Iran’s Persian carpet industry is fraying at its edges. Once the biggest exporter of carpets in the world, the country’s trade has been hit hard by Western sanctions. Exports have shrunk by 33 percent since 2009, according to Iran’s state news agency IRNA, hitting $330 million in the year to March 2015. After the oil sector, the carpet industry has been the most affected. Cheaper replicas from Asia now make up the majority of imports to the West . ‘The price was increasing, not day by day but every week, every month’ Exports are “more or less zero” according to Mojtabah Keshevarz, owner of Royal Persian Carpets in the capital, Tehran. “It was a good business,” he explains. “The price was increasing, not day by day but every week, every month.” The trader says one of his most expensive carpets, a pomegranate-and-walnut-dyed rug woven in Isfahan, is 100 years […]