Nuclear deal could unleash Iran’s economy
After almost 15 years of intermittent negotiations, Iran and the P5+1 group of six major world powers have reached a framework agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. The deal couldn’t have come soon enough for the Iranian economy, which has been crippled by sanctions imposed by the U.S. and the United Nations. At the same time, state oil revenues are shrinking every day, and unemployment and inflation have soared to levels not seen since the catastrophic […]
Swimming Against the Tide: The Robust Role of the State in the Era of Knowledge-Based Economy
Masoud Movahed is a doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He contributes to, among others, Foreign Affairs, Harvard International Review, Yale Journal of International Affairs, World Economic Forum and Al Jazeera English. There have been numerous growth models presented by economists since the early emergence of capitalism as a new form of organizing economic resources. Broadly, the growth models can be divided into three main categories: 1) the Smithian theories of development that place […]
A Wake-up Call to Rouhani
The post-revolutionary state in Iran is an intriguingly complex political system. Constituted of a series of composite institutional arrangements with competing roles, the Iranian state is a hybrid of both democratic and theocratic institutions. Presidential elections, however constrained by the theocratic components of the political system, determine who will seize the halls of power. Since 2013, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani—who has much more in common with the reformists than the conservatives—won elections twice. During both […]
Rebooting Iran’s Economy: What Tehran Needs to Do to Fix its Finances
he deal between Iran and the P5+1 powers could not have come sooner for the Iranian economy, which has been crippled by some of the twenty-first century’s strictest economic sanctions. The United Nations Security Council’s trade embargoes against Tehran caused the state’s oil revenues to shrink daily, and made Iran’s national currency devalue by almost 80 percent. Unemployment and inflation simultaneously soared to unprecedented levels, and the Iranian economy plummeted to pre-sanctions levels. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has managed to jump-start a modest economic recovery […]
Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” strategy is doomed to fail, especially as tensions rise between Iran and the United States.
Iran’s economy has been through a lot in the past four years. After the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was designed to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, was sealed in 2015, Iran immediately received sanctions relief: its GDP promptly grew by a staggering rate of 12 percent, and European companies started investing in the country’s key sectors such as oil, gas, and automobiles. But then last May, Donald Trump withdrew from JCPOA […]