Nary a word about Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s nuclear ambitions or headline-grabbing trip to the United States appeared in a recent Agence France-Presse article.
Instead, the piece focused entirely on complaints about his economic stewardship, which experts say will push inflation to more than 20 percent this year.
Rising costs for food and services have hit the poor hardest, prompting a leading reformist ayatollah to claim that the problem is “making the people cry out.”
Opponents blame Ahmadinejad for “frittering away” abundant oil revenue on highly visible infrastructure projects, which one conservative in Parliament said has awakened “the inflation monster.”
Source:
“Ahmadinejad’s economic performance under fire again – from both sides”
Agence France-Presse, October 30, 2007