Iran's Rouhani Years: From Euphoria To Disappointment

Tehran, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 15th Jun, 2021 ) :Promising greater openness at home and outreach abroad when he was elected in 2013, Iran's outgoing moderate President Hassan Rouhani comfortably won a second term but leaves office as a deeply unpopular figure.

Ultraconservative Ebrahim Raisi is widely expected to win the presidency on record-low turnout this coming Friday -- an outcome that would set in stone the disappointment of the Rouhani years, marked by crushing economic woes.

Rouhani "wanted above all to liberalise the Iranian economy and develop the private sector's role... by attracting foreign investment," said Thierry Coville, a researcher at the Institute for International and Strategic Relations (IRIS) in Paris.

But that strategy was "totally trampled" by former US president Donald Trump.

Three years ago, Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from a landmark 2015 nuclear accord agreed between Iran and world powers, a deal that had promised sanctions relief in exchange for limits on Tehran's nuclear programme and a promise never to acquire the bomb.

Trump then slapped sanctions on Iran that choked the economy to an unprecedented degree, including by seeking to stop all the country's oil exports.

Iran's economy contracted by more than six percent in both 2018 and 2019, according to the IMF, leaving a bitter taste for the crowds who had swelled into the streets in jubilation when the nuclear accord was first agreed.

The economic malaise has since been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, leaving many Iranians struggling to get by.