Within a year, the Iranian rial has lost over 50% of its value. Whereas in March 2024, it was trading at 600,000 to the US dollar, one year later the rate has fallen to more than 1,000,000. This massive devaluation is driving inflation further, making imported goods more expensive, and placing a particular burden on lower and middle income groups in Iran.

"Economic uncertainty means that worries about the cost of living are coming to the fore and political engagement is declining," Mohammad Reza Farzanegan, an economic expert at the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Marburg in central Germany, told DW.

"From an economic point of view, there is considerable doubt that weakening the middle class contributes to achieving the goals international political pressure would like," he pointed out, referring to a new study he conducted with Nader Habibi, an academic at Brandeis University in the US.

It shows that the punitive economic measures imposed on Iran since 2012 — because of its controversial nuclear program, in an effort to increase economic and political pressure on Tehran— have massively hindered the development of the Iranian middle class.

If sanctions had not been imposed, the annual middle-class size........

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