Prominent members of Iran's business and international trade community say short-term and ad-hoc solutions cannot boost the country’s commercial ties with the world, and Iran needs to improve political and diplomatic ties with the world.

However, most public figures in Iran who comment on this issue shy away from directly naming relations with the United States as the key to addressing deep economic problems. Almost everything in Iran's economy is affected by US sanctions and Iran's inability to resolve the impasse in the negotiations over the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

The United States has said it is willing to lift many sanctions to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that former president Donald Trump abandoned in 2018 and imposed sanctions. But months of talks with Iran in Vienna have not succeeded yet.

The website of Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture on August 11 carried a brief article by Sharif Nezam-Mafi, the chairman of Iran-Switzerland Chamber of Commerce in which Nezam-Mafi said that short-term solutions no longer work in the area of international financial transactions.

He attributed Iran's foreign trade problems to the fact that in recent years, businesses in Iran have been having minimal access to international banking because of US sanctions and Iran's refusal to join international conventions against money laundering and funding of terrorism.

Nezam-Mafi said the problem is not limited to transactions with the West and that soon, Iran will not be able to conduct any financial transactions with Russia and China. These problems should be solved at a higher level, he said, meaning that Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei needs to give the go-ahead to his diplomats to reach an agreement with the United States.

Under the pressure of sanctions, Iran resorted to using money changers for small scale international transactions in order to circumvent the sanctions, but this is not doable when you want to have major transactions with multinational companies. Nezam Mafi said this problem deprives Iran of conducting business even with regional countries.

Meanwhile, Majid Reza Hariri, the chairman of Iran-China Chamber of Commerce said in an interview with the Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA) on Friday August 13 that President Ebrahim Raisi's economic team are not business-minded managers. "Most of them believe in the ideas of self-sufficiency and domestic production as the pillars of their economic theory." He added, "This comes while the key to Iran's economic problems is international trade."

Hariri also attached great importance to the issue of tackling Iran’s runaway inflation. He said: "With every decision the government is going to make, the first question should be: Will it lead to a reduction in inflation?" He warned that as things stand now, the official 44 percent inflation rate will jump to 60 percent by the end of the fiscal year (late March 2022)."

Meanwhile, he said "except a couple of Raisi's ministers who have worked with him at the administration of the holy shrine of Mashhad, we still do not know others in his team. And although they are likely to easily get the parliament's approval, still we need to wait and see how realistic these ministers' plans for the future are."