Parker: How Iran steals its citizens' wealth to finance terror

The Fraser Institute in Vancouver, Canada, just published, for 2024, its annual Economic Freedom of the World Report.

There are many ideas about what freedom means.

Economic freedom, which the Fraser Institute focuses on, is of key and central importance. It is about the extent to which individuals have control of their economic life.

It's about law that protects private property, having an honest court system that adjudicates disputes, that government power to interfere with and regulate enterprise is prudent and limited, that individuals and enterprises have freedom to do business not just at home but internationally, and that governments do not debase their national currency.

The Fraser Institute gathers data from various international institutions and measures these various factors that define economic freedom and compiles an index of economic freedom in 165 countries around the world.

The correlation between economic freedom in a country, and the economic success and prosperity of that country, is powerful.

The average per capita income in the top 25% of countries in economic freedom is almost eight times higher than in the lowest 25%.

Singapore, until recently the most economically free country in the world, has average per capita income, per the International Monetary Fund, of $88,450.

The United States, the fifth most economically free country in the world, has average per capita income of $85,370.

This data also sheds important and revealing light on the current hostilities taking place in the world, particularly in the Middle East.

Israel ranks number 41 out of the 165 countries in the Fraser economic freedom ranking, which puts it in the top quartile. Israel, per the IMF, has average per capita income of $53,370.

Iran has the third largest holding of oil reserves in the world, exceeded only by Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Iran has oil reserves 2.6 times greater than those of Russia and 4.5 times greater than those of the United States.

Yet Iran's per capita income is $5,310, only 10% that of Israel.

Why? Out of the 165 countries that the Fraser Institute ranks in economic freedom, Iran stands at 158. There is virtually no economic freedom in Iran.

Look at some of the components of the lack of economic freedom in Iran: Its legal system is ranked 143 out of 165 in the world; its management of its national currency ranks 135 out of 165; and government regulation ranks 157 out of 165.

The bottom line is that Iran's per capita income is 10% that of Israel's because the Iranian regime simply steals the wealth of its citizens — both the natural wealth of its bountiful oil reserves and the wealth that comes from the creativity of a free people — to finance its treacherous ideology of murder and terror.

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, recently killed in Gaza, had reported wealth of $3 billion. Did this come from some creative high-tech startup? Of course not. This is stolen wealth, much of it coming from Iran, financed on the backs of Iranian citizens.

In the video released by Israel showing Sinwar moving with his family into a tunnel in Gaza prior to the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, his wife is seen carrying a $32,000 Hermes Birkin handbag.

Compared to the vast natural wealth of Iran, Israel's wealth and prosperity comes almost entirely from the creativity and entrepreneurship from a population given vastly more economic freedom than Iranian citizens are granted.

If the average Iranian citizen was asked if they are happy losing tens of thousands of dollars in annual income so their government can finance death and terror, what do you think they would say?

How can it be that so much of the allegedly civilized world is so deeply confused, that good and evil are so profoundly obfuscated, that so many refuse to see what is going on?

Star Parker is president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education.