Rouhani said at a speech a day earlier that Iran faced a deficit amounting to nearly two-thirds of its annual $45 billion budget. Like their counterparts in Lebanon and Iraq, the protests in Iran on Friday were set off by economic anxiety, but some quickly assumed an anti-government tone. Iran has long planned to cut energy subsidies as part of an economic reform plan. Some Iranian economists warned that the new energy policy would fail for a number of reasons. The Energy Information Administration of the United States ranks Iran as possessing the world’s fourth-largest oil reserves and second largest natural gas reserves.

Source: bd News24 November 16, 2019 05:26 UTC