The secretary of Iran's influential Expediency Discernment Council, Mohsen Rezaee, is criticizing the government's revenue forecast based on the sale of 2.3 million barrels of oil per day in the next year's budget bill. The budget proposed for the next Iranian calendar year, beginning March 20, 2021, is a sign of "the government's dependency on foreign relations," he says.
According to the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps-linked Tasnim News Agency, Rezaee made comments on Friday that the government should adjust the budget according to "resistance economy" policies.
Rezaee, who served as Chief Commander of the IRGC between 1980-97, said that U.S. sanctions imposed on Iran would continue for the next five years, even after Joe Biden takes office.
Rezaee claimed that whether Biden's victory is approved, or current President Donald Trump succeeds in remaining in office, that the sanctions will continue for another four or five years, though he did not explain his remark or how he had calculated the timing.
President Hassan Rouhani's government has included 2.3 million oil barrels per day in next year's budget bill. His deputy and the head of the Plan and Budget Organization, Mohammad Baqer Nobakht, recently announced that Iran was even ready to export 4.6 million barrels of oil per day, if and when U.S. sanctions are lifted.
However, the average daily export of Iranian oil in recent months was only 300,000 barrels per day, part of it to settle the debt of the Iranian National Oil Company to China's Sinopec and CNPC.
Next year's budget bill has faced criticism from the Iranian Majlis parliament, with some MPs already announcing that the parliament will reject the bill for its excessive oil revenue dependency.