Iranians braced for year of misery and unrest

Economic hardship is hurting ordinary people while experts fear downturn might consolidate power in hands of hardliners

Scrap metal dumped in piles around Tehran has traditionally been good business for Jaafar. For nearly three decades, the Afghan migrant has sold what he finds to small factories, sending most of what he earns to his family back home. Lately, that hasn't been much. "I can only afford enough bread for myself," he says.

The waste picker, 50, is one of millions of people in Iran caught in the jaws of Donald Trump's policy of enforcing "maximum pressure" on the country by suffocating its economy with sanctions. He could return home, he says, but there he would collide with another overseas American project.