![](\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2011\/01\/iran_protes.jpg\" "\\"iran_protes\\"")
NCRI – The Iranian regime\u2019s main priority for 2011 will be to focus on internal crises and opponents, taking away the spotlight from the nuclear program, the Christian Science Monitor said in its final edition of 2010.<\/p>\nNCRI – The Iranian regime\u2019s main priority for 2011 will be to focus on internal crises and opponents, taking away the spotlight from the nuclear program, the Christian Science Monitor said in its final edition of 2010.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Washington and European capitals, top New Year priorities on Iran may be Tehran\u2019s nuclear program, and the next round of talks in Istanbul in late January.\u201d But, 2011 will bring \u201csignificant challenges\u201d for the mullahs as the regime grapples with subsidy cuts and \u201can inefficient economy already under strain from a host of sanctions,\u201d the paper said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most important challenge in Tehran in 2011 will be economic reform,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n
The Christian Science Monitor said, \u201cAfter decades of expensive subsidies that drained the treasury of anywhere between $30 billion to $100 billion per year, Tehran\u2019s cold-turkey withdrawal of subsidies on gasoline, fuel, and bread \u2013 which last week quadrupled the price of gas overnight and made diesel prices skyrocket much higher \u2013 is an \u201cextremely drastic\u201d measure, says Farideh Farhi, an Iran specialist at the University of Hawaii.\u201d
\u201cIndeed, the changes amount to the most serious economic retooling since the 1979 Islamic revolution \u2026 taking away such subsidies after a generation can be politically explosive.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c2011 will prove a decisive year,\u201d the paper added.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeyond domestic issues, Iran also has a complicated set of foreign policy challenges in the new year.\u201d
\u201cIran\u2019s first priority in foreign policy should be neighbors and the Islamic world,\u201d the newly appointed foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi, said last week at his first official press conference. \u201cIn this regard, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have a special position. Iran and Saudi Arabia, as two effective countries in the Islamic world, can resolve many problems together.\u201d<\/p>\n
With regards to the nuclear dossier, the paper added, any deal between the West and the Iranian regime \u201cwould also require a compromise from Washington, which until now has insisted that Iran stop all uranium enrichment \u2013 the process to make fuel for nuclear power, that refined to higher levels can also be used to make a weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NCRI – The Iranian regime’s main priority for 2011 will be to focus on internal crises and opponents, taking away the spotlight from the nuclear program, the Christian Science Monitor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[175],"class_list":["post-9604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-iran-protests","tag-updated"],"yoast_head":"\n