Mohamad Machine-Chian
Iran International
Mohamad Machinechian is a senior multimedia journalist at Iran International.
Iran International
Mohamad Machinechian is a senior multimedia journalist at Iran International.
Iran’s currency has lost half its value in just six months and is now at risk of losing its role as both a store of value and a functioning currency, as households and businesses increasingly shift prices, savings, and expectations toward the US dollar.
Cryptocurrency is a rare tool embraced by both Iran’s rulers and its citizens—used at the top to enrich elites to dodge sanctions and at the bottom to survive the economic devastation wrought by their policies.
The future of the Islamic Republic is unresolved, but if and when change comes, Iran’s return to global trade would carry far-reaching consequences for the region’s economy.
What is unfolding in Iran is a clash between a state that treats isolation and sacrifice as strategic virtues, and a society no longer willing to bear the economic and human cost of the Islamic Republic’s ideological and regional ambitions.
Three days after merchants ignited strikes across Iran, the country’s bazaar is now openly defying the Islamic Republic, marking a historic break between conservative traders and a state accused of sacrificing livelihoods to missiles and security spending.
Tehran’s newly announced fuel price changes have been presented as a long-overdue reform of an unsustainable subsidy system, but they amount to an undeclared form of austerity aimed at rolling back subsidies with minimal political exposure.
