An Iranian woman window shops in Tehran's gold bazaar on October 6, 2012. Iran's currency has fallen to a record low against the dollar due to sanctions. Photo CFP

While admitting that economic sanctions have resulted in high inflation and unemployment in Iran, 35-year-old Iranian man Pouya Azadeh is not at all pessimistic when talking about their impact.

"The sanctions have made Iran more economically independent than before. I don't think they have much impact on our everyday life," he told the Global Times in perfect Putonghua.

Studying for his doctorate in literature at Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU), Azadeh is unwavering in his tone when talking about Iran's nuclear program.

"I believe Iran's nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, because it's against Iran's Islamic law to produce nuclear weapons," he said firmly.
Many countries consern that Iran's nuclear program is aimed at building nuclear weapons, but Iran has insisted it is for civilian purposes.

Squeezed households

Economic sanctions by the international community imposed in response to Iran's nuclear program have dealt a heavy blow to the country's economy.

The value of Iran's currency, the rial, has plunged in the last two years. Trading at 16,000 rial per US dollar at the beginning of 2012, the rial-to-dollar rate is 36,000 to one as of April 30, Forbes reported.

Adding even more pressure onto the deteriorating Iranian economy, the US House of Representatives passed a bill on July 31 that aims to cut Iran's oil exports by another 1 million barrels per day over a year to near zero.

Kenneth Katzman, an expert on Iran affairs at the Congressional Research Service, the US Congress' think tank, told the Global Times that the effect of the new US sanctions would be "close to" that of an embargo on Iranian oil.

A Chinese journalist, who has worked in Iran for more than three years, told the Global Times on condition of anonymity that Iranian people's spending power has been substantially constricted during the past three years because salaries have not been adjusted for surging inflation.

According to him, an Iranian government employee earned an average of 5 to 6 million rial each month, the equivalent of $500 to $600 before the sanctions, but that amount can only be converted to about $200 now.

Moreover, prices of many electronic products and imported goods have more than doubled in the past three years, he said.

"A Japanese-made print cartridge at our office was bought at about 150,000 rial at the beginning of 2010. But when I went to buy a new cartridge a few days ago, the price had risen to 740,000 rial," he said.

Survival strategy

However, despite the record inflation, prices of essential goods such as food, gasoline and medicine have not increased sharply, due to a series of measures adopted by the Iranian government, the Chinese journalist said.

In a bid to ease the impact of sanctions, the Iranian government has allowed importers of basic commodities and medicines to buy US dollars at a subsidized rate much lower than the rate for ordinary buyers.

To meet domestic demand for gasoline after sanctions stopped many foreign companies from selling it to Iran, the Iranian government boosted gasoline production from major refineries and petrochemical plants.

Iran's oil ministry has said the Islamic country's gasoline production increased by 170 percent from late 2010 to 2012, according to Iran's Fars news agency.

As another measure to cushion the blow of sanctions, Iran sometimes turns to barter deals to overcome difficulties in money transfers resulting from sanctions.

Amir Jafarpour, deputy head of the Transportation and Fuel Management Committee, said the transaction difficulties have forced Iran to order 315 subway cars from China as payment for crude oil exports, the Iranian news website tasnimnews.com reported on July 29.

Admitting the barter arrangement can be a mitigating factor against sanctions, Kenneth Katzman added that such deals are very common in Iran's trade with China, India, Japan and South Korea.

Public voice

Although galloping prices and declining spending power have added a great deal of pressure to Iranian people's lives, Li Weijian, director of the Institute of Foreign Policy Studies under the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, told the Global Times that the Islamic country seems to be highly consistent in its stance toward the nuclear program, considering it their sovereign right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful use.

"The general Iranian public is presented with the official narrative that economic hardships are the price that they need to pay to safeguard their political independence," Abolghasem Bayyenat, an independent foreign policy analyst, wrote in an article published on the Asia Times website early this year. "Western demands on Iran's nuclear program are represented as illogical and discriminatory and thus must be resisted."

Since the Iranian public perceives the economic hardships as a sacrifice for the country's independence and also due to the government's subsidies for essential goods, the decline in living conditions has not resulted in a widespread public revolt against the Iranian government, Li said.

"The economic sanctions have indeed brought some inconvenience to ordinary people, but in the long run, Iran's national economy will become less dependent on foreign countries thanks to the sanctions," another Iranian doctoral candidate at the BLCU, who only gave his Chinese name as Ye Xi, told the Global Times.

Hitting out at the US' allegation of Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons capability, Ye's classmate Mohammad Kadkhodaei said it was just "an excuse" for their sanctions in order to "set barriers for Iran's development."

It's because the US won't let Iran set an example for Arab countries that are mostly puppets of the US government, he told the Global Times.

"The US wants to deprive Iranian people of their inalienable and undeniable right - the right to develop uranium enrichment technology and use it for peaceful purposes," he added.

Asked if he would go back to Iran after graduation, Kadkhodaei answered "definitely."