Iran, as a theocracy not directly answerable to the people should be doing better at coping while Americans are reminded of gasoline prices every time they drive down the street or access the internet, but reading this article it seems the battle of hearts and minds is fairly evenly matched.
From the Wall street Journal, September 16:
While Saudi Arabia and others find workarounds, bottlenecks are threatening Iran’s economy
Iran vowed to respond to a U.S. blockade by pushing more trade overland. On the ground, it isn’t going according to plan.
Hundreds of Iranian truck drivers are currently stuck at Iran’s border with Pakistan, unable to send their goods into Tehran’s neighbor. They say they are facing worsening bureaucratic hurdles and costs, many caused by their own government. The same thing is happening at Iran’s land borders with Turkey, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, dealing Tehran a self-inflicted blow and throttling trade through its few remaining economic release valves.
Tons of stranded apricots have been spoiled because of the delays. Lucrative cargoes of iron ore, cement and bottled gas are stuck at entry points to the Pakistani and Afghan borders, truckers say.
“Neither Iran is taking responsibility for the situation, nor is Pakistan allowing us to unload our cargo,” one driver says in a video posted by the Union of Truckers and Drivers Organizations Across Iran over the weekend.
The economic war in the Persian Gulf is dictated as much by how much the countries in the region can move their exports over land rather than through the Strait of Hormuz. Some have found workarounds. Saudi Arabia is moving more of its oil west across the Arabian Peninsula. The U.S. Navy is helping some of the Gulf nations shift their oil through the strait.
Iran’s attempts are faltering. The U.S. is isolating its economy with new sanctions and launching strikes on Iranian tankers in reprisal for Tehran’s attacks on its Navy, collapsing seaborne exports.
In another setback for Iran’s plans to bypass Hormuz, the country’s Mahan Air, which is sanctioned by the U.S., said Wednesday that it was suspending flights to Oman and Turkey, state-affiliated media in Tehran said. Last week, the U.S. Treasury imposed new sanctions on companies it said were supporting Mahan, which operates cargo and passenger services.
The U.S. blockade has also hurt Iran’s imports of basic goods, 70% of which normally go through the blockaded ports. Though humanitarian goods and food are ostensibly exempt, the reality is that shippers are reluctant to service Iran.
Videos posted on social media last week show cranes at the Port of Shahid Rajaee, Iran’s largest commercial container port, at a standstill. Thousands of containers are stranded in ports in Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, transportation professionals in Tehran last month told the Mehr News Agency, which is affiliated with Iranian security services.
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Iran has tried to compensate by pushing more trade through other routes. Transits across the Caspian Sea have grown by 70% in the past five months, according to Iranian officials. Iran imports large quantities of its wheat, corn and cooking oil from Russia, according to commodities data provider Kpler and Iranian trading websites.
“We are trying to turn this threat into an opportunity,” Hadi Haghshenas, the governor of the Iranian province of Gilan, on the Caspian Sea, told state news agency IRNA in late August.
A freight railroad from Tehran to Xi’an in eastern China has jumped from once-a-week journeys to every three or four days since the blockade started, according to the state-controlled Tehran Times. Iran imports industrial machinery, electronics and automotive spare parts from China.
But in a sign of how vulnerable the alternative routes are, Iraq over the weekend temporarily closed cargo terminals at the Iran border after alleging Iran had used its territory to attack Saudi Arabia. On Sunday, trucks carrying Iranian onions bound for Iraq were forced to turn back as a result, according to Tehran’s Central Fruit and Vegetable Market.
Iran’s land borders were a mess before these latest closures, though. This summer, for example, the number of trucks going through Pishin, one of the main crossings into Pakistan, increased from about 40 vehicles to as many as 130 vehicles a day, local governor Rahimbakhsh Balidehei told the semiofficial ISNA News Agency. The result is that customs officers across Iran’s land borders are struggling to cope, Ehsan Malekzadeh, chairman of the Iranian International Transport Companies Association, told the Mehr News Agency.
Malekzadeh said 3,700 trucks were stranded on the Iranian side of the crossing to Turkey, with delays reaching 20 days....
....MUCH MORE
