'We'll never regain what we've lost': Iranians react to interim deal
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Version 0 of 1. As hundreds gathered in north Tehran’s Vanak square last Friday to celebrate the news that a nuclear deal between Iran and the 5+1 group was in the offing, Morteza, an eyeglass shop owner, stood in the crowd alongside his wife. “These few years have turned us into a truly damaged people,” he said. “The wounds are so deep that there is no easy treatment. What we want is normal relations with foreign countries and a healthy economy, and we will pick up the pieces gradually. But I fear that we’ll never fully regain what we’ve lost.” Still reeling from the effects of western sanctions, Iranians voiced bittersweet responses to the agreement outlined in Lausanne on 27 March. After years of withstanding the resulting economic devastation under the banner of what their government termed “resistance” to US hegemony, Iranians are now questioning the purpose of their sacrifices. “Sure, a lot of people are celebrating, but we’re really just celebrating the fact that we’re back at zero again,” said Ardeshir, a 27-year-old law student. “Even though the celebrating is superficially very joyous, in a sense it’s actually very sad.” In addition to a noticeable drop in living standards, Iranians have faced a slew of problems that contributed to the severe mental depression of 34.2% of Tehran’s population, according to health ministry figures. Due to a sanctions-induced rise in pollution and shortage of cancer treatment medication, thousands lost family members prematurely. At least 4 million people are jobless, and a legion of bankrupt business owners has resorted to driving taxis to make ends meet. When the nuclear standoff was at its height, Iranians began stockpiling rice and canned food, believing war was inevitable. “There’s no doubt that a nuclear agreement in June won’t be enough to fully undo the emotional and societal damage done to Iran’s people by the sanctions regime,” an Iran-based journalist told Tehran Bureau. “While an improved economy can facilitate the process, Iranians now have further justification for being suspicious of the west’s motives.” Until 2012, when the United States spearheaded an internationally accepted sanctions regime targeting Iran’s banking system, the Iranian middle class had “thought of the US as a friend of the Iranian people and a country that really desired democracy for Iran,” added Ardeshir. “But the sanctions changed many people’s minds. We understood then that we didn’t mean anything to the US. They made life more miserable for us than our own leaders ever could have.” Heightened distrust of the west has contributed to local criticism of the Lausanne deal, which came under scrutiny after the governments of both the United States and Iran publicised disparate versions of the agreement. A “verification mechanisms” provision, which would enable the constant supervision of Iranian nuclear facilities by foreign institutions, proved particularly controversial in Tehran. Absent from the Iranian version but featured in the US interpretation, the provision fomented local fears that the nuclear deal would encroach upon their country’s military independence. “They couldn’t have screwed this up worse,” said Reza, 37, an ethnic Azeri who runs one of Tehran’s ubiquitous Daryani supermarkets. “For ten years they told us that we’d never back down, we’d never surrender, and all that, and now for 25 years we’re going to have ‘supervision.’ Anyway, it’s no less than the government here deserves. They were really telling the truth when they said they wouldn’t back down even one step; they were planning to back down 25 steps!” Still, there were some who welcomed the nuclear deal as a watershed moment. In the upmarket Tehran district of Niavaran, home to towering luxury malls and multi million-dollar apartments, 29-year-old dentist Mahshid fearlessly walked her dog, a banned type of pet in Iran, down Mojdeh Street. She recalled President Hassan Rouhani’s two major pre-election promises: A nuclear agreement, along with the lifting of the sanctions, and an end to the jailing of Green Movement leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi, Zahra Rahnavard, and Mehdi Karroubi. “With this agreement, he has been able to deliver on at least one of these promises,” Mahshid said. “The things we gave up to get the sanctions lifted are things we can eventually put behind us. We can consign them to the dustbin of history.” Others were too concerned with quotidian problems to read the headlines. Waist-deep in a trash receptacle on Vali-e Asr Street, 50-year old Akbar - missing half his teeth - grumbled that he had no time to watch television. “News like this is a kind of convenience for the well-off,” he said. “I don’t know anything about any agreements or nuclear energy. Along with the others, I am just busy with backbreaking work. What happens out there makes no difference to us.” |