TEHRAN: Mehdi Dolatyari watched with dread in recent months as once-affordable goods at his central Tehran supermarket soared out of reach for his customers. Iranians who previously bought sacks of staple foods at the store now struggle to scrape together enough for meals, as the country’s currency sinks to new lows against the dollar.
“Rice is awfully expensive,” Dolatyari said, describing how its price has nearly doubled.
With US sanctions still strangling the economy, record-breaking inflation has hit ordinary Iranians where it hurts most. Stunned shoppers are cutting meat and dairy from their diets, buying less and less each month.
The Iranian rial is now about 270,000 to the dollar — compared with 32,000 rials for $1 at the time of Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. That has decimated people’s salaries and savings.
Inflation has soared to 45 percent, the highest level since 1994, while food prices have skyrocketed by nearly 60 percent.
The causes are multiple and overlapping. Among them: a sinking economy devastated by years of sanctions linked to Iran’s nuclear program; supply chain disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic; and a steady decline in local production.
Gross domestic product plunged by almost 60 percent from 2017 to 2020, the Chamber of Commerce reported last week, with its head Gholamhossein Shafeie describing the drop as a “serious warning for the future of Iran’s economy.”
Families now find their money increasingly worthless and must forgo foods once considered staples.
Compared with a year ago, the price of milk, yogurt and eggs has swelled by nearly 80 percent. The cost of vegetables and meat has risen by some 70 percent, and the cheapest basics like bread and rice by more than 50 percent, according to the government statistics agency.
“We see prices get more and more expensive every day,” said Ozra Edalat, 63, an exasperated shopper. “It’s terrible. How is it possible to get by with such low salaries?”
Many Iranians say they’re shopping less than ever before.
“Now I can only buy groceries once a month,” said Ghane Khiabani, a mother of three in Tehran. “We have to be pinching pennies.”
Severe sanctions were reimposed by the US in 2018 when then-President Donald Trump withdrew Washington from the landmark nuclear accord, and hope that world powers will find a path back to the deal remains elusive. Negotiations in Vienna over the agreement’s resurrection paused in June just before hard-line Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi took office, with no date set for their resumption.
Iran’s weak economy suffered from mismanagement for decades, experts say, but sanctions, particularly on the crucial energy sector that block the government from selling crude oil abroad, have hastened the decline.
“The main cause of the current high inflation is internal, bureaucratic and executive inefficiencies,” said economist Morteza Afghahi. “However, since we are dependent on selling crude oil ... and on foreign currencies earned through oil revenues, we have become more vulnerable under sanctions.”
The shortage of dollars has prompted the government to print more and more rials to pay what it owes, stimulating the economy but stoking inflation.
As a result, many Iranians have been pushed into poverty. In the past year, the number of citizens living under the official poverty line — bringing home less than the equivalent of $46 a month — increased by nearly 40 percent, the government’s own figures show.
Another casualty of inflation may be the Iranian grocery store itself.
The explosion of major chains and online shopping, along with increasingly rising rents, slim profit margins and dwindling customers, have left small- and medium-sized shops struggling to survive, unable to compete with the discounts on bulk buying found in big franchises.
“It’s not economical to run the shop anymore,” said Ali Donyaie, 71, who opened his grocery store in Tehran more than four decades ago.
At stake is not only the price of goods, but the fate of thousands of cashiers, fruit sellers and meat cutters. The layoffs will ripple across the economy, warned Saeed Derakhshani, head of Iran’s supermarkets union, dealing yet another blow to those who already can only afford a few essentials.
“A retailer won’t be able to survive,” Derakhshani said. “What happens to their business, their families and those who labor for them?”
Beset by US sanctions, Iranians struggle with high food prices
https://arab.news/8yac7
Beset by US sanctions, Iranians struggle with high food prices
UN chief condemns ‘escalation’ between Yemen’s Houthis and Israel
“The Secretary-General condemns the escalation between Yemen and Israel. Israeli airstrikes today on Sana’a International Airport, the Red Sea ports and power stations in Yemen are especially alarming,” said a spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a statement.
