Iranians are abandoning traditional eating habits, being thrown out of work at alarming rates and face running short of medicines as the nation braces itself for fresh sanctions aimed at forcing its leaders to scrap their suspect nuclear programme. Price rises have spread across the food spectrum. Undercover student researchers surveying 20 supermarkets and four government food distribution centres in Tehran, discovered that 10 basic foods had risen in price by an average of 70% since March while the average family's weekly food basket shrunk by half. Unemployment in Iran's industrial heartland has soared to an unofficially estimated 35% because factories unable to import vital goods and equipment due to sanctions are forced in turn to sack their workers.Despite the grim backdrop, Iranian officials have affected a lack of concern about the EU oil embargo, insisting that they have alternative customers. In truth, many non-European customers are taking flight, fearful of simultaneous new US sanctions that punishes nations for buying Iran's oil. Even China and India -- two of Tehran's most reliable clients -- have announced in recent days that they will only continue buying Iranian crude if Iran provides its own tankers and insurance. With fresh OPEC figures showing Iran's production down by 720,000 barrels in the past month, Iranian officials have resorted to desperate measures, including offering heavily discounted sales to traditional customers.
Inevitably, the climate of austerity has sparked dissent, prompting a predictably harsh response. A 10,000-signature petition addressed to Mr Ahmadinejad's government outlining workers' grievances recently resulted in mass arrests of trade union activists in Karaj, near Tehran. Even the regime's most cosseted insiders are not immune. Staff in the elite revolutionary guards have experienced salary delays, with officials blaming budgetary disagreements between parliament and Mr Ahmadinejad. And in a potent irony for the ruling theocracy, the price of textile for clerics' turbans has risen 15% in three months.