so that costs me 20,000 real, and that is double for these tomatoes was it was a year ago. this is a poor neighborhood. every single one of these vegetables is grown locally, but even the locally produced items have surged in price. labor costs have gone up. even the sanitization costs have gone up. just in one year, the price for a tomato has doubled. senator corker, thanks so much for taking the time to be us. today, i was in various neighborhoods of tehran. one was a very upscale neighborhood. i saw a store, tag heuer for the watches, also bulgari and escada. there s a mall of luxury stores we saw, and we saw yesterday, the lexus mercedes-benz, and porsches at a dealer. they re more expensive, but it seems like the richer have done time. the poor, shrimp prices have doubled, tomato prices have
amazing here looking at the impact of the sanctions is you see food prices have surged, and that has hurt regular iranians complaining to us about how painful it is to them. yet, you see at the higher end, sure, sanctions are biting and the currency restrictions will impact some of the luxury cars we re showing you that are readily available, but you can go to bulgari or escada or the fancy restaurants and it seems a lot of the wealthy who are part of the revolutionary guard who are doing absolutely fine, and in fact, maybe even better than before because there s a black market and they re being forced to develop new industries and that s more opportunity for them. so sanctions won t work unless that power group is affected. are they being hurt or helped? well, the wealthiest iranians aren t going to suffer as much. the poor are going to get poorer. so the population is really bearing the brunt of sanctions. but at the same time, the regime is also feeling the pressure. look, the rev