Rouhani cancels public housing construction program

 

Above: Modern residential blocks of low income public housing built in Borujerd, Iran

(Photo: Wikipedia Commons) 

 According to Tehran Times:

The transport and urban development minister announced [last] Wednesday that the Mehr housing plan will not continue in the new administration of Hassan Rouhani.

Abbas Ahmad Akhoundi said his ministry will “only complete” the unfinished Mehr housing projects.

The completion of 1.5 million houses in 17 new cities is a legacy of the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad administration for the new administration. The plan started in 2007.

The plan is a home construction promotion program in which the government offers developers free land in return for the construction of cheap residential units for first-time house buyers on 99-year leases. Under the scheme, the government commissions banks as agents to offer loans to the real estate developers.

The minister said the project has created problems for the government and the applicants and is not a “good plan” to be continued.

[...]

In late August Ali Tayebnia, the minister of economy and finance, blamed the Mehr housing plan for over-expanding money supply. He also blamed the Mehr housing policies for runaway inflation and serious budget problems.

Officials in the new administration had initially said that the Mehr houses serve as dormitories and it was better that these houses were being built in cities.

Not long ago Iran's media began running pictorials on public housing new construction deficiencies, so this announcement was expected.

With reduced government revenue as a result of U.S.-led economic sanctions against Iran, the public housing program couldn't be sustained.

Iran's media has been depicting this development as being in the interest of low income applicants but one has to imagine there are families in line for public housing that are disappointed with the cancelation of the program.

Iran: No Deals with P5+1 at Geneva Talks

Mehr News and PressTV are now reporting that no deal was reached during the Geneva talks regarding Iran shipping its domestically low-enriched uranium stock to Russia for further refinement.

Press TV reports today that Iran's Supreme National Security Council said the assumption that such an agreement had been reached with the P5+1 (permanent members of Security Council plus Germany) during the Geneva talks was untrue. The Council's Media Secretary Peyman Jebelli made the announcement in an interview with Press TV.

Earlier, on Oct. 2nd, Mehr News reported that a member of the Iranian delegation who attended the Geneva talks on Thursday said no agreement was made on delivering Iran’s 5 percent enriched uranium to one of the 5+1 countries and receiving 20 percent enriched uranium.

Mehr further reported that the negotiator, who spoke to the Mehr News Agency on condition of anonymity, said no consensus was made about inspection of the Fordoo nuclear project near Qom in two weeks.

Both news agencies are reporting that the issue of supplying Iran with medium-enriched uranium and the inspection date for the Qom enrichment site will be topics of discussion at a meeting between the IAEA and Iran on Oct. 18. They also state that this was prearranged before Iran's meeting with the P5+1 group in Geneva, Switzerland.

Analysis:
The Iranians may be emphasizing the fact that nothing was actually finalized at the Geneva Talks 2 Forum. The medium-enrichment proposal in Russia may be something put on the table that the Iranian negotiators agreed to pursue "in principle".

However, the declarations in Iran's news media may also signal that the Iranian decision makers have now had a chance to study the contents of the Geneva talks, and based upon this have drawn up more calculated positions on the issue of MEU and the Qom inspection schedule.

It probably hasn't helped any that Western government and media sources are openly depicting the medium-enrichment proposal in Russia as the means of purposely withdrawing Iran's LEU stock, in order to deny it the supposed ability of producing a nuclear weapon. This gives the impression of a "hostage-like" situation in the making, which could serve to undermine Iran's position in nuclear discussions, as well as set back its civilian nuclear program. Likewise, the Qom nuclear site inspection is also being depicted as a P5+1 "demand", when in reality it involves the IAEA and Iran exclusively. The Iranians appear sensitive to such depictions, which more often than not have the effect of influencing their positions on diplomacy.

--MARK PYRUZ