Vol. 77/No. 4      February 4, 2013

The new penalties add to multiple rounds of retaliatory measures by Washington and its imperialist allies aimed at forcing Tehran to abandon its program of nuclear research, which they say is geared toward developing nuclear weapons. The Iranian government maintains the program is for electric power generation and medical purposes.

The new law “seeks to block Tehran’s ability to barter its oil for gold and precious metals, and significantly widens the number of Iranian energy, shipping and financial entities on the U.S. blacklist, and bars foreign firms from doing business with them,” the Wall Street Journal wrote Jan. 3.

When the Senate adopted an earlier version of the law in November, media stressed it was above all aimed at Turkey’s purchase in gold of Iranian natural gas—a way for both countries to circumvent U.S. and European Union banking sanctions banning payments in U.S. dollars or euros.

But more recent coverage highlighted the scope of the bartering operations the Iranian government had to put in place in order to dodge the imperialist squeeze.

“In exchange for oil, Iran receives not dollars as before, but wheat and tea from India, rice from Uruguay, meat and fruit from Pakistan and everything from zippers to bricks from China,” the same Journal article added.

Oil exports have been slashed 40 percent in the previous nine months under the impact of the sanctions, Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi told the Iranian parliament’s planning and budget committee Jan. 7. The drop came with a 45 percent decrease in collecting oil payments.

The sharp decline is undermining Iran’s finances. In 2011 Tehran relied on $100 billion income from oil exports to cover 60 percent of the budget. According to a Jan. 8 dispatch by Israel’s Arutz Sheva, the sanctions are currently costing around $5 billion a month in lost revenues to the Iranian government.

The head of the planning and budget committee, Gholamreza Mesbahi Moghadam, recently said the government was facing a $60 billion deficit in 2012.

Under these pressures, the Iranian “rial has reportedly lost more than 80 percent of its value since 2011,” the BBC reported Jan 7. The Associated Press says the drop was about 50 percent in October alone.

In response, the Iranian government stopped subsidizing currency rates for travelers and students, as well as subsidies for merchants importing anything but essential food and medical items.

Iran’s Health Minister Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi was sacked Dec. 27 after criticizing the government for not providing sufficient funds to supply hospitals. “Luxury cars have been imported with subsidized dollars but I don’t know what happened to the dollars that were supposed to be allocated for importing medicine,” she was reported as saying.

Reuters reported Jan. 12 that Air France-KLM and Austrian Airlines were halting services to Iran, “a sign of the crumbling purchasing power” of Iranian customers under the weight of sanctions.

Impact on working people

Production in Iran’s car industry declined 60 to 80 percent last year, the paper added, “leading to hundreds of thousands losing their jobs, according to Iranian media reports. Many manufacturers of automobile spare parts are working at 40% capacity because of a shortage of cash and a lack of raw materials, according to a statement by one of the industry’s union leaders.”

In October, unions organizing truckers who transport fuel and gas in the city of Isfahan staged a two-day strike to protest the exploding costs of living and maintaining their trucks while their wages remain the same.

Iran’s Central Bank announced Jan. 9 that the country’s annual inflation rate hit 27.4 percent at the end of 2012, one of the highest since Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office in 2005.

The Iranian government “has floated specific dates for reopening talks” over its nuclear program with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council—China, France, Russia, the U.S. and the U.K.—plus Germany, The Associated Press reported Jan. 19.

Three rounds of such talks last year broke down in June in Moscow. The six countries announced in November they had reached an agreement to resume negotiations.

Tehran refused in the previous talks to scale back its uranium enrichment program unless major economic sanctions are rescinded. Meanwhile, Reuters reported Jan. 18 that inspectors from the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency returned without coming to an agreement with Tehran.

The IAEA has been demanding access to the Parchin military complex south of Tehran, where it claims explosive tests relevant for nuclear weapons development may have taken place. New talks are scheduled for Feb. 12 in Tehran.  
 
 
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