Bodies of about 100 Kurdish women, children found in Iraq mass grave
TAL AL-SHAIKHIA, Iraq: Iraqi authorities are working to exhume the remains of around 100 Kurdish women and children thought to have been killed in the 1980s under former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein, three officials said.
The grave was discovered in Tal Al-Shaikhia in the Muthanna province in southern Iraq, about 15-20 kilometers (10-12 miles) from the main road there, an AFP journalist said.
Specialized teams began exhuming the grave earlier this month after it was initially discovered in 2019, said Diaa Karim, the head of the Iraqi authority for mass graves, adding that it is the second such grave to be uncovered at the site.
“After removing the first layer of soil and the remains appearing clearly, it was discovered that they all belonged to women and children dressed in Kurdish springtime clothes,” Karim told AFP on Wednesday.
He added that they likely came from Kalar in the northern Sulaimaniyah province, part of what is now Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, estimating that there were “no less than 100” people buried in the grave.
Efforts to exhume all the bodies are ongoing, he said, adding that the numbers could change.
Following Iraq’s deadly war with Iran in the 1980s, Saddam’s government carried out the ruthless “Anfal Operation” between 1987 and 1988 in which it is thought to have killed around 180,000 Kurds.
Saddam was toppled in 2003 following a US-led invasion of Iraq and was hanged three years later, putting an end to Iraqi proceedings against him on charges of genocide over the Anfal campaign.
Karim said a large number of the victims found in the grave “were executed here with live shots to the head fired at short range.”
He suggested some of them may have been “buried alive” as there was no evidence of bullets in their remains.
Ahmed Qusai, the head of the excavation team for mass graves in Iraq, meanwhile pointed to “difficulties we are facing at this grave because the remains have become entangled as some of the mothers were holding their infants” when they were killed.
Durgham Kamel, part of the authority for exhuming mass graves, said another mass grave was found at the same time that they began exhuming the one at Tal Al-Shaikhia.
He said the burial site was located near the notorious Nugrat Al-Salman prison where Saddam’s authorities held dissidents.
The Iraqi government estimates that about 1.3 million people disappeared between 1980 and 1990 as a result of atrocities and other rights violations committed under Saddam.
Brother of suspected ‘terrorist’ stabs Tunisia National Guard officer
TUNIS: The brother of a suspected “terrorist” on Thursday stabbed a Tunisian National Guard officer in the eastern Monastir governorate, a judicial source told AFP.
Earlier in the day, a National Guard unit attempted to arrest the suspect — accused by authorities of being a member of a “terrorist group” — at his home, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
During the arrest operation, his brother attacked the officer, the source added.
The source said the officer was hospitalized following the stabbing in his abdomen and was recovering after undergoing surgery.
An investigation was opened by the judicial division combatting terrorism, the source added.
Neither of the brothers, both of whom were taken into police custody, have been named, and the Tunisian interior ministry did not respond to AFP’s request for comment.
Tunisia saw a surge in jihadist groups after the 2011 revolution that overthrew the dictatorship of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Attacks claimed by jihadists in recent years have killed dozens of soldiers and police officers, as well as some civilians and foreign tourists.
Jihadist attacks in Sousse and the capital Tunis in 2015 killed dozens of tourists and police, but authorities say they have since made significant progress against extremism.
Palestinian hospital director says Israeli strike kills 5 staff in Gaza
- WHO has described conditions at Kamal Adwan hospital as “appalling” and said it was operating at a “minimum” level
GAZA STRIP: Five staff at one of northern Gaza’s last functioning hospitals were killed by an Israeli strike on Thursday, the facility’s director said, more than two months into an Israeli operation in the area.
Hossam Abu Safiya, head of the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia, said “an Israeli strike resulted in five martyrs among the hospital staff.” The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Israel has been pressing a major offensive in northern Gaza since October 6, saying it aims to prevent Hamas militants from regrouping.
At the other end of the Palestinian territory, the chief paediatric doctor at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis said three babies had died from a “severe temperature drop” this week as winter cold sets in.
Doctor Ahmed Al-Farra said the most recent case was a three-week-old girl who was “brought to the emergency room with a severe temperature drop, which led to her death.”
A three-day-old baby and another “less than a month old” died on Tuesday, he said.
Meanwhile, in central Gaza, a Palestinian TV channel affiliated with a militant group said five of its journalists were killed on Thursday in an Israeli strike on their vehicle in Gaza, with Israel’s military saying it had targeted a “terrorist cell.”
Witnesses said a missile struck the van while it was parked outside Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat.
The three-week-old girl, Sila Al-Faseeh, was living in a tent in Al-Mawasi, an area designated a humanitarian safe zone by the Israeli military that is home to huge numbers of displaced Palestinians.
“The tents do not protect from the cold, and it gets very cold at night, with no way to keep warm,” said Farra.
He said many mothers were suffering from malnutrition which affected the quality of their breast milk and compounded the risks to newborns.
Sila’s father Mahmoud Al-Faseeh said it was “extremely cold, and the tent is not suitable for living. The children are always sick.”
The United Nations and other organizations have repeatedly decried the worsening humanitarian conditions in Gaza, particularly in the north, since Israel began its latest military offensive in early October.
The World Health Organization has described conditions at Kamal Adwan hospital as “appalling” and said it was operating at a “minimum” level.
Earlier on Thursday, Gaza’s civil defense agency said that five other people had been killed by Israeli strikes during the day in the north of Gaza.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said a 35-year-old soldier was killed in the central Gaza Strip. It brings to 390 the number of Israeli soldiers killed since the start of ground operations in the Palestinian territory.
The journalists’ employer Al-Quds Today said in a statement that a missile hit their broadcast van while it was parked in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
The channel is affiliated with Islamic Jihad, whose militants have fought alongside Hamas in the Gaza Strip and took part in the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war.
The station identified the five staffers as Faisal Abu Al-Qumsan, Ayman Al-Jadi, Ibrahim Al-Sheikh Khalil, Fadi Hassouna and Mohammed Al-Ladaa.
They were killed “while performing their journalistic and humanitarian duty,” the statement said.
The Israeli military said it had conducted a “precise strike” and that those killed “were Islamic Jihad operatives posing as journalists.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists’ Middle East arm said in a statement it was “devastated by the reports.”
“Journalists are civilians and must always be protected,” it added.
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said last week that more than 190 journalists had been killed and at least 400 injured since the start of the war in Gaza.
The war was triggered by the Hamas-led October 7 attack last year, which resulted in 1,208 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 45,399 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable.
Israeli attorney general orders probe into report that alleged Netanyahu’s wife harassed opponents
- Program uncovered a trove of WhatsApp messages in which Mrs. Netanyahu appears to instruct a former aide to organize protests against political opponents
JERUSALEM: Israel’s attorney general has ordered police to open an investigation into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife on suspicion of harassing political opponents and witnesses in the Israeli leader’s corruption trial.
The Israeli Justice Ministry made the announcement in a terse message late Thursday, saying the investigation would focus on the findings of a recent report by the “Uvda” investigative program into Sara Netanyahu.
The program uncovered a trove of WhatsApp messages in which Mrs. Netanyahu appears to instruct a former aide to organize protests against political opponents and to intimidate Hadas Klein, a key witness in the trial.
The announcement did not mention Mrs. Netanyahu by name, and the Justice Ministry declined further comment.
But in a video released earlier Thursday, Netanyahu listed what he said were the many kind and charitable acts by his wife and blasted the Uvda report as “lies.”
It was the latest in a long line of legal troubles for the Netanyahus — highlighted by the prime minister's ongoing corruption trial.
Netanyahu is charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in a series of cases alleging he exchanged favors with powerful media moguls and wealthy associates. Netanyahu denies the charges and says he is the victim of a “witch hunt” by overzealous prosecutors, police and the media.
