Reports from several Iranian cities say Iranian pensioners have been protesting against rising prices and their declining purchasing power on Sunday, February 21.

During the protests that took place in Tehran, Neishabour, Ilam, Ghazvin, Khorramabadad, Ahvaz, Tabriz, Mashad, Yazd and Isfahan the pensioners called for the adjustment of their pensions against the inflation.

Last week, the Statistical Center of Iran reported that the point-to-point inflation rate for February compared to the same month last year has reached 48.2 percent. This means that a collection (basket) of goods and services purchased in February 2021 will cost much more for ordinary people who need to purchase items with higher inflation, such as food.

Iran’s national currency has lost its value eightfold since 2017, when Donald Trump assumed the presidency and expressed his opposition to the 2015 nuclear deal. He withdrew from the agreement and imposed sanctions on Iran, which slashed its oil exports, depriving the government of most of its foreign currency revenues.

Hamshahri newspaper has quoted a key member of the Iranian parliament's economic commission as saying that "high prices have broken the people's back."  Pensioners told Hamshahri in December that while the official poverty line in Iran is 100 million rials or $400 monthly, Iranian pensioners earn less than 30 million rials.

Meanwhile, proreform news website Fararu wrote in a February 21 report that rising inflation in Iran has particularly hurt the low-income strata of the population, adding that food and beverages are among the commodities with the highest price rise.

Only over the past month, prices for food and beverages have risen by five percent, the report noted. It added that prices for food and beverages in in one year has risen by 67 percent. 

On the other hand, according to the IRGC-linked Fars news agency, some food items such as cooking oil have been scarce regardless of the price issue.

Abbas Ghobadi, the head of the market regulatory body at the Ministry of Industry, Mining and Trade, told Fars, however, that the government will supply enough cooking oil to stabilize the market.

The official also told that the government is planning to supply 40 tons of fruit to the market to keep prices low for the Iranian New Year, Nowruz, in the last week of March. He probably was not aware that 40 tons of fruits would mean half a gram of fruit for every one of 80 million Iranians.

It was probably with the same argument that the official said Iran produces enough cooking oil for the nation's requirements. Recently, videos sent by viewers to foreign-based Persian-speaking TV channels showed people buying a ration equal one spoon of cooking oil after standing in long lines for several hours.

In a 19 February post on twitter, an Iranian user highlighted that on the same day when a Mars probe landed on the planet, Iranians were standing in long lines for a basic consumer item such as cooking oil.

Twitter user Hamid, posted a video on February 6 that shows people in Javanroud, near Kermanshah in western Iran waiting to buy cooking oil while traffic has been disrupted in the city.

Meanwhile, Fararu noted that all the recent figures and statistics about inflation and rising prices show the impact just in urban communities. The situation is more serious in rural communities where families have even less access to items supplied to the market by the government.

According to Fararu, as commodities are mainly distributed in the cities, villagers have to buy them through dealers and sub-retailers who charge more for the same commodities in comparison to their prices in the cities.

As an example, the annual inflation rate for cooking oil for rural households is 113 percent in the current year while the figure is much smaller for urban households, the website noted.