Domination through Poverty – A Critical Analysis of the Poverty Discourse in Iran

Since the establishment of an Islamic regime in Iran 1979, the poverty in the country has grown, especially among the middle class. This has occurred despite growing national prosperity, a solider government budget and decades of management experience. To understand this paradox, there is a need for research focusing on the connection between poverty and regime security. By using Critical Discourse Theory, the Islamic regime’s poverty discourse has been investigated through analyzing 333 texts belonging to the regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, and how the regime determines the poverty lines in Iran. In his statements, Khamenei instructs officials to implement policies that make the people to live on a poverty line outlined by him, defined as having access to a shelter, some food, drinking water and clothes, and to some extent to health services. The government also uses this definition to establish the limits of extreme and absolute poverty. The aim with this discourse could be an attempt to deprive the people from economic resources in order to dominate them and make them dependent on the regime. Khamenei makes this clear in his speeches, connecting the issue of poverty to regime security. (Less)