Photo by Stéphan Valentin

The New York Times gave us an analysis piece on Iran by Roger Cohen, a longtime reporter who covered Iran for the paper more than a decade ago. The gist of the piece, which is headlined “An Islamic Republic with Its Back Against the Wall,” is that the Iranian government is hugely unpopular and that its economy is collapsing.

I am not going to claim any particular expertise on Iranian politics, although I do suspect that much of the country actually supports the current government, but I will say that Cohen has hugely misrepresented the country’s economy.

He told readers:

Iran’s gross domestic product, or total output, has fallen 45 percent since 2012, and many people are desperate. Crippling international sanctions over the nuclear program contributed to this downward........

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