Iran awaits real relief from sanction lift with dilemma

It's 12 am and Sajad Khoshnam, in his 30s, is roaming the Arevi square on Sunday, looking for a chore.

"Nothing has changed. It was even worse." he groaned, "They fooled us, and for two years, they told us to be patient, saying everything will get better after the sanctions be lifted. I don't believe them anymore. "

It has been one hundred days after the west's lift of sanctions against Iran, and yet, few are feeling the relief. There is a growing frustration among ordinary Iranians over how things have changed so slowly.

Khoshnam's muscular body resembles a boxer champion. He was a fitness instructor until laid off from his full time job one year ago, and now has to work as a furniture porter. Once paid 1,100 US dollars on a good month last year, Khoshnma told Xinhua, now shrinks to 200 dollars. His mother is suffering from cancer in the hospital unattended. He could not afford the medical bill.

Actually, Khoshnam is not an exception of those with such a temper of disappointment.

"Money in our pocket is petered and the market is limping. People are less willful to do shopping," said Mehdi Zarei, a 28-year-old mobile phone seller. "In the past, there were ample of spare parts and accessories in the Iranian market, but now the merchants have dreads about the imports of these things."

"Our sales have been reduced to half or even to one third compared to the previous year. Our business was not even good in the New Year eve, it was terrible," Zarei told Xinhua.

On January 16, the United States and European nations lifted oil and financial sanctions on Iran based on a nuclear deal reached last year. Iran's President Rouhani hailed it as a "golden page" in his nation's history and a "turning point" for its economy.

Yet, that hope has been largely evaporated. Regular financial transactions continue to be nearly impossible because the United States had sanctioned on Iran on issues like "human rights violation," "state sponsor of terrorism" since 1980s, long before the nuclear issue. Western investors are still reluctant to do business with Iran, afraid of inadvertently violating those sanctions.

"Global business is scared of touching Iran, because of Iran's historical problems with the America," said Saeed Laylaz, an economist advising the Rouhani government.

As Iranians see it, the U.S. obstacles are undermining the execution of the nuclear agreement and inflaming the country's hard-liners.

The Iran's top leaders are voicing their anger. In his Nowruz speech in Iranian holly city Mashhad on March 20th, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah AliKhamenei complained that "our various kinds of businesses that require financial services are still facing problems. When we investigate the issue, it becomes obvious that [the banks] are afraid of the United States. Americans said 'we lift the sanctions.' On paper they lifted. But through different ways they try to prevent sanctions relief from bearing fruit."

The foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, asked, in a recent meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, that American officials must assure other countries that they could do business in Iran free of charges from the United States.

On Monday, John Kerry disclosed that Iran had so far received only three billion U.S. dollars after the nuclear deal, far less than many Iranians anticipate.

The financial obstacles are bad news for President Rouhani, whose iconic achievement of his two and half years' presidency is the nuclear deal and its supposed effect of an economic revival. Hard-liners have attacked the president as gullible to the United States, accusing him for making too much concessions. They are even questioning if Iranian banks are truly been reconnected to SWIFT, Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, as Rouhani administration had repeatedly promised.

On Wednesday, Iran's parliament approved a bill canceling cash subsidies to 24 million Iranians, suggesting a fiscal strain. With dropping oil prices hurting Iran's national income, Tehran is finding the support of a system giving 12-dollar monthly cash payments to nearly all of its 80 million citizens increasingly unaffordable. The measure is likely to further undermine the support of the Rouhani administration.

But Iran's long history of surviving the Western sanctions has nurtured a generation ingrained of patience and optimism.

Farshad Asadi, a 35-year-old teacher in a Tehran-based private language lab, put the situation in a different way.

"We haven't seen a huge increase of students learning English here, that's for sure. The lifting of sanctions is not so tangible on the society yet, but I am still optimistic," said Asadi. "Just imagine the alternative. That would be sanctions again, no agreement, the worsening situation of our country. No one wins."

Source: XINHUA