February 13, 2014 | Quote
Iran’s Economy Improving Amid Nuclear Talks
Iran's economy is getting a boost from the reprieve in international sanctions amid ongoing talks with Tehran over the country's nuclear program, the International Monetary Fund said in a new assessment.
The optimistic outlook could give credence to critics who say that the interim nuclear deal is a stall tactic by Tehran to ease its economic travails. The Obama administration has said the sanctions reprieve would provide only limited economic relief to Iran, estimating the total value at around $7 billion.
But in the IMF's first review of Iran since U.S. and international sanctions started constricting investment and exports to the country, the fund said it expects the economy to grow by 1% to 2% this year after contracting by a similar amounts over the past two years.
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“Regrettably, the administration and its allies may be miscalculating,” Mark Dubowitz, the head of the Washington think tank, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week. “If Iran's economy recovers, the pressure on Iran's leaders to follow through on a nuclear deal lessens.”