Ali is busy butchering a sheep carcass he just received from his slaughterhouse in southern Tehran, preparing to sell it to buyers who, like him, are complaining about their diminished purchasing power due to soaring inflation in Iran. and is considered by experts to be the sharpest in recent decades.
“His sales have plummeted, almost halved,” Ali, 50, told AFP. “People’s purchasing power has plummeted.”
“What can I say?” he adds on the sidewalk, where shoppers are waiting for him in the Moloy business district. I’m a butcher, but sometimes I don’t eat meat once a week, everything has risen in price.”
Iran is facing a severe economic and life crisis largely due to the sanctions that Washington has reintroduced on Tehran following former US President Donald Trump’s decision to unilaterally withdraw his country from the Iranian nuclear deal in 2018.
The crisis has affected various aspects of life, such as the depreciation of the local currency and the inflation rate, which annually exceeds the 40 percent threshold since 2018, experts say.
And economic analyst Said Lailaz argues that maintaining that percentage “for four years in a row is unprecedented and the most serious since World War II.”
Inflation continued to accelerate for several weeks after President Ibrahim Raisi’s government announced amendments to the subsidy system in the second half of May and raised prices for basic commodities such as flour, meat, eggs and vegetable oil.
Hundreds of people have taken to the streets in recent weeks in several cities to protest against rising prices, and these protest movements have added to others that have been carried out for several months by various professional circles, demanding higher wages and pensions to account for inflation.
