Following the recent disappointing news about Irans economic conditions, the Iranian rial plunged more than 13 percent in open-market trade on Monday to a new all-time low of about 33,500 per US dollar, traders and currency-tracking websites said, meaning the currency has lost about a quarter of its value in the past week.
Closing production lines, decreasing budget of government offices and organizations, massive bankruptcy in the private sector are all resulted from tough economic sanctions over Irans controversial nuclear program.
The West contemplates sanctions against Iran are working and they would lead to a riot in the country. It thinks whatdidn'thappen after 2009 presidential election occurs nowdue to economic hardships.
As Israel's foreign minister said in an interview, international sanctions could trigger a popular uprising in Iran like last year's revolt in Egypt that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.
"The opposition demonstrations that took place in Iran in June 2009 will come back in even greater force," Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in Israel's Haaretz newspaper.
Meanwhile, some analysts say this scenario will not come to fruition. There is an old proverb which says, For the Iranians not to revolt, they should be kept hungry. This proverb indicated that economic pressures would not make Iranian people to rebel.
To give an example, a deadly famine hit Iran during the First World War. The statistics show at least 10 million people have been killed due to famine.
England, Russia and countries involved in the war were the main causes of this catastrophic event. They purchased little grain left from the starvation to the high price for feeding their army.
At that time, Irans central government was in its weakest situation in 200 years. But all of these elementscouldn'tlead to riot. It shows that Iranians would not think of regime change because of economic reasons.
At present, despite some restrictions, by easily access to free flow of information, Iranian people exactly know that major part of economic problems are due to crippling sanctions and psychological warfare got underway against Iran.
On the other hand, Ahmadinejad government's economic policies are considered other cause of economic problems in Iran. So it is expected that economic tensions would be eased by coming the new government. It should be noted that Ahmadinejad second four-year presidential term ends in June.
Itdoesn'tseem that Iranian people are seeking the regime change due to the international sanctions, considering that there have been international sanctions over the past 34 years and regarding to the situation of Irans neighboring country such as Afghanistan and Iraq.
In fact, another period of economic Growth is needed to make people to seek the regime change in Iran.
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