LONDON: Civil unrest has flared in Iran even as it powered out of recession following the easing of international sanctions last year.
But economic recovery hasn’t yet fed through to the mass of the people, experts told Arab News.
Sanam Vakil, associate fellow at Chatham House said: “After negative growth, Iranian GDP was at 7 percent in 2016/17, 6 percent driven by hydrocarbon exports.”
Iran is energy-rich, holding the world’s fourth-largest proved crude oil reserves and second-largest when it comes to natural gas, said the US Energy Information Administration.
And yet, despite its lavish endowment of oil and gas, the energy premium had not kicked in — “we should expect a ‘trickle down effect’ that will take time, said Vakil.
The protests were about increased expectations following the nuclear deal which was “oversold” to the Iranian populace, she added.
“It wasn’t as impactful as people thought it would be,” said Vakil.
There was a lack of acknowledgement that there would continue to be a number of obstacles as result of secondary US sanctions.
A paper from London-based BMI Research, emailed to Arab News said: “Inflation has declined substantially since president Hassan Rouhani entered office in 2013 — but it remains elevated, standing at 9.6 percent year-on-year in November (up from 8.4 percent in October).”
BMI adds: “Unemployment, meanwhile, has risen as upticks in hydrocarbon exports and foreign investment have failed to spur large-scale job creation: it was officially recorded at 12.6 percent of the labor force in July, but is widely assumed to be significantly higher.”
According to BMI, Iranians’ expectations for economic conditions to improve on the back of the 2015 nuclear deal and 2016 lifting of most international sanctions have not been met.
Many (particularly in the more rural areas of the country) perceive the political establishment to be highly corrupt, and not acting in the best interest of ordinary Iranians, said BMI.
Vakil said the Iranian government faces “political obstacles and need to be communicating more.”
“Rouhani is trying to curb corruption, and make institutions more transparent. But some of these institutions are pushing back. There are tensions, the government is running up against clerical foundations … people that account for quite a big percentage of government budget, but don’t want any strings attached [such as transparency],” said Vakil.
Additionally, Rouhani had to pursue banking reform because Iranian banks have a massive percentage of non-performing loans, she said.
A 2017 International Monetary Fund (IMF) report said global banks still face an extremely high compliance burden to do business with Iran.
How can Iran better ramp-up its energy resources to spread prosperity? Vakil said Iranian gas hasn’t really taken off and needs massive investment.
The IMF pointed out that Iran’s natural gas sector had been expanding, but production growth had been lower than expected as a result of the lack of foreign investment and technology.
Located offshore in the Gulf, the South Pars natural gas field holds almost 40 percent of Iran’s gas reserves, but it is being developed mostly by Iranian companies because most international companies have pulled out. The IMF said development has been faced numerous delays.
When it comes to oil, there are several factors at play. Prices are weak, and as the second largest member of OPEC, Iran must comply with production cuts agreed last year. On the other hand, like other countries, it is seeking to boost income from outside the energy sector to cut its dependance on hydrocarbons.
Iran shipped 777 million barrels of crude last year, the state news agency Shana said recently in a report used by Reuters. The same report said Iran had he country exported 490,000 barrels per day of gas condensate.
The combined daily exports of crude oil and condensate were said to be on a par with what the country used to export in oil and condensate before the imposition of economic sanctions because of its nuclear program, according to Shana.
An IMF mission to Iran in December 2017 found that growth had begun to broaden to the non-oil sector.
“Real GDP growth is projected to reach 4.2 percent in 2017/18 and is expected to be sustained or even rise toward 4.5 percent over the medium-term if financial sector reform takes hold,” said the IMF.
But the IMF also argued for faster implementation of structural reforms, completion of anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism reforms, and the removal of obstacles to private sector development that would allow growth to become more diversified, resilient and job intensive.
Credit institutions and banks needed urgent restructuring and recapitalization, it added.
“Despite recent improvements in the business environment, Iran needed to reduce red tape, reform state-owned enterprises and improve transparency about corporate beneficial ownership to attract investment and develop the private sector,” said the IMF.
Iran energy riches fail to bring prosperity
Iran energy riches fail to bring prosperity
Saudi Arabia’s AI imperative: seizing the agentic enterprise to fulfill Vision 2030 goals
- Workers who use AI daily are 64% more productive and 81% more satisfied with their jobs
RIYADH: As Saudi Arabia advances its ambitious Vision 2030, a transformative shift in the global workplace underscores a critical opportunity for the Kingdom’s organizations.
Slack’s latest Workforce Index survey revealed an unprecedented surge in the adoption and impact of artificial intelligence, presenting a clear pathway for Saudi businesses to lead in the era of digital labor, drive economic diversification, and create high-value roles for the future workforce.
“Saudi Arabia has all the ingredients to lead this shift: a young population, a government willing to modernize at extraordinary speed and industries preparing for global competition,” Mohammad Al-Khotani, the senior vice president and general manager of Salesforce Middle East told Arab News.
From adoption to advantage
The evidence that AI is a decisive competitive advantage is now overwhelming. Slack’s research, which surveyed 5,000 global desk workers, found that daily AI usage has soared by 233 percent in just six months.
Workers who use AI daily are 64 percent more productive and 81 percent more satisfied with their jobs than their non-AI-using colleagues. This trend is even more pronounced in specific markets; in the UK, daily AI users report an 82 percent increase in productivity and a 106 percent boost in job satisfaction.
According to the report, this surge is fundamentally reshaping work. The data confirms that trust grows with use: workers who use AI agents daily are twice as likely to trust them in areas like data protection and accuracy.
Furthermore, AI is enabling workers to expand their capabilities strategically. Some 96 percent of AI users have leveraged the technology to perform tasks they previously lacked the skills to do.
Workers are now 154 percent more likely to use AI agents to perform tasks better and more creatively, not merely to automate them. The top productivity boosts come from eliminating extensive research, assisting with communication, and overcoming creative blocks.
Given this, Al-Khotani emphasized the macroeconomic imperative for Saudi organizations to lead, not follow.
“Saudi Arabia is one of the few countries where the public sector has already set a global benchmark for digital service delivery. This creates a macroeconomic condition in which private-sector organizations must now match the pace set by the state,” he said.
He further noted that “the scale of Saudi Arabia’s transformation, megaprojects, tourism growth, manufacturing build-out and new digital sectors, requires the productivity lift that only digital labor and AI agents can provide. Organizations that adopt early will move faster, earn citizen trust and gain market share.”
This perspective is echoed by Mohamad El-Charif, founder of the Middle East’s first sovereign regulatory compliance platform, Qadi.
“When we talk about digital labor in Saudi Arabia, we have to acknowledge that legal and regulatory AI is not optional. If we wait and come in as fast followers, we’ll end up running our core legal and regulatory workloads elsewhere, governed, and updated elsewhere,” he explained to Arab News.
He argued that early adoption creates a lasting advantage: “Moving early with governed, sovereign agents, lets Saudi organizations encode their own local laws, internal policies, escalation paths and audit trails into the infrastructure.”
He added: “Under Vision 2030, leading Saudi banks, insurers, telcos, and energy companies are not just serving the domestic market; they’re becoming global players. If they build their regulatory backbone early and on their own terms, they don’t just stay in bounds at home, but they also carry that infrastructure with them as they expand.”
From automation to the agentic enterprise
This ground-level adoption aligns with a strategic corporate pivot identified in the 2025 MuleSoft Connectivity Benchmark Report, produced in collaboration with Deloitte.
The report highlighted that generative AI has reshaped human-AI interaction, and the next frontier is the rise of the “agentic enterprise.” This model involves autonomous AI agents that can operate with unprecedented independence, responding to queries, managing sophisticated tasks, and optimizing workflows without continuous human intervention.
The report found that 93 percent of IT leaders intend to introduce such autonomous agents within two years, with 40 percent having already done so and another 41 percent planning deployment within the next year.
This shift is accelerating rapidly; the average number of AI models in use has already doubled from 2024 projections, and IT leaders predict a further 78 percent increase over the next three years.
Salesforce Middle East’s Al-Khotani elaborated on this strategic potential, stating: “AI agents offer a multiplier effect across sectors that Vision 2030 prioritizes. This same efficiency can shift the economics of different industries.”
He added: “Legacy sectors can automate routine compliance, scheduling, documentation, onboarding and case resolution. Public services can