Esmaeil Seqab-Esfahani said Monday at the fourth International Conference on Energy Consumption Optimization and Efficiency that the high number of road accidents each year reflects weaknesses in Iran’s transportation system. “If we had an efficient transportation system, many of these incidents would not happen to families,” he said.

He stressed the importance of government policymaking in the energy sector, adding: “The mother of all imbalances in Iran is the energy imbalance, and it must be addressed. Today we see part of this imbalance in the form of outages, restrictions and daily concerns, but the underlying dimensions are far broader. This imbalance has pushed us into a cycle in which inflation lies on one side and a rising exchange rate on the other.”

Addressing Root Causes Is Key to Energy Policy Success

Seqab-Esfahani said reports show that although each incoming administration presents its achievements, overall conditions do not improve. “The reason is that the policies creating this cycle have fundamental flaws. Unless we decide once and for all to move away from addressing symptoms and instead resolve the root causes, this cycle will continue.”

He said manipulating energy prices is one such symptom. “Anyone who simply says prices must rise remains stuck in symptom-based thinking. We have not yet understood how to move away from these symptoms, and until we do, no matter how many new organizations we create, they are doomed to fail.”

He reiterated that the formation of a new organization is not itself a success. “We should feel optimistic only when we see signs of policy shifts and distancing from past mistakes. For years, we believed that keeping the prices of a few essential goods fixed could serve as a shield against inflation, but experience showed this approach not only failed to curb inflation but became part of the problem.”

Government Should Set Policy, Not Play the Market

Seqab-Esfahani added that policymakers once assumed keeping diesel prices low would help Iran dominate regional transit, or that if the country manufactured its own trucks, it could control the transit sector. “But truck manufacturers benefited from subsidized gas and were exempt from taxes, so these policies were flawed. We also assumed cheap fuel would attract more trucks to our roads, while the real issue was customs efficiency, not fuel prices,” he said.

He stressed that the marketplace belongs to the public and the private sector, and the government should be a policymaker, not a market player. “If we allow the private sector to operate complete rail lines, a large portion of road transport and diesel consumption will decline, and dry ports will expand. Building power plants, adding railcars or buying tractors is not the government’s job. It is not the government’s role to collect old trucks and hand out new ones. These tasks belong to the private sector; the government’s role is policy.”