Iran’s outgoing president Hassan Rouhani has once again said that if his government had not been restricted in nuclear negotiations, sanctions would have been lifted earlier this year and the country’s battered economy would have started to recover.
In remarks on Sunday delivered at an annual meeting of the central bank, Rouhani defended his government’s economic record, reiterating that difficult conditions since 2018 “have been forced” on his administration. He was referring to the United States sanctions imposed by former president Donald Trump when he withdrew from the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran.
Rouhani did not elaborate who “tied the hands and feet” of the government in nuclear talks as he put it, but earlier he had blamed legislation passed last December by his hardliner opponents in parliament who set forth tough conditions for talks to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA.
Rouhani argued that if there were no sanctions and pandemic, Iran’s currency would be now trading for 50,000 rials to the US dollar, instead of the current rate of almost fivefold at 250,000 rials. But the rial stood at 30,000 to the dollar in 2017, before Trump’s intention to withdraw from the JCPOA became apparent. What Rouhani said in effect means that even without sanctions and the pandemic Iran’s currency would have fallen precipitously.
Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic, the rial has fallen more than 3,000-fold, from 70 rials to the dollar to 250,000.
Source » trackpersia