But on the streets of Iran’s cities, as “maximum pressure” U.S. sanctions took hold, the view was decidedly less sunny. As a result of the sanctions President Donald Trump began imposing last year, “Iran is doing very poorly,” Trump said Saturday at a news conference in Japan. There has been no systematic study of how the sanctions have affected the lives of Iranians, or whom they blame for their troubles. The sanctions prohibit trade in U.S. dollars and threaten secondary measures against countries and companies that deal with Iran. U.S. government-sponsored social media bombards Iranians with reminders of government corruption and their isolation from the rest of the world.

Source: National Post July 01, 2019 01:37 UTC