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would push Iran's economic output down by 1.5% in 2018 and 3.6% in 2019.
Pressure from the sanctions has also led to the collapse of the rial in 2018, but towards the end of the year it made a remarkable half-recovery as the Iranian central bank made interventions and the markets realised Trump’s plan to strangle Iran’s economy was not yet in top gear . By the market close on February 17, 2019, bonbast.com reported that a dollar was selling at IRR130,000 on the free market and in mid-December there were even anecdotal reports of trades just below the IRR100,000 threshold. Those rates starkly contrast with the situation in late September when the rial to the dollar rate approached 200,000. At the start of 2018, the rial stood at around 30,000 to the USD.
January 31 brought some good news in the fight to fend off the Trump administration’s attempts to throttle the Iranian economy – Europe finally announced the registration of a special purpose vehicle it intends to use to help build up sanctions-shielded trade between Iran and EU member states. However, the mechanism—named Instex (Instrument In Support Of Trade Exchanges)—will start off with very modest targets and opinion is divided on how far it can progress.
2.0 Politics
2.1 Rouhani says US individuals to be sued in Iranian
court over impact of sanctions on ordinary people
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declared in a March 18 speech that Tehran is preparing a lawsuit to be lodged “in a competent court inside Iran” against US individuals involved in imposing sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
The move is unlikely to amount to more than a PR stunt against US officials who have brought in a tougher than ever sanctions regime that has placed Iranian consumers under terrible pressure from rising prices and a collapsed currency.
"The world should know that what America has done was not against the Iranian state, it was not against Iran's nuclear program, it was against the wellbeing of the Iranian people," Rouhani said.
He went on to say that sanctions have wrought havoc with the lives of ordinary people, with food and medical supplies among the areas affected, despite Washington’s claims that it would allow sufficient humanitarian trade with the Iranians.
Some reports says that under the sanctions the average Iranian has become two-thirds poorer in the past year. The Iranian rial has lost as much as 70% of its value against the US dollar.
US State Department officials said on March 13 that further sanctions against Iran were impending .
5 IRAN Country Report April 2019 www.intellinews.com