Page 4 - IRANRptJul22

1.0 Executive summary
Iran’s economic growth recorded 5.7% in the third quarter of the current Iranian calendar year (September 23 – December 21, 2021), according to a report by the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) on March 14. Iran’s economy has continued to rebound despite US sanctions still levied on it through local production and a boost in exports thanks to high oil and gas prices in the global market.
The CBI’s report said that the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) stood at $13.4bn in the three-month period, showing 5.7% growth compared to last year’s corresponding period. The report put the country’s overall economic growth in the nine months to December 21, 2021 at 4.1%.
This would mean Iran has emerged from the long and bitter three-year recession that set in around May 2018 following then US president Donald Trump’s reintroduction of heavy sanctions on Tehran. Officials have credited higher exports and a general realignment of the economy, necessitated by the impact of heavy US sanctions, with securing the new growth.
The chances of reviving the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the major powers are worse after indirect US-Iranian talks held in Doha this week that ended without progress, a senior US official told Reuters on June 30. The talks saw European Union officials shuttle between the two sides trying to revive the nuclear deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), under which Iran curbed its nuclear development programme to guarantee it was kept entirely civilian in nature. In return for doing so, Iran was granted relief from economic sanctions.
Iran, however, has presented the Doha talks as a positive development. At the same time, it has pointed the finger at the US for not providing guarantees that a new US administration would not again abandon the deal Trump-style.
The talks between Iran and the US have been deadlocked since March and ended without an agreement. Tehran's insistence that Washington remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a state entity, from its Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list is thought to be the key obstacle preventing Iran and the US from sealing an agreement.
The three European countries that signed the JCPOA seven years ago, namely France, Germany and the UK, on June 30 urged Tehran to seize an offer that is on the table to reinstate the nuclear deal.
Britain, Germany, and France told the UN Security Council that negotiations to restore the JCPOA “have resulted in a viable deal being on the table since early March". They added that they regretted that Iran “has refused to seize this diplomatic opportunity and continued its nuclear escalation."
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin met in Turkmen capital Ashgabat on June 29 calling for trade independent of the Western financial exchange system. Raisi remarked that an independent financial system would make it "impossible for any country to exert influence or pressure on it".
4 IRAN Country Report July 2022 www.intellinews.com