Nationalization of Oil in Iran

Although I think nationalization of oil by Dr. Mossadegh was a great achievement of Iran for independence, but I think the next step was not to keep it "nationalized" meaning as state property, and a privatization plan would have created the economic foundation for democracy in Iran. Maybe if Dr. Mossadegh had stayed in power, he would have taken the next step and not kept it under the state ownership, I cannot guess as I am not familiar with his thoughts on the next move. But I think privatization is what was needed and still this is needed. Of course, I also find other proposals to end the state ownership with other alternatives, such as the proposal of Dr. Bagher Zadeh interesting to evaluate. Nonetheless, regardless of how the state ownership of Oil is ended, I think it has to be done, before we can ever see a true democracy in Iran. As long as the state owns oil which is like 95% of the country's income, the state is paying the citizens, and not the citizens paying the state as tax-payers, and this fact by itself undermines any democracy in Iran, because the state officials do not feel that they are working for the people, and not the other way around.

http://iona.ghandchi.com/AlbusZadeh.htm

- Sam Ghandchi
 

********************Dr. Hossein Bagher Zadeh's Response********************************

From:  hbzadeh@btinternet.com

Date:  Wed Apr 10, 2002  11:32 am
Subject:  Re: [iranscope] Nationalization of Oil in Iran

Sorry - I tried to post the follow-up - but the topic had been closed
(this is the second time that this happnes to me!) Anyway, here are my
thoughts:

> Sam Ghandchi wrote:

> Although I think nationalization of oil by Dr. Mossadegh was a great
> achievement of Iran for independence, but I think the next step was
> not to keep it "nationalized" meaning as state property, and a
> privatization plan would have created the economic foundation for
> democracy in Iran. Maybe if Dr. Mossadegh had stayed in power, he
> would have taken the next step and not kept it under the state
> ownership, I cannot guess as I am not familiar with his thoughts on
> the next move. But I think privatization is what was needed and still
> this is needed. Of course, I also find other proposals to end the
> state ownership with other alternatives, such as the proposal of Dr.
> Bagher Zadeh interesting to evaluate. Nonetheless, regardless of how
> the state ownership of Oil is ended, I think it has to be done, before
> we can ever see a true democracy in Iran. As long as the state owns
> oil which is like 95% of the country's income, the state is paying the
> citizens, and not the citizens paying the state as tax-payers, and
> this fact by itself undermines any democracy in Iran, because the
> state officials do not feel that they are working for the people, and
> not the other way around.

I am personally against privatisation of the oil industry. It is a
national industry with overwhelming impact on the local economy (and
consequently its politics, international relatiosn etc). Such an
industry needs to be democratically controlled rather than handing out
its control to a bunch of industrailists.

The ratinales I mentioned about my proposal (including the one quoted
above) will not be fulfilled by privatisation. The government would
need to get royalties from the private operators of the privatised
company - in effect getting the revenue, as it does now, under another
name. If we want to turn the governemnt from royalty collector to tax
collector, we need to hand over the industry to the nation as a whole.

I invite anybody interested to read the proposal and some of the
rationales about it in the articles below:

http://www.iran-emrooz.de/yaddasht/bagerz801215.html

http://www.iran-emrooz.de/yaddasht/bagerz801222.html

http://www.iran-emrooz.de/yaddasht/bagerz801229.html

http://www.iran-emrooz.de/yaddasht/bagerz810107.html

Hossein Bagher Zadeh