Time To Revisit `A People's History of Iran' Again: Part 29

(All the 2012 GOP and Democratic presidential candidates in the USA—except for Ron Paul—apparently support the U.S. government’s current policy of waging economic warfare and covert war against people in Iran and threatening people in Iran with an overt US/Israeli military attack in 2012 or 2013. Yet most people in the United States know little about the history of people in Iran since foreign imperialist powers began undemocratically and illegally intervening in its internal political and economic affairs in the late 19th century. But here's part 29 of "A People's History of Iran," from a few years ago--bf).

The economic destruction caused by the eight year Iraq-Iran War and the generally unfriendly policy of the U.S. government towards Iran during the years since the U.S. embassy was seized by Iranian students in 1979 (except during the “Iran-Contragate Scandal” period of the Republican Reagan Administration when the U.S. government arranged for weapons to be shipped to the Islamic Republic of Iran) hurt the post-revolutionary Iranian economy, prior to the death of Ayatollah Khomeini on June 3, 1989. But Iran’s oil wealth has enabled the Islamic Republic to apparently satisfy the economic needs of some people within Iranian society--although many other people in Iran still seem to be having economic difficulties.

By 1989, 80 percent of the Iranian economy was still controlled by the Iranian government and banks, insurance companies and all major industries in Iran were now nationalized. Although one-third of Iranian workers were provided jobs by Iran’s public sector in 1988, during that same year about 30 percent of all Iranian workers were still apparently unemployed.

In 1989, the average inflation rate in Iran’s economy also apparently exceeded 23 percent; and by 1993 the annual inflation rate in Iran had increased to 40 percent. As a result, when the Iranian government announced cuts in price controls and government subsidies of basic necessities during the 1990s, street protests broke out in Tehran and other Iranian cities. (end of part 28)