The advent of while 90% lived in more or less desperate conditions. In particular, agriculture was placed in the global framework of the country as an immense pocket of backwardness and marginalization, while food self-sufficiency was far from being achieved. The advent of while 90% lived in more or less desperate conditions. In particular, agriculture was placed in the global framework of the country as an immense pocket of backwardness and marginalization, while food self-sufficiency was far from being achieved. The advent of Khomeini did not change the economic situation and the results were most of the times disastrous. To the uncertainty of Khomeini’s concrete programmatic orientations were added further determining factors, such as the flight of managers and qualified personnel from the country, the breakdown of commercial relations with the United States and the freezing of Iranian capital present in the USA. The long war with Iraq contributed to make the situation more difficult after the fall of the Shah (blockade of ports, fires of refineries, very high human and material losses, waste of economic resources, etc.). This set of internal and international elements was at the basis of the disastrous fall in oil production and the no less steep decline in industrial activity (perhaps by 30% from 1979 to the mid-1980s), nationalized in its core sectors, such as mining, the steel industry, the automotive industry, as were banks and insurance companies, subject since 1984 to the dictates of Islamic law. A further effect of compression of the growth of national income was due to the decrease in the price of oil on international markets, culminating in the oil counter-shock of 1986.
The Iranian economic crisis, moreover, worsened following the sanctions and the US economic embargo. According to allcountrylist, this situation therefore highlighted the excessive dependence of the national economy on the sole resource of hydrocarbons: in the 1990s, especially after the end of the conflict with Iraq, efforts were made to stimulate the diversification of activities, favoring development agricultural and launching plans for the realization of self-sufficiency in the petrochemical sector, deeply damaged by the war events. The political conflicts, mainly between the high clergy and the group of technocrats, however, inevitably resulted in the inability to define effective economic policies, as well as in an action to stop a partial privatization and the entry of foreign capital. Furthermore, the economic recovery, although in the early 1990s it had benefited from a high rate of growth, it was soon compromised by the weight of foreign debt, which had been heavily used not only to satisfy the growing desire for consumer goods, but also to finance post-war reconstruction. The obvious inability of Iran to bear the obligations deriving from the burden of the debt, which became more onerous as a result of the loss of revenues from the drop in oil, prompted the government to start a series of negotiations with its creditors for the rescheduling. of debt. This policy, which, in order to meet payments, had to impose the adoption of severe restrictions on imports, still allowed the current account to be brought back into surplus, but it put the economy in serious difficulty. industry, strictly dependent on imports, thus reducing economic growth. The social cost of the recession was thus very high: the surge in inflation and the dizzying fall of rial have in fact greatly reduced the purchasing power of wages and increased unemployment. At the same time, the government’s announced attempts to reduce dependence on petroleum products were not having the desired effects. In fact, the secondary sector remained conditioned in its expansion by the scarcity of technological resources and the lack of infrastructures; only the petrochemical industry, after the serious losses and destruction caused by the war with Iraq, equally registered signs of growth. On the regional front, Iran sought to increase its influence, in direct competition with Turkey, by promoting an agreement with the countries bordering the Caspian Sea for the exploration of offshore oil fields and declaring itself available for the transit on its territory of oil pipelines destined to transport crude oil to the Arabian Gulf. At the end of the 1990s, the situation remained characterized by a climate of uncertainty linked, above all, to the results of privatization.
Thanks to the steady revenue from hydrocarbons and the increasing increase in oil prices since 2000, Iran has seen an average annual increase in GDP of about 5.5%. The country’s economic situation, with a GDP of US $ 344,820 million and a GDP per capita of US $ 4,732 (2008), has elements of instability and is marked by high inflation. Furthermore, in the face of an increasing entry of young people into the labor market, Iran has a high unemployment rate. The political positions taken by the ultra-conservative government, starting from 2005, and the attitude of foreign governments, which have adopted restrictive measures, pose serious difficulties to the trade relations of the country, which has little openness to foreign investment. The embargo placed by the United States and the pressures of the United Nations Security Council have effectively conditioned the trend of trade even if the country has been able to diversify its partners strengthening relations with other Asian states interested in the energy market. In the early 21st century in fact, Iran has signed important agreements for the management of hydrocarbon reserves in the Caspian Sea, with Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, for the supply of oil to China, as well as having implemented nuclear development programs. The necessary economic diversification programs are struggling to take off and hydrocarbons and petroleum derivatives still represent the vast majority of Iran’s production and exports.
