The reformist Ham-Mihan daily, in a scathing article on Monday, although did not question Aref’s argument, asked him to put the issue in a wider context of ‘unreasonable’ decisions that have been made in the society to find the priorities.
Ham-Mihan wrote, in a society where the price of domestically-produced products are sold at staggering prices that are not affordable for wage earners, speaking about ‘unreasonable’ might cause social anger.
“Speaking about ‘unreasonable’ by government officials, in this situation, instead of paving a way to move forward, is considered a form of unjustified sarcasm, whose consequences will be serious,” the daily warned.
The daily noted that a large number of unresolved issues, including filtering the internet, continue to plague the society, which it claimed are way more important than the price of gas at the pumps.
Aref made the remarks in the induction ceremony of the new Iranian oil minister, criticizing the daily gasoline imbalance in the country where refineries produce 110 million liters of gasoline per day while the daily consumption is 140 million liters.
Iranians pay $0.05 for a liter of gasoline in gas stations across the country, which is much lower than the neighboring countries.
However, there are concerns that removing the heavy subsidy and raising the prices will have inflationary impacts.
