Iran’s victory claims are a delusion amid the ruins
It’s not all victory garlands, fist pumps and self-congratulation in Iran. One hardline MP, the deputy chairman of parliament’s national security committee, reportedly has described the draft peace deal as a document that would turn Iran into an American colony.
The regime is overseeing an economy that had been mired in recession before February 28 and is now teetering on the brink of depression. GDP growth in the Islamic Republic has gone from a single negative point to negative 6.1 for the year to date.
Before the conflict the Iranian currency was hardly humming along but the war forced a 40 per cent reduction on the rial. Ten thousand rials will get you 10 Australian cents.
The flatlining currency shows no sign of any real recovery. To avoid grim scenes of Iranians pushing wheelbarrows full of almost worthless cash, the regime has printed a 10 million rial note for the first time. It’s worth the price of a Happy Meal in Australia.
There already were profound hyper-inflationary pressures in Iran before the war. While these have worsened only marginally since the war began, the cost of basic staples in Iran has skyrocketed. The price of cooking oils, rice and flour has shot up by more than 200 per cent.
Regime change in Iran was always unlikely by sheer force of munitions. Bombing raids and missile strikes by the US and Israel even may have shored up the mullahs’ ugly dominance of the Iranian people.
Food security is another matter and it is at crisis level. Hungry people are angry people. The most recent and compelling example was in Sri Lanka in 2022, when president Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned and fled the country amid critical shortages of fuel, food and medicine.
The Islamic Republic of Iran will be a tougher nut for its citizens to crack, but one certainty is that if enough hungry, angry people hit the streets, it’s time for the mullahs to grab their suitcases and flee, possibly to Russia where the best advice they can receive is to avoid standing in front of windows.
Clearly, the warring parties – one a military superpower, the other a regional middle power – have separate and distinct objectives, but mere survival is not triumph.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/irans-victory-claims-are-a-delusion-...
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