Alwaght- Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has said that the Iranian economy has weathered the crisis foisted on it by the American sanctions and that the reinstated ban by Trump administration is no longer able to leave effects on the Iranian economy.
He made the comments during a press conference in Tehran on Monday.
“The US, Israeli regime, and the regional reactionaries’ collusion to deal a serious blow to the Islamic Republic has failed,” the president told the journalists.
“I am happy to talk in a condition the country has passed the hard economic, political, and security circumstances,” Rouhani continued.
He added that until late 2017 the government’s moving ahead was quite normal. But since then it ran into a new situation characterized by economic hardship.
The president commented on the US ban that was reinstated after Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal in May 2018 saying “in 2018 the foreign and home predictions for our economy were that we would have an extremely hard economic year and this would be even worse in 2019. Even some predicted three-digit inflation. But over the past 18 months, the people and the government successfully passed the storm. With sophistication, patience, and resistance, the Iranian people moved past the critical situation.”
He also pointed to the unemployment rates in the country saying that unemployment has decreased by 1.8 percent. He also referred to the decrease in the inflation rates and hoped that further economic improvement will further push back the inflation rates.
“We created over 800,000 jobs by this summer, reducing the unemployment to 10.5 from 12.3,” he announced.
He also pointed to the national currency value regain after a year of losses. Rouhani echoed the comments recently made by the central bank governor Abdolnaser Hemmati who said that the national currency rial has restored 40 percent of its value against the US dollar over the past few months in a significant sign of recovery.
The president also commented on Iran’s power in the region and the world stage. He said that Iran of 2019 is way stronger than 2018.
Rouhani was asked about the EU failure to accomplish its commitments after US withdrawal. “The remaining countries in the nuclear deal were to make up for the US treachery but they failed to accomplish their commitments,” he answered, saying that Iran will continue responding to the Western failure to act properly in the deal by further reducing Tehran’s commitments to the agreement. He added that soon Iran will launch a new generation of centrifuges, dubbed IR8 and IR9, for faster uranium enrichment that now reaches 4.5 percent.
