Iranians struggle to get by amid US war and domestic woes

“You find yourself comparing prices to just a few weeks or months ago,” she said. Just a tub of ice cream and yoghurt cost her about 10 million rials (just over $5), added Leyla, who on Tuesday received 180 million rials ($94) as her monthly pension. “And that’s the amount I get after a 40 percent increase from the government this year – but it doesn’t even begin to cover the essentials,” she said. A mix of decades-old economic structural issues, coupled with limitations imposed by local authorities and the compounding damage inflicted by a war launched by the United States and Israel in February, just months after a 12-day conflict with Israel, continues to make life more difficult for Iranians. Across the sanctions-hit country, people face a mounting list of challenges as they struggle to get by – from collapsing purchasing power and unaffordable food, rent and medicine to lost jobs, unreliable internet, electricity cuts, banking disruptions and destroyed infrastructure. Masoud, a young resident of the capital, said his landlord agreed after much negotiation to settle for a rent increase of just less than 50 percent this year. “It’s steep, but I’d either have to pay more for a similar apartment in the same neighbourhood or move further south in the city – not to mention the costs of moving,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that he expected next year to be much worse. This is while the government has decreed that landlords in Tehran can legally only increase rent by 27 percent, with the cap for other provinces set at 25 percent. But those figures are often used as the floor, not the ceiling, for prices while unhappy tenants have to trudge through chaotic dispute-resolution councils if they protest. A similar picture has emerged in other sectors and industries, where support from a cash-strapped government is either nonexistent or extremely limited as conditions get tougher by the day. For instance, the government offers monthly cash subsidies and electronic coupons for the purchase of food items, but they only equal a few dollars. Local media, citing users, have recently reported that some shops refuse to accept the coupons since they have not been compensated for them by the government. In the meantime, inflation last month was at nearly 90 percent, with food inflation hitting 134 percent, compared with a year earlier. The figures for next month are expected to be worse. Iran’s national currency hit a new all-time low this week.