Tehran's teeming bazaar
Posted: Monday, March 05, 2007 11:46 AM
Filed Under:
Tehran, Iran
By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
Reza Elmanan ran his hand over a carpet of deep reds and browns, turning the edge to show the fine weaving. "It’s from Tabriz, pure silk, one hundred years old. For you, $2,000," he said, "but we can talk about the price."
These aren’t good times for Elmanan. Sales have fallen by 70 percent from last year. "Everything is becoming more expensive, people can’t afford it," he complained, before blaming Iran’s president: "Ahmadinejad hasn’t delivered in his economic promises."
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| Ian Williams / NBC News |
| A view of the bustling Tehran market. |
Elmanan’s carpet shop sits amid the mayhem of the Tehran bazaar, miles upon miles of narrow crowded alleyways, lined with colorful shops and stalls selling just about everything. It’s Iran’s economic heart, and we were advised that this was the place to come to feel the nation’s economic pulse.
A powerful, but disgruntled, lobby
By some estimates the bazaar controls more than a third of Iran’s retail trade. The merchants who run the bazaar, known here as bazaris, are politically very powerful. They helped finance the Islamic Revolution, and can make or break a government. Right now they are not a particularly happy bunch.
"My sales are down by 50 to 60 percent," said Mohammed Yasrebi, whose family has sold jewelry in the bazaar for three generations. "I’m very worried about sanctions," he said. "Things are going to get much worse than they already are."
The bazaris are conservative – a secretive world of interconnected commercial and banking interests. Since the revolution, they’ve been a pillar of support for the conservative wing of the Islamic leadership. But today they are being hit where it hurts most – in their wallets. Many blame Ahmadinejad’s hectoring style and reckless foreign policy for isolating Iran. Like business people everywhere, they want stability and certainty.
"What don’t they just talk? This shouting does nobody any good," said Elmanan of the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program, folding away another carpet that had failed to find a buyer.
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| Ian Williams / NBC News |
| Women window shop in the Tehran market. |
Outside, porters ferried barrows laden with fabrics, whistling and shouting to clear a path through the crowds. On more than one occasion this correspondent was forced to take evasive action, jumping into a doorway, much to the amusement of more seasoned buyers, more adept at avoiding the hurtling barrows.
It looks busy, Elmanan had told me, but people just aren’t spending.
Defiant currency with nuclear power symbol
Ahmadinejad was elected on the back of populist promises to improve the lives or ordinary Iranians and to spread the country’s oil wealth more widely. That hasn’t happened.
Inflation, officially 13 percent, is reckoned to be at least twice that figure. Today the government announced it is introducing a new 50,000 rial (about $5.50) bank note. On the rear of the note is the nuclear power symbol, a sign of defiance, though to the hard-pressed merchants the new note is just a further sign of the country’s inflationary woes.
These are also challenging times for Iran’s oil industry, one of the few things not controlled by the bazaris. A frank weekend report in the Tehran Times described falling capacity and an old and creaking infrastructure, which it said is in need of massive investment if Iran is to take advantage of growing demand. The report said major oil companies were desperate to provide that investment, but nervous because of the standoff with the United States.
There is also a suspicion here that Saudi Arabia – alarmed at growing Iranian influence in the region – is deliberately dampening the oil price in order to put further pressure on Tehran.
Ahmadinejad said recently that sanctions are just a piece of paper. But that is not the way it is seen in the bazaar. When the economy is in crises the bazaar feels the pain, and today, behind the din of commerce, Iran’s most powerful merchants are grumbling loudly.
