Iran’s former football federation president says the Islamic Republic has spent 47 years looting Iran, sending its rulers’ children abroad with money stolen from the country and using “Death to America” to distract Iranians from its corruption and failure.

Mohammad Hossein Dadkan said:

“You’ve done nothing for the country for 47 years. Go and leave the country. If there was no ‘Death to America,’ what were you going to say? What would you use to keep the people distracted?

“Other than filling your own pockets, what have you done? You sent your own children abroad and took the privileges for yourselves.”

Dadkan identifies three foundations of the Islamic Republic’s survival: manufactured enemies, elite enrichment and public distraction.

The scale of money leaving Iran supports his indictment:

▪️ Approximately $27 billion left through the capital account in 2025, following $20.7 billion the previous year.

▪️ Spring 2025 alone recorded an outflow of roughly $9 billion, putting the projected annual pace near $36 billion.

▪️ Approximately $145 billion left between 2015 and spring 2025.

▪️ From 1997 to 2025, roughly $228 billion of Iran’s current-account surpluses either left as capital or never returned to the domestic economy.

▪️ Estimates of unreturned non-oil export revenues since 2018 range from approximately $95 billion to $200 billion.

These figures overlap and cannot simply be added together, but they reveal an enormous and sustained extraction of national wealth.

The real total is likely higher because official statistics cannot fully capture cash, cryptocurrencies, hawala networks, shell companies, foreign property and false invoicing.

This is not primarily ordinary Iranians moving their limited savings abroad. Most foreign trade is controlled by state-owned, semi-state, IRGC-linked or politically connected entities possessing the access and protection needed to transfer billions.

Sanctions have damaged Iran, but they do not explain why so much export income disappeared, why decades of oil wealth failed to produce lasting prosperity or why regime families accumulated privileged lives abroad.

The Islamic Republic tells ordinary Iranians to endure hardship for “resistance” while its ruling networks move their money and children to the same Western countries they publicly condemn.

It spends Iran’s wealth on missiles, drones, proxy militias and ideological expansion while the country’s currency, infrastructure and living standards collapse.

After 47 years, “Death to America” can no longer conceal the result.

The public was ordered to sacrifice for the Islamic Republic while its rulers enriched themselves and secured their families and fortunes abroad. https://t.co/PYofMNeCWm

— The Iran Watcher (@TheIranWatcher) November 10, 2026