassan Rouhani’s government, which is a supposed crackdown on corruption because the government wants to attract foreign investment. Zanjani’s case could also be a distraction from other corruption cases. Iran’s seemingly closed society is due to the 1979 revolution when Islamic rulers denounced capitalism and pushed for an economy based on an amalgamation of Islamist and socialist ideology. Mousa Ghaninejad, an economist at Iran’ s Petroleum University of Technology said â€Å"We have fallen into an oil trap since 1974, which has increasingly put the economy under state control and keeps creating new rich classes who are linked to oil rents and political power† (Bozorgmeh, Najmeh). Essentially creating a class of oligarchs that operates in the private sector, dependent on the regime’s survival. But the private sector is about 20 % of the economy, which prevents the independent business community from attempting to influence politics (Bozorgmeh, Najmeh).