Economy

Al-Monitor – Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi said Tehran and Jakarta have decided to stop using the dollar in their bilateral trade as he visited the southeast Asian Muslim nation on Tuesday, his website reported.  Standing next to his Indonesian counterpart Joko Widodo at a televised presser in Jakarta, Raisi declared that the two sides were now set to use the Iranian national …

Iranwire – “If the depreciation of resources continue, the National Development Fund will be completely annihilated,” Mehdi Ghazanfari, chairman of the fund’s board of directors, has warned. The sovereign wealth fund was established in 2011 to transform revenues from the sale of oil, gas, gas condensate and oil products into productive investments for future generations. The fund is a member of the International …

VOA – Iran’s oil minister Javad Owji said that the oil market is on the right track after decisions made by OPEC+, the semi-official Iranian news agency Tasnim reported on Wednesday. “Iran and Russia have the same views inside OPEC+,” Owji added on the sidelines of an Iranian-Russian conference of economic cooperation held in Tehran. OPEC and its allies led …

Al-Monitor – Iran and Russia signed a major railway agreement on Wednesday. The deal is part of the International North–South Transport Corridor the two countries are developing with India to rival the Suez Canal. The $1.6 billion agreement is to build a 162-kilometer (100-mile) railway between the Iranian city of Rasht on the Caspian Sea and the Iranian city of Astara …

Iranwire – The president of the restaurateurs association of Mashhad has said that 255 restaurants in the north-eastern Iranian city, out of a total of 1,200, closed their doors last year due to ballooninginflation and a drop in people’s purchasing power. “If the government gives us meat and chicken at low prices, then we can offer meals to our customers at low prices as well,” Hassan Amirian said on May 13. The price for a kilogram …

Al-Arabia – Iranian authorities have arrested eight people for “leading” a workers’ strike at a key gas site in the south of the country, local media reported on Sunday. “Eight main leaders of the workers’ strike in the South Pars projects have been arrested by the intelligence services,” Akbar Pourat, the deputy local governor, was quoted as saying by Tasnim …

gatestoneinstitute.org – In an editorial last Monday, Kayhan, believed to reflect the views of the “Supreme Guide”, claimed that now that the Islamic Republic has defeated the American “Great Satan” in the Middle East, it must deal with hyperinflation as “the greatest threat to our revolution.” The new tune may be partly prompted by a desire to cast the current nationwide …

Al-Monitor – Iran has been ramping up trade with members of the BRICS group, as Tehran looks to join the five-nation alliance that is often seen as an alternative to the Western economic and political hegemony.  BRICS is comprised of the emerging economies of Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa. The alliance accounts for 42% of the global population and about …

gatestoneinstitute.org – Iranian workers… have launched a series of strikes and sit-ins to protest what they regard as “systemic exploitation.” By the time of this writing, over 100,000 workers were on strike in 122 businesses in 35 cities, relatively small numbers yet significant for two reasons: the protests seem to be spreading and the strikes begin to affect the nerve-centers …

Iranwire – Iran’s most prominent Sunni cleric again used his Friday sermon to criticize the Islamic Republic’s policies, saying that the intensifying economic crisis has impoverished many Iranians. “You have missed all opportunities to solve the nuclear crisis and have failed to address the issue of sanctions,” Molavi Abdulhamid, the Sunni Friday prayer leader of the south-eastern city of Zahedan, …