Sanctions and the US-Israel war on Iran have left the country’s people unable to keep pace with rising prices as the rial hits a new all-time low.
By Alia Chughtai, Fatemah Karimkhan and Maziar Motamedi
(Al Jazeera) – The Iranian rial has fallen to a new all-time low against the US dollar, dropping past 2 million rials to $1 on the free market after Washington launched its toughest sanctions yet in efforts to strangle Tehran’s economy.
Iran’s economy has been crippled by decades of US and international sanctions, especially over its nuclear programme – the Iranian rial has crashed and inflation woes are piling up misery for people. The US-Israel war on Iran, launched on February 28, worsened the economic woes for the country of some 92 million people.
To understand how much everyday items now cost, Al Jazeera tracked the prices of food, clothing and medicines on the streets of Tehran, comparing them with what the same goods cost in the days before the war.
How much do basic necessities cost in Iran?
Before the war, 2 million rials could buy about 4kg of tomatoes, half a kilo of chicken and a little less than a litre of cooking oil.
Today, the same amount buys about half as much, with the average price of tomatoes increasing by 71 percent, chicken by 74 percent and cooking oil by 177 percent.
The price of insulin, the baseline survival for diabetics, has shot up by 642 percent, while essential medicine like paracetamol has become dearer by 93 percent, and baby formula, largely subsidised by the government, has become costlier by 95 percent.
