For those on the losing end, however, every day brings more bad news. The steep price rises are turning visits by Tehran homemakers to their neighborhood supermarkets into nerve-racking experiences, with the price of bread, for example, increasing 16-fold since the withdrawal of state subsidies in 2010.

“My life feels like I’m trying to swim up a waterfall,” said Dariush Namazi, 50, the manager of a bookstore. Having saved for years to buy a small apartment, he has found the value of his savings cut in half by the inflation, and still falling. “I had moved some strokes up the waterfall, but now I fell down and am spinning in the water.”

Western sanctions have hurt, economists say, particularly in denying Iran access to foreign currency reserves, which it had used to prop up the rial. Yet economists also agree that much of the damage to the economy has been self-inflicted, saying that the Ahmadinejad government went on an import spending spree after oil revenues started hitting record levels from 2005 on.

With the government buying so many goods from abroad, many domestic producers were forced to lay off workers and close factories. That, in turn, has made Iran more vulnerable to international sanctions, they say. Companies that might have helped produce goods to replace those blocked by sanctions have long since gone out of business, as the owners shifted their wealth to speculation, building and selling properties, foreign currency or raw materials.

Near the industrial city of Pakdasht, outside Tehran, rows of factory buildings stood idle in the burning summer sun, heavy locks on their metal gates. In the distance, columns of Turkish trucks thundered past, swirling up clouds of dust. There were no buses bringing in new shifts of workers, and instead of mechanical clatter filling the air, stray dogs barked in the distance.

In one of the few factories still operating, Manoucher, 60, an engineer turned industrialist, recalled that only a decade ago being a factory owner in Iran meant not only a secure income but also social admiration as a job creator and someone who was building Iran’s future.

“Nowadays, it means you are a loser,” he concluded. Men in blue overalls peeked nervously up toward the director’s window, perhaps fearing they could be next to be laid off. “I am responsible for these people,” said Manoucher, who did not want to disclose either his family name or what his factory makes, because he sells products to a government company.