Posted on 01/13/2020 6:18:05 PM PST by karpov
LONDON — Iran is caught in a wretched economic crisis. Jobs are scarce. Prices for food and other necessities are skyrocketing. The economy is rapidly shrinking. Iranians are increasingly disgusted.
Crippling sanctions imposed by the Trump administration have severed Iran’s access to international markets, decimating the economy, which is now contracting at an alarming 9.5 percent annual rate, the International Monetary Fund estimated. Oil exports were effectively zero in December, according to Oxford Economics, as the sanctions have prevented sales, even though smugglers have transported unknown volumes.
The bleak economy appears to be tempering the willingness of Iran to escalate hostilities with the United States, its leaders cognizant that war could profoundly worsen national fortunes. In recent months, public anger over joblessness, economic anxiety and corruption has emerged as a potentially existential threat to Iran’s hard-line regime.
Only a week ago, such sentiments had been redirected by outrage over the Trump administration’s Jan. 3 killing of Iran’s top military commander, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani. But protests flared anew over the weekend in Tehran, and then continued on Monday, after the government’s astonishing admission that it was — despite three days of denial — responsible for shooting down a Ukrainian jetliner.
The demonstrations were most pointedly an expression of contempt for the regime’s cover-up following its downing of the Ukrainian jet, which killed all 176 people on board. But the fury in the streets resonated as a rebuke for broader grievances — diminishing livelihoods, financial anxiety and the sense that the regime is at best impotent in the face of formidable troubles.
Inflation is running near 40 percent, assailing consumers with sharply rising prices for food and other basic necessities. More than one in four young Iranians is jobless, with college graduates especially short of work, according to the World Bank.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
They’ll turn it around tomorrow and accuse President Trump of starving Iranian babies.
L
Poor Iran, defenseless victim of Trump the Terrible.
More winning!
Of course, that would require a 5-dimensional chess player at the helm...
Westernize. They need to westernize.
Ditch the Mullahs. Ditch the hijabs.
1 in 4 college graduates are unemployed.
Sounds like Obamanomics works over there like it did over here.
Too early to use “The Trump Doctrine”?
Westernize. They need to westernize.
Ditch the Mullahs. Ditch the hijabs.
exactly
I think we are going to some sort of revolution from the inside in the next 6 months.
Killing their number 2 guy and 2 car loads of other fellow terrorists was the best thing we ever did for them
This gives the people who want freedom opportunity to take back their government.
President Trump made a statement that we are listening
This article is as close as the NYT can come to admitting that Trump’s policy of sanctions is working in Iran.
...
You’re right.
Trump knows how to win and he’s doing that against Iran.
“The bleak economy appears to be tempering the willingness of Iran to escalate hostilities with the United States, its leaders cognizant that war could profoundly worsen national fortunes.”
Obama. John Kerry, and the NYT think it would be smarter to have Iran was in a position to escalate hostilities. They would reverse the sanctions in a second. Idiots cannot comprehend that countries do what they are capable of, and are only constrained by incapacity.
Totally agree. Just imagine if Obama had employed Trump’s strategy 10 years ago. Iran would have been free of the Mullahs by now. Of course, that assumes Obama wanted a free Iran. I’m sure he did not.
Dump the iron hearted Mullahs and go back to the Shah. Open the place up to the west. It could be a great nation again. What is the Shah’s son doing these days? Maybe trump should meet with him?
I would say that because of peanut,we are in this shit show in the mid east.
YES! And thanks to peanut we got this shit show over there.
Maybe the Shah was a ruthless SOB, Maybe he was not. But the only thing these camel jockeys understand is ruthlessness.
Who said “Trump’s foreign policy is infantile.”? I may be paraphrasing.
“as close as they come”
Yeah, the whole article is centered on Trump’s success...
But manages to never say so.
Though the Reza Shah Pahlavi’s son seems like a decent and temperate sort (I’ve seen him at a small political gathering), I would advise against Trump embracing him as a solution. The Iranians themselves need to terminate the theocratic oligarchs and fanatics, and create their own future. The US should keep hands off, so that the new government is seen as legitimate. This is actually the Shah-in-Waiting’s own position.
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