Here's something you need to see before you make any more appeals for international sanctions on Iran to be suspended, @ImranKhanPTI @SMQureshiPTI. THREAD http://www.reuters.com/investigates/iran/#article/part1

After investigating for 6 months, Reuters uncovered in 2013 Ayatollah Khamenei's business empire that's the size of Morocco's economy and has thrived even as crippling sanctions have squeezed the Iranian people tight. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/iran/#article/part2

This empire was founded upon a decree by Khamenei's late father intended to start a philanthropic venture and is built on the systematic seizure of properties belonging to ordinary Iranians. http://www.reuters.com/investigates/iran/#article/part3

The primary engine of Khamenei's empire is the immensely powerful but little-known company Setad. Started out as a charity, it's now morphed into a multi-billion-dollar business juggernaut that now holds stakes in nearly every sector of Iran's industry and economy.

Setad has holdings in major banks, a brokerage, an insurance company, power plants, energy and construction firms, real estate investments, ostrich farms, a refinery, a cement company, soft drinks production, condom manufacturing, and much more.

Its vast operations provide an independent source of revenue and patronage for Khamenei, even as Western sanctions squeeze the Iranian economy harder.

It also makes economic strength his invisible but third power base after religious legitimacy and military backing.

This massive conglomerate runs itself in shady ways and is also running into deep trouble with the US government in the face of sanctions.

"It opens the doors to corruption. There is no limitation. The private ownership and private life of people are not respected."

To make Setad's asset acquisitions possible, governments under Khamenei's watch have systematically legitimized the practice of confiscation and gave the mega-corporation control over much of the seized wealth.

The Supreme Leader, judges and parliament over the years have issued a series of bureaucratic edicts, constitutional interpretations and judicial decisions bolstering Setad at the expense of ordinary Iranians robbed of their properties without compensation.

At the time of this Reuters' report, the most recent of those declarations came in June 2013, just after the election of Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani.

If Iran need funds to deal with its COVID-19 outbreak, it should break open Khamenei's huge tax-free hedge fund as well as liquidate his Setad, auction its assets off and direct the proceeds to the coronavirus containment effort.

It can get more money by cutting off its budget for the IRGC and its sponsored militant proxies the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and redirecting it toward containing its coronavirus outbreak.

Why's it doing none of that but asking for a lifting of sanctions instead?

Cuba, despite being chronically sanctioned itself, still managed to build up a good health care system that played an effective role in containing the coronavirus locally and Cuba's now sending doctors and supplies to help other countries including Italy.

Please understand, sirs, Iran's real affliction is not the sanctions, it's the regime.

If you want relief for the Iranian people amid COVID-19, you should ask for regime change in Tehran, not a suspension of sanctions.

P.S. at the beginning of this thread, I posted links to the three different parts of Reuters' report. I didn't post one link three times.