Iran will likely undergo a worse recession amid U.S. sanctions against Tehran, projected the World Bank in a report published on Wednesday.
The country’s gross domestic product is expected to decrease by 4.5 percent in 2019, with the intergovernmental organization predicting minus-3.6 percent GDP growth this year.
“The oil industry is an important part of Iran’s economy, and its oil production is clearly going to drop because of the new U.S. sanctions,” Patrick Clawson, research director for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Voice of America.
Since withdrawing in May 2018 from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the United States has reimposed sanctions lifted under it, along with enacting new economic penalties against Iran, including on Iranian oil exports.
Last month, the Trump administration declined to issue further waivers to countries over importing Iranian oil.
The United States has also designated the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization.
