A Gallup World Poll showed Tuesday most Iranians see their economy as substantially diminished since the U.S. decision a year ago to abandon the Obama-negotiated Iran nuclear deal.
Within months of U.S. President Donald Trump dropping the agreement formally known as the JCPOA, a record-high 57 percent of Iranians said the local economy was getting worse, the Gallup survey showed.
Iran’s economy has deteriorated even more since then, with the World Bank downgrading the country’s economic outlook a third consecutive time as of last week.
The problems for Iran began in May, 2018 when President Trump announced the U.S.’ withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and the reinstitution of economic sanctions on Iran. He said the aim was to punish one of the world’s largest exporters of terror that had previously been economically rewarded by the Obama administration.
He further warned that if Iran continued to pursue nuclear weapons, “it will have bigger problems than it has ever had before.” Trump said:
[I]t is clear to me that we cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement. The Iran deal is defective at its core. … Therefore, I am announcing today, that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. In a few moments, I will sign a presidential memorandum to begin reinstating US nuclear sanctions on the Iranian regime. We will be instituting the highest level of economic sanction. Any nation that helps Iran in its quest for nuclear weapons could also be strongly sanctioned by the United States.
One in six Iranians worked full time in 2018, which was “on the higher end of what Gallup has tracked since 2012,” but it’s “still one of the lower figures in the region, similar to Iraq, Morocco and Palestinian Territories, and higher only than the 6 percent in war-torn Yemen,” said Gallup writer Julie Ray as quoted by UPI.
The poor economic climate prompted record-low confidence in their economic outlook and quality of life.
A record-low of 7 percent of Iranians said it was a good time to find a job, the poll showed. On the other hand, a record-high 34 percent of Iranians saw their lives “suffering.”
The Gallup World Poll for Iran includes 1,002 phone interviews from July to August of 2018.
UPI contributed to this report