Angry Iranians ask Prez Rouhani to control inflation, reboot economy plans

When he was studying in Tehran, Abbas would catch a pre-dawn train in from the provinces. A few scenes glimpsed through the window are etched in his mind: street-sweepers huddled around fires, men curled up under blankets in front of closed shops.
Student life didn’t often take him to the affluent downtown, where glitzy malls sell Western-branded clothes and watches.

On the weekends Abbas would head back to the northwestern city of Zanjan, famous for hand-made knives and elaborately decorated shoes. The extremes of poverty and wealth on display in the capital were much less apparent in his hometown.

But Abbas, now a 36-year-old high-school teacher, sensed something else was wrong there. As a child he used to watch the town’s most skilled bladesmith at work. “He should have opened 10 branches by now,’’ said Abbas, who asked that his surname be withheld so that he could speak freely. “He’s still in a workshop under the stairs, making a handful of knives a day.’’