Iranian people feel their ‘bones breaking’ under U.S. sanctions
As the U.S. piles sanction after sanction on Iran, it’s the average person who feels it the most.
From a subway performer’s battered leather hat devoid of tips, to a bride-to-be’s empty purse, the lack of cash from the economic pressure facing Iran’s 80 million people can be seen everywhere.
Many blame President Donald Trump and his maximalist policy on Iran, which has seen him pull out of Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and levy punishing U.S. sanctions on the country.
In recent weeks, Iran has threatened to break out of the deal unless European powers mitigate what it calls Trump’s “economic warfare.” Iran also appeared ready to push back against the buildup of U.S. forces in the region, after shooting down an American drone it says violated its airspace last week.
In response, U.S. officials have announced yet more stringent sanctions.
But alongside Trump, many Iranians blame their own government, which has careened from one economic disaster to another since its Islamic Revolution 40 years ago.
“The economic war is a reality and people are under extreme pressure,” said Shiva Keshavarz, a 22-year-old accountant soon to be married.
She said government leaders “keep telling us to be strong and endure the pressures, but we can already hear the sound of our bones breaking.”
Walking by any money exchange shop is a dramatic reminder of the hardships most people are facing. At the time of the nuclear deal, Iran’s currency traded at 32,000 rials to $1. Today, the numbers listed in exchange shop windows have skyrocketed — it costs over 130,000 rials for one U.S. dollar.
Inflation is over 37%, according to government statistics. More than 3 million people, or 12% of working-age citizens, are unemployed. That rate doubles for educated youth. [Continue reading…]
Ironically, the punitive new measure may not have major economic impact—at least not to the degree that the Administration advertised. “It’s a lot of hype, but it doesn’t mean much economically. It’s unlikely to have a damaging effect” on Iran beyond the sanctions that have already been imposed, Elizabeth Rosenberg, a former Treasury sanctions specialist who is now at the Center for a New American Security, told me. “It’s in the realm of the symbolic.” The sanctions are “a sideshow to a threat of military escalation and all-out conflict,” she said. They fuel a narrative focussed on Iran rather than the United States—and the fact that Trump blinked when he called off a retaliatory military strike last Thursday.
Former Treasury officials also claim that Trump did not need to sign a new executive order—beyond the hype and media attention it produced. The authority to sanction either entities or officials affiliated with the Iranian government has existed since 2012, when the Obama Administration issued an executive order, Kate Bauer, a former Treasury official who is now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said. “It’s clear that this Administration wants to send a message,” Bauer said. “This is a response to the recent escalation and the shooting down of the drone.”
The main impact of the new sanctions may be political—diminishing rather than encouraging diplomacy or deëscalation. Pompeo said that Tehran “knows how to reach us,” if it decides to “meet our diplomacy with diplomacy.” But Tehran immediately rejected talks. At the United Nations, the Iranian Ambassador Majid Takht-Ravanchi told reporters that Tehran would not succumb to pressure. “Nobody in a clear mind can accept to have a dialogue with somebody that is threatening you with more sanctions. So, as long as this threat is there, there is no way that Iran and the U.S. can start a dialogue,” he told reporters, before a closed-door session on tensions in the energy-rich Gulf. In a tweet, Zarif said that Trump’s advisers and allies “despise diplomacy and thirst for war.” Other Iranian officials condemned the new sanctions as “economic terrorism.” [Continue reading…]
Iran has said that a US decision to impose sanctions on the country’s supreme leader and other top officials permanently closed the path to diplomacy between Tehran and Washington.
“Imposing useless sanctions on Iran’s supreme leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the commander of Iran’s diplomacy (foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif) is the permanent closure of the path of diplomacy,” foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said in a tweet on Tuesday.
“Trump’s desperate administration is destroying the established international mechanisms for maintaining world peace and security.” [Continue reading…]