DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Cab drivers and bikers tap away furiously on their mobile phones as they wait at red lights in the Iranian capital during an early June heatwave. Some pedestrians in Tehran are doing the same. They all believe they could get rich.
The object of their rapt attention? The “Hamster Kombat” app.
A wider crypto craze aside, the app’s rise in Iran highlights a harsher truth facing the Islamic Republic ahead of Friday’s presidential election to replace late President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash in May: an economy hobbled by Western sanctions, stubbornly high inflation and a lack of jobs.
Even as
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