Iran's Rial Hyperinflates - Protests Ensue

[The Dharma Bum]

[Sandman]

[The Comrade]

Food may not be included but the resulting inflation us making it harder and hardt for Iranians to afford food

[Sandman]

[The Comrade]

Okay well tell that to the women selling their jewelry to afford food.

[The Dharma Bum]

[NAB]

[Sandman]

Look, I'm not defending sanctions (not a fan), and I'm certainly not arguing that they'll be successful in Iran. They haven't and they won't. In fact, all signs seem to show that Ahmadinejad and the clerical leadership of Iran welcome the sanctions as a way to rally the populace. All I'm saying is sanctions themselves do not lead to starvation, and this myth that's been circulating since the mid-90's is oversimplified junk, red meat for Chomsky stans. You think Iraq proves that they do cause starvation, but it's actually the best example that the issue is much more complex than you are portraying it to be. Remember "oil-for-food"? The humanitarian program Saddam rejected for 6 whole years because he WANTED the Iraqi people to be wholly dependent on his rations? Remember when the oil embargo was partially lifted to allow Iraq to make BILLIONS of dollars to use towards food and medicine for their people? The profits were made and people still died from lack of supplies. Blame the UN, blame the US, but the cold, hard truth is that the worst results of sanctions always come from the unreasonable dictatorial responses to them.

Economic sanctions are effective not because they threaten starvation, but because they make life uncomfortable. The situation in Iran has been uncomfortable but not unlivable for years, and because of growing political backlash, the Iranian government has chosen to f*ck with the rial to try to artificially bring prices back down, which any high school economics student could tell you would result in hyperinflation. Every case of hyperinflation in the history of the modern world is caused by the same thing, and I'll give you a hint, it ain't trade embargos from a handful of nations among hundreds. Iranians are trading jewelry for food because their government is practicing bad economics with the currency, not because food itself is short. The price of EVERYTHING has inflated in Iran, not just food, and in context, not just the goods that are actually targeted by the sanctions.

[The Dharma Bum]

[Spider]

Something to bear in mind is that the US embargoed Iran decades ago. It didn't matter much to them.

What's stinging them now are the sanctions coming down from the other dozens of nations in the game. When the EU threw down against them, they started really suffering.