According to a World Bank assessment, sanctions, poor economic management, and unstable international oil prices have caused over 10 million Iranians to fall into poverty during a “lost decade of growth.”

This report represents the first official evaluation of poverty in the 85 million-person nation after the Islamic revolution in 1979 by the institution.

It portrays an economy in which inequality and poverty surged in the decade through 2020, with US-led policies contributing to that, and women bearing the brunt of the impact of both sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Iran saw declining poverty in the decades leading up to the 2011 imposition of sanctions by then-President Barack Obama, with those falling below the global poverty line going from 40 percent of the population in 1980 to around 20 percent in the early 2000s.

But since 2011, the “on-again, off-again sanctions — which were imposed by the US and other countries — have had “a deleterious impact on economic growth and Iranians’ welfare, the report’s authors wrote. “Iran’s economy has suffered from a lost decade of economic growth.

Economic woes in Iran were among the drivers of last year’s mass protests, which were sparked by the death of a young woman detained for allegedly violating strict Islamic dress codes.