Late March is a festive occasion for Iranians and many others, as we celebrate the beginning of Persian New Year, coinciding with the beginning of the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere. Known as Nowruz, the festival has gained global recognition in recent years and even got its own Google doodle this year.
But on Iran’s political calendar, Nowruz is also a harrowing occasion.
In the lead-up to it each year, a council convened by the government determines the legal minimum wage, which has to be increased annually due to rampant inflation. As Iranians spend the final weeks of winter getting ready for Nowruz, trade unions and workers’ rights activists are busy fighting for a living wage. This time around, too, thousands of workers and their advocates have written open letters, signed petitions and staged demonstrations to ask for a monthly minimum wage of at least 150 million Iranian rials ($250 at the market rate) every month – which, even if it had been achieved, would have still been well below a living wage.
But the campaign failed to reach even this meagre goal. The minimum wage for the new year was finally set at only 116 million rials per months. While this is a 35 per cent increase from the previous year, it effectively counts as a massive pay cut, since the inflation was more than 43 per cent, according to official figures, with some items, especially in the capital city Tehran, having seen their prices more than double.
This is an obvious violation of Iran’s own labour code, which mandates an annual increase in the minimum wage to at least keep up with the inflation.
By most calculations, to afford a basket of necessary goods, Iranians need 250 million rials every month. This was the number given by Ali Babayi Karnami, a conservative MP who holds a PhD in economics and heads the parliament’s workers’ caucus. And that is a nationwide figure. In Tehran and other large cities, the real number would be between 280 to 300 million rials. The new minimum wage thus doesn’t even cover half of a living wage.
With international isolation and increased repression, Iranians face many woes. But nothing is as grating as the country’s worsening economic conditions
In US dollar terms, things are even worse. Since every dollar now trades for around 600,000 rials, the monthly minimum wage is now about $193. By contrast, the minimum wage is $618 in neighbouring Turkey, which has also suffered from its own economic crises and high inflation rates. Workers of Iran now have one of the lowest living standards in the region.
The minimum wage in Iran is supposed to be set by a trilateral process involving the government, workers and the private sector. It is determined by the High Council of Labour, convened by the Ministry of Labour, chaired by the minister himself and consisting of three representatives from each of the parties. But since independent trade unions are banned and their leaders have been jailed, workers’ representatives on the council instead come from the highly curated Islamic Councils of Labour (ICL), a state-sanctioned trade union often aligned with the government.
However, even these representatives have little power, since the government representatives always more readily side with the employers and thus leave them in the minority. In this sense, over the past few decades the Islamic Republic has been resolutely capitalist despite all its social justice pretensions, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei promoting and overseeing massive privatisation.
This year, workers’ representatives on the High Council had waged a campaign for the aforementioned 150 million rials. Alireza Mirghafari, an ICL trade unionist organising workers in the gas refineries of southern Iran, led a petition signed by more than 70,000 people echoing this demand. Employers’ representatives, meanwhile, were asking for the wage to be set at 90.8 million. The final number is, of course, much closer to the demand of the employers.
As the High Council convened on Monday to make its decision, the meeting continued past midnight. The workers’ representatives left in protest and refused to sign the final decision, which was published in the early hours of Tuesday, less than 24 hours to the new year.
Once you look at the details, things become even more harrowing.
In effect, only workers who are married and have children could get the full 116 million while the most basic wage base is set at 70.2 million, with the rest consisting of various top-ups, some of which are conditional. For instance, married people get a 5 million rial bonus, which supposedly signals the government’s pro-natal policies. But that amount currently cannot even buy a single kilogram of meat. The amount dedicated to housing has remained unchanged at 9 million rials, even though rents have increased by more than 50 per cent in large cities.
With international isolation, increased repression and prisons full of political prisoners, Iranians face many woes. But nothing is as grating and destructive as the country’s worsening economic conditions, which are the result of economic mismanagement, cronyism, a lack of planning, corruption and the western-led sanctions that are themselves results of the policies pursued by Mr Khamenei.
When he was elected president in a mostly staged election in 2021, Ebrahim Raisi had promised to improve things. His aides and supporters often blame the problems on his centrist predecessor, Hassan Rouhani. But three years later, it is clear that things are worse – and only getting worse.
In this month’s parliamentary elections, which were limited almost entirely to various brands of conservatives and hardliners, economic concerns were at the top of voters’ minds, as well as those of the majority who didn’t vote. There is a widespread consensus that the economy is in a state of disaster.
Ebrahim Jamili, an economist who sits on a board of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, has predicted that the coming year “will be the toughest year, economically speaking, since 1979”.
A more forthright opinion was expressed by Javad Alavi Borujerdi, a high-ranking cleric and a grandson of a famed Grand Ayatollah. In a recent lecture, he said: “The people of Iran don’t deserve to live like this … people can’t even afford eggs anymore.”
He went on to add: “Whether we like it or not, they’ll blame it on us, the clerics.”
The years Ramadan fell in May
The Voice of Hind Rajab
Starring: Saja Kilani, Clara Khoury, Motaz Malhees
Director: Kaouther Ben Hania
Rating: 4/5
Wicked
Director: Jon M Chu
Stars: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey
PAKISTAN SQUAD
Abid Ali, Fakhar Zaman, Imam-ul-Haq, Shan Masood, Azhar Ali (test captain), Babar Azam (T20 captain), Asad Shafiq, Fawad Alam, Haider Ali, Iftikhar Ahmad, Khushdil Shah, Mohammad Hafeez, Shoaib Malik, Mohammad Rizwan (wicketkeeper), Sarfaraz Ahmed (wicketkeeper), Faheem Ashraf, Haris Rauf, Imran Khan, Mohammad Abbas, Mohammad Hasnain, Naseem Shah, Shaheen Afridi, Sohail Khan, Usman Shinwari, Wahab Riaz, Imad Wasim, Kashif Bhatti, Shadab Khan and Yasir Shah.
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ENGLAND WORLD CUP SQUAD
Eoin Morgan (captain), Moeen Ali, Jonny Bairstow, Jos Buttler (wicketkeeper), Tom Curran, Joe Denly, Alex Hales, Liam Plunkett, Adil Rashid, Joe Root, Jason Roy, Ben Stokes, David Willey, Chris Woakes, Mark Wood
The five pillars of Islam
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Specs
Engine: Duel electric motors
Power: 659hp
Torque: 1075Nm
On sale: Available for pre-order now
Price: On request
The bio
His favourite book - 1984 by George Orwell
His favourite quote - 'If you think education is expensive, try ignorance' by Derek Bok, Former President of Harvard
Favourite place to travel to - Peloponnese, Southern Greece
Favourite movie - The Last Emperor
Favourite personality from history - Alexander the Great
Role Model - My father, Yiannis Davos
The Word for Woman is Wilderness
Abi Andrews, Serpent’s Tail
The specs: 2018 Maserati GranTurismo/GranCabrio
Price, base Dh485,000 (GranTurismo) and Dh575,000 (GranCabrio)
Engine 4.7L V8
Transmission Six-speed automatic
Power 460hp @ 7,000rpm
Torque 520Nm @ 4,750rpm
Fuel economy, combined 14.3L (GranTurismo) and 14.5L (GranCabrio) / 100km
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Know your cyber adversaries
Cryptojacking: Compromises a device or network to mine cryptocurrencies without an organisation's knowledge.
Distributed denial-of-service: Floods systems, servers or networks with information, effectively blocking them.
Man-in-the-middle attack: Intercepts two-way communication to obtain information, spy on participants or alter the outcome.
Malware: Installs itself in a network when a user clicks on a compromised link or email attachment.
Phishing: Aims to secure personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.
Ransomware: Encrypts user data, denying access and demands a payment to decrypt it.
Spyware: Collects information without the user's knowledge, which is then passed on to bad actors.
Trojans: Create a backdoor into systems, which becomes a point of entry for an attack.
Viruses: Infect applications in a system and replicate themselves as they go, just like their biological counterparts.
Worms: Send copies of themselves to other users or contacts. They don't attack the system, but they overload it.
Zero-day exploit: Exploits a vulnerability in software before a fix is found.
TUESDAY'S ORDER OF PLAY
Centre Court
Starting at 2pm:
Malin Cilic (CRO) v Benoit Paire (FRA) [8]
Not before 4pm:
Dan Evans (GBR) v Fabio Fogini (ITA) [4]
Not before 7pm:
Pablo Carreno Busta (SPA) v Stefanos Tsitsipas (GRE) [2]
Roberto Bautista Agut (SPA) [5] v Jan-Lennard Struff (GER)
Court One
Starting at 2pm
Prajnesh Gunneswaran (IND) v Dennis Novak (AUT)
Joao Sousa (POR) v Filip Krajinovic (SRB)
Not before 5pm:
Rajeev Ram (USA) and Joe Salisbury (GBR) [1] v Marin Cilic v Novak Djokovic (SRB)
Nikoloz Basilashvili v Ricardas Berankis (LTU)
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
WITHIN%20SAND
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Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
WHAT ARE NFTs?
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are tokens that represent ownership of unique items. They allow the tokenisation of things such as art, collectibles and even real estate.
An NFT can have only one official owner at one time. And since they're minted and secured on the Ethereum blockchain, no one can modify the record of ownership, not even copy-paste it into a new one.
This means NFTs are not interchangeable and cannot be exchanged with other items. In contrast, fungible items, such as fiat currencies, can be exchanged because their value defines them rather than their unique properties.
Company: Instabug
Founded: 2013
Based: Egypt, Cairo
Sector: IT
Employees: 100
Stage: Series A
Investors: Flat6Labs, Accel, Y Combinator and angel investors
Company profile
Name: The Concept
Founders: Yadhushan Mahendran, Maria Sobh and Muhammad Rijal
Based: Abu Dhabi
Founded: 2017
Number of employees: 7
Sector: Aviation and space industry
Funding: $250,000
Future plans: Looking to raise $1 million investment to boost expansion and develop new products
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Key findings of Jenkins report
- Founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al Banna, "accepted the political utility of violence"
- Views of key Muslim Brotherhood ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, have “consistently been understood” as permitting “the use of extreme violence in the pursuit of the perfect Islamic society” and “never been institutionally disowned” by the movement.
- Muslim Brotherhood at all levels has repeatedly defended Hamas attacks against Israel, including the use of suicide bombers and the killing of civilians.
- Laying out the report in the House of Commons, David Cameron told MPs: "The main findings of the review support the conclusion that membership of, association with, or influence by the Muslim Brotherhood should be considered as a possible indicator of extremism."
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre V8 twin-turbocharged and three electric motors
Power: Combined output 920hp
Torque: 730Nm at 4,000-7,000rpm
Transmission: 8-speed dual-clutch automatic
Fuel consumption: 11.2L/100km
On sale: Now, deliveries expected later in 2025
Price: expected to start at Dh1,432,000
Volvo ES90 Specs
Engine: Electric single motor (96kW), twin motor (106kW) and twin motor performance (106kW)
Power: 333hp, 449hp, 680hp
Torque: 480Nm, 670Nm, 870Nm
On sale: Later in 2025 or early 2026, depending on region
Price: Exact regional pricing TBA
Farage on Muslim Brotherhood
Nigel Farage told Reform's annual conference that the party will proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood if he becomes Prime Minister.
"We will stop dangerous organisations with links to terrorism operating in our country," he said. "Quite why we've been so gutless about this – both Labour and Conservative – I don't know.
“All across the Middle East, countries have banned and proscribed the Muslim Brotherhood as a dangerous organisation. We will do the very same.”
It is 10 years since a ground-breaking report into the Muslim Brotherhood by Sir John Jenkins.
Among the former diplomat's findings was an assessment that “the use of extreme violence in the pursuit of the perfect Islamic society” has “never been institutionally disowned” by the movement.
The prime minister at the time, David Cameron, who commissioned the report, said membership or association with the Muslim Brotherhood was a "possible indicator of extremism" but it would not be banned.
Most sought after workplace benefits in the UAE
- Flexible work arrangements
- Pension support
- Mental well-being assistance
- Insurance coverage for optical, dental, alternative medicine, cancer screening
- Financial well-being incentives
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Britain's travel restrictions
- A negative test 2 days before flying
- Complete passenger locator form
- Book a post-arrival PCR test
- Double-vaccinated must self-isolate
- 11 countries on red list quarantine
The years Ramadan fell in May
It Was Just an Accident
Director: Jafar Panahi
Stars: Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, Ebrahim Azizi, Hadis Pakbaten, Majid Panahi, Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr
Rating: 4/5
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Generation Start-up: Awok company profile
Started: 2013
Founder: Ulugbek Yuldashev
Sector: e-commerce
Size: 600 plus
Stage: still in talks with VCs
Principal Investors: self-financed by founder
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Zayed Sustainability Prize
Terminator: Dark Fate
Director: Tim Miller
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Mackenzie Davis
Rating: 3/5
if you go
The flights Fly Dubai, Air Arabia, Emirates, Etihad, and Royal Jordanian all offer direct, three-and-a-half-hour flights from the UAE to the Jordanian capital Amman. Alternatively, from June Fly Dubai will offer a new direct service from Dubai to Aqaba in the south of the country. See the airlines’ respective sites for varying prices or search on reliable price-comparison site Skyscanner.
The trip
Jamie Lafferty was a guest of the Jordan Tourist Board. For more information on adventure tourism in Jordan see Visit Jordan. A number of new and established tour companies offer the chance to go caving, rock-climbing, canyoning, and mountaineering in Jordan. Prices vary depending on how many activities you want to do and how many days you plan to stay in the country. Among the leaders are Terhaal, who offer a two-day canyoning trip from Dh845 per person. If you really want to push your limits, contact the Stronger Team. For a more trek-focused trip, KE Adventure offers an eight-day trip from Dh5,300 per person.
More coverage from the Future Forum
BMW M5 specs
Engine: 4.4-litre twin-turbo V-8 petrol enging with additional electric motor
Power: 727hp
Torque: 1,000Nm
Transmission: 8-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 10.6L/100km
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh650,000
RIDE%20ON
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Jetour T1 specs
Engine: 2-litre turbocharged
Power: 254hp
Torque: 390Nm
Price: From Dh126,000
Available: Now
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