Maurice Obstfeld

Well, the economic situation has obviously been grim for many years with ongoing sanctions.

When Trump came into office, he rescinded some of the very mild waivers that Biden had issued in order to promote nuclear talks.

And so that intensified the pressure.

Furthermore, we've seen the Iranian regime weakened geopolitically over the course of the year with Israeli and U.S.

strikes, with the evisceration of Iran's proxies abroad, and that too has harmed the economic situation.

So as a result of that, what we've seen is the

government basically trying to pay its bills by printing money.

That sparked inflation.

It sparked a huge depreciation of the Iranian currency, a huge, I should say, an accelerating depreciation.

The last year, the currency fell by more than 80%.

It fell by around 16% in December alone.

Last year's inflation rate, we believe, was above 50%.

This year, it's bound to be higher.

So all of this has spilled over into frustration in the streets, starting with economic demonstrations, but then building up into a much wider issue

conflagration that's spread across the country, including outside of the main urban areas, and reflecting a lot of frustration with the regime, with the corruption that people see, with the trampling of basic freedoms.

It looks like this is much more significant than the 2022 demonstrations and probably the most severe threat to the regime internally since its beginning in 1979.

It seems to be...

really tied to the currency and the effect on inflation and what that's doing to just the cost of living.

There's also been severe infrastructure crises, which I think are also contributing of the crisis over water availability.

has really been a severe problem.