Page 12 - IRANRptMar20

Iran drops six places to 170 on latest World Press Freedom Index
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Iran has placed 170th out of 180 countries in the​ ​World Press Freedom Index 2019​ ​compiled by Reporters Without Borders, six places down on where it finished in the previous year’s ranking.
The decline has coincided with the sanctions-led economic attack which the US launched last year to strangle Iran's economy to force concessions on its Middle East policies. Analysts say this has given hardliners in Iran the upper hand in many areas of Iranian society which were previously starting to liberalise as economic growth rates improved in line with the multilateral nuclear deal. Since the US walked out of that deal and imposed its heaviest sanctions ever on the Islamic Republic, the country has found itself pushed back into recession.
In a short summary put out with the latest ranking, the Reporters Without Borders said: “Iran has been one of the world’s most repressive countries for journalists for the past 40 years. State control of news and information is unrelenting and at least 860 journalists and citizen-journalists have been imprisoned or executed since 1979.
It added: “The Islamic regime exercises extensive control over the media landscape and its harassment of independent journalists, citizen-journalists and independent media has not let up. They are constantly subjected to intimidation, arbitrary arrest and long jail sentences imposed by revolutionary courts at the end of unfair trials.
“The media that are still resisting increasingly lack the resources to report freely and independently. As a result, it is the citizen-journalists on social networks who are now at the centre of the battles for freely- reported news and information and for political change in Iran. The regime has extended its fight against media freedom beyond the country’s borders and also targets the international media.”
3.0​ ​Macro Economy
3.1​ ​Macroeconomic overview
Sanctions hammered Iran saw GDP shrink 8.7% in 2019 and can’t expect growth in 2020 says World Bank
The “economic war” waged by the US against Iran has exacted an even worse toll on the Islamic Republic’s economy than was anticipated if the latest World Bank assessment is correct.
In the​ ​January 2020 edition of its Global Economic Prospects report​ released on January 9, the World Bank estimates that Iranian GDP contracted by as much as 8.7% in 2019, a year that saw the Trump administration gradually introduce tougher and tougher sanctions against Tehran including a drive to squeeze all Iranian oil off world export markets. In the June 2019 edition of the report, the international financial institution​ ​only foresaw a contraction of 4.5%.
In further bad news for Iran, while the World Bank six months ago was counting with a resumption of Iranian growth in 2020 to 0.9%, it now sees stagnation of 0.0%. And that figure, it added, “assumes that the impact of sanctions tapers somewhat”. Whether that tapering occurs may well depend on whether US President Donald Trump regards it as in his interests as his campaign to get re-elected in November ramps up.
12​ IRAN Country Report​ March 2020 www.intellinews.com