Iran's ten challenges for 2022
The Iranian government faces the challenge in 2022 of calming a population beset by the poor state of the economy, which could improve if Tehran reaches an agreement with Western powers to save the 2015 nuclear deal and gets sanctions lifted, which would help reduce Iranian discontent.
The new Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, will have to manage public discontent over the poor economic situation, with inflation soaring and the rial plummeting against the dollar. In addition, drought and power cuts are making the situation even worse.
Protests over this situation have been ongoing for the past few months and are expected to continue next year. The 2021 protests led to harsh criticism of the country's theocratic system, including slogans against Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
The new covid variant, omicron, has just been detected in Iran, and is feared to cause a new wave of infections, as has happened in other countries.
So far 51,000,000 out of 80,000,000,000 million Iranians have been fully vaccinated, mainly with the Chinese Sinopharm serum, but the Persian country will face a new round of booster vaccinations and possibly further restrictions.
Iran is suffering its worst drought in 50 years, a situation that will continue into 2022. With 70 per cent of farmland at risk due to lack of water, Tehran faces potential food security problems and above all protests by farmers.
The year 2021 ended with protests in some regions of the Persian country, which were harshly repressed by the regime. In 2022, these protests are expected to continue in the face of the Iranian government's lack of resources to provide solutions to water shortages.
Iran and Germany, France, the UK, China, Russia and the US indirectly are in the midst of negotiations to save the 2015 nuclear deal at the end of November.
The outcome of these negations will be crucial for the Persian country. An eventual lifting of sanctions would ease the nation's economic situation, which would reduce public discontent.
With inflation averaging 30 per cent in recent years and peaking at 45.2 per cent in 2021, Iran needs to curb this indicator.
Inflation is one of the main drivers of social discontent. A nuclear deal and the lifting of US sanctions would help reduce inflation.
Iran hopes to increase its oil exports from an estimated 600,000 barrels per day today to 1.2 million by 2022, a difficult mission that depends on China, the main buyer of Iranian crude.
After reaching nearly three million barrels in 2018, the decline in exports due to US sanctions has hit the Iranian economy hard.
The government hopes to end the devaluation of the rial, which briefly surpassed the 300,000 per dollar mark in 2021.
The executive is also considering ending the subsidised rate for some imports of 42,000 rials to the US currency as it is costly and drives up inflation, a decision that will not be popular.
The issue of women attending football stadiums as spectators is still up in the air. In 2019, the Iranian government allowed women to attend a match in Tehran for the first time in 40 years under pressure from FIFA.
After vetoing their attendance in 2021 on the grounds of covid, Iran will have to make a decision next year on whether to allow women in stadiums or face possible sanctions from FIFA.
The Iranian national football team is looking for a good showing at the World Cup in Qatar. After a difficult start to qualifying the Iranian team was put in the hands of coach Dragan Skočić, who managed to improve the Persian team's play and put them on track to qualify.
The Iranian national football team is the leader in the Asian continent, according to the FIFA rankings, but is ranked 21st in the world, a position it hopes to improve.