'I can dream it, but I can't afford it': Iranians on their bleak economy

Transcript

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

While I was in Iran last week, I heard something that summed up how life is going there. We were chatting with a woman in her 60s in Tehran's Grand Bazaar - this enormous labyrinth of shops and stalls, spice dealers, perfume dealers, carpet salesmen.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Farsi).

UNIDENTIFIED INTERPRETER: She says that we have a nice saying in Iran. We say that the first 100 years of life is difficult. The rest will be easy.

KELLY: (Laughter).

She told us through our interpreter that she was just looking around, not really buying, which is understandable because the economy in Iran is terrible, to put it bluntly. Prices are up - way up - for just about everything - people's incomes, not so much.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Through interpreter) Nobody's happy, but we're forced to get along 'cause there's nothing else we can do.

KELLY: We went to Iran to hear from regular people after months of protests following the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini. She was pulled off the street for allegedly violating the country's strict dress code for women. She died in police custody. That was the spark. But part of what fueled the protests was a sense of economic desperation. Nearly everyone we talked to in Iran brought it up, even fervent supporters of the regime.

(CROSSTALK)

KELLY: At the Grand Bazaar, you hear it before you even set foot inside. Out front, illegal currency traders are circling, swapping dollars and euros for Iranian tomans. At first, no one wants to talk to us.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).

UNIDENTIFIED INTERPRETER: He's saying there are lots of cameras here, and I don't want to do an interview.

KELLY: This trader pointing up at cameras bristling from the walls above us was one of many people we spoke with who worried about the risks of speaking critically about life in Iran. We agreed not to use names. People come to this black market because, legally, you can only exchange a maximum of about 5,000 U.S. dollars. The Iranian government wants to keep people from hoarding them.

And what is the price today? If I give him $1, he gives me what?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Through interpreter) Forty-four thousand and five hundred tomans.

KELLY: Iran's official currency is the rial, but people often refer to prices in tomans. Whichever you're using, what you just heard is, for Iranians, about the worst the exchange rate has ever been. Inflation in Iran is close to 50%.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken).

KELLY: We head into the bazaar and, before long, find ourselves sipping tea, sitting on a pile of carpets, swapping stories with the man trying to sell them.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Why are you not sitting? Please, sit there.

KELLY: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: OK.

KELLY: I was here three years ago in 2020, and I've come back to see what's changed, how people are getting on.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Everything has changed.

KELLY: Like what?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: The change means the life has changed, you know? For example, the price is expensive - 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 times more than before.

KELLY: Price of what?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: For everything - you know? - for the house, for the food.

KELLY: And the weak currency makes carpets more expensive, too. Silk from China costs more. So does Merino wool from Australia. On top of that, there are fewer buyers for his rugs. When the U.S. withdrew from the nuclear agreement with Iran in 2018, it reimposed tough sanctions, including a ban on importing carpets from Iran.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: My main customer was America or Europe or abroad. That is the - at least, I think it's like 70% of the carpet which they make - they had to call somebody in the - outside of Iran.

KELLY: Seventy percent of his customers from outside Iran. That is how it was. Today between sanctions and fewer tourists, he sells more like 10% of his carpets to foreigners, mostly Chinese and Russian who are not bound by U.S. and European sanctions. Right on cue, as we're wrapping up our interview, a Russian couple wanders in to take a look at his offerings.

(CROSSTALK)

KELLY: A few hours later, in a different part of town, Manouchehri Street in South Tehran, we meet a 75-year-old man. He's got a blanket laid out on the sidewalk, selling old camera parts, odds and ends. He's retired, but comes here to keep busy and make a little extra money. Like the carpet seller, he blames most of Iran's economic problems on American sanctions.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Through interpreter) We are under the boots of America, under the boots of the U.K. and some other countries, perhaps. And these full sanctions are making life hard for everybody.

KELLY: What would you like America to do - lift sanctions - put more pressure on the government - what?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Through interpreter) America hasn't really done anything for us ever ever. If we want to do something, we have to do something for ourselves.

KELLY: To fact-check some of this, I spoke with Saeed Laylaz. He's an economist who's advised a number of Iranian presidents including Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate who left office in 2021. Laylaz says that, yes, U.S. sanctions have hurt. But he puts the blame for Iran's economic malaise squarely at the feet of Iran's leaders.

SAEED LAYLAZ: All pains which you see in our streets, is directly come from mismanagement of economy...

KELLY: From Iranian mismanagement.

LAYLAZ: Exactly.

KELLY: Iran has created its own economic problems.

LAYLAZ: Exactly. Exactly. Some looters are governing this economy and this country.

KELLY: Laylaz says Iran's runaway inflation is caused by how much money the government prints to fund its spending and because of corruption at state-owned banks. And he says investors are afraid to do business in Iran because the government has a history of seizing companies. On the plus side, he points to growing economic ties with Russia and India to growing trade in the region with Afghanistan, Iraq.

I know it's impossible to predict the future, but if I were to ask you, 10 years from now, where do you see Iran's economy being, what's the range of possibility?

LAYLAZ: Much, much better than now, it will be. I am very hopeful about the future of Iran. Iran will solve all problems, like China, like Vietnam, like even Russia, like every other totalitarian country in the world in the past in which despotism will remain. But from ideological point of view, everything will change.

KELLY: Whether or not that comes to pass, right now, life in Iran is hard for many. Back on Manouchehri Street, I pop into a corner grocery store and buy a Twix for 40,000 Iranian tomans - about a buck. There's a 27-year-old working the counter, and we strike up a conversation. He tells me, in Iran, he can afford a cup of coffee, but not a house or a car - not the things he needs to be independent. You can't plan for the future in Iran, he says.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: It's just a dream for us that is not going to happen. I can only dream it, but I can't afford it.

KELLY: Who is responsible? Who do you blame for the economy and daily life being like this?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: The regime. If I want to be clear, the regime.

KELLY: I ask him about the recent protests against the regime, which have now largely been suppressed and driven underground.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: It's not the protests. Let's say it's a change. It's going to happen.

KELLY: I ask whether he still has hope, and here, his eyes light up.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: I didn't lost my hope, and I hope all my countrymen don't lose their hope. Every change like this needs time.

KELLY: Tomorrow, we'll look at the dissent that fueled those protests and what happens to it now. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.