Majlis Commission Confirms : "Luxury Cars were imported instead of medicine"

Maserati Celebrations in Iran

It was a story that started in the Guardian by Saeed Kamali, the pro-Rowhani Iranian journalist who nominated Hasan Rowhani for the Nobel Peace Prize. Manouchehr Esmaili-Liousi, a haemophiliac patient had died as a result of a hiking accident and never even got to the hospital, but the story of the tragic accident was changed into a haemophiliac boy in Iran "dying in hospital after his family failed to find the vital medicine he desperately needed for his disease."

"Sanctions are Causing Medicine Shortage in Iran and Killing Patients" soon became the sexy preferred headline in the Western media. Western newspapers and news sites raced each other with similar news headlines and the Islamic Republic lobby groups in the West had a feast with yet another too common phenomenon of lazy journalism in the Western mass media. See also NIAC Profiteering from Deceit. Only the Times of London reported what was actually taking place on the ground in Iran.

Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi, Ahmadinejad's health minister at the time, was not saying what the Western media were regurgitating, she kept publicly complaining that the $2 Billion in the annual budget, allocated to import medicine with,  was not received by the health ministry.

It was a bizarre situation in which, Iran's health minister kept repeating the medicine shortage was nothing to do with sanction and yet the Western media kept repeating, sanctions were causing the medicine shortage in Iran!

Islamic Republic's first female health minister, Marzieh Dastjerdi,  finally paid the price for her outspoken remarks and was unceremoniously sacked by Ahmadinejad. Now 18 months after, the Islamic Republic's Article 90 Majlis Commission, has endorsed her claims. The allocated $2 Billion with subsidised currency rate which should have gone to the Health Ministry to import medicine with, was  instead being used to import luxury cars.

Nader Ghazipour, the MP for Oroumieh and a member of the Majlis team investigating the luxury import of cars corruption said the list of companies who used subsidised currency rate to import luxury cars, amounted not to just one or two pages but to several pages and names of some government officials can be seen amongst them.

"The crime of Mrs. Marzieh Vahid-Dastjerdi, who was sacked by Ahamdinejad, was that she exposed the secrets. She said luxury cars were being imported with the medicine money and she was right" - Ghazipour told the Majlis.

Sanctions Are not the Cause of Iran Medicine Crisis

Here is yet another example of Iranian medicine officials spelling out the problems and causes of the current medicine crisis in Iran.

Mehdi Mohamadzadeh, Head of Iran's Association of Pharmaceutical Medicine Economics in an interview with the official Fars News Agency said "Of course we are in a dire economic situation, but with regards to medicine, there are no sanctions against us and the world's large pharmaceuticals are not reluctant to sell medicine to us. They are willing to co-operate, so long as they get paid"

Mohamadzadeh who is also a member of the Medical Sciences Scientific Committee at Beheshti University added "The cause of the crisis is that either very little government rate currency is allocated or it is paid late."

Mohamadzadeh's statements are in tune with what the rest of Iranian medicine officials, including the former Health Minister, Marzieh Dastjerdi, have said repeatedly. "Medicine crisis in Iran is nothing to do with sanctions" as former Health Minister kept saying before she was sacked by Ahmadinejad.  All the officials who are involved in the medicine import to Iran have been pinpointing the problem at medicine import companies, not receiving the allocated government rate currency to import the drugs with. The government rate currency is instead used to import luxury cars and non-essential goods like horse saddles, cosmetics and spade handles.

Yet if you just google for "Medicine Crisis in Iran", you will see sensational headline after headline on how people are dying in Iran as a result of sanctions.

"Iran unable to get life-saving drugs due to international sanctions" - Guardian
"Zionist-devised US sanctions bar medicines from Iran" - Press TV
"Iran sanctions disrupt the medicine supplies" - BBC
"US led Iran sanctions blocking medical treatment to thousands of Iranians" - antiwar.com
"US led Iran sanctions put millions of lives at risk" - Stop the War
"Iranian Mothers for Peace alert the world on sanctions and critical shortage of medicines" - Farid Marjai and Mehrnaz Shahabi in Stop the War Coalition - [they also quote the Guardian hoax on the Iranian haemophiliac boy ]
"In Iran, Sanctions take their toll on the sick" - Washington Post

There is just an unbound amount of unfounded and uncorroborated material in the Western media on how sanctions are killing Iranians by denying them vital medicines and yet the people in Iran know who is to blame and the officials involved in Iran's pharmaceutical industry have said the medicine crisis is nothing to do with sanctions.

Iranian regime lobbyists are hard at work in the West however. They are trying to influence the media, the think tanks, the peaceniks and policy forums and sell a story to the world which has nothing to do with the facts on the ground.

Gary Sick's cronies and paid lobbyists made sure I couldn't disseminate what was being said by Iranian pharmaceutical officials and media to the G2K mailing lists.  The aim is to suppress the truth and appeal to the useful idiots around the world, people with good intentions who are short on facts.

Why the Islamic Republic is not giving priority to importing medicine can be summed up in one sentence "the sick don't riot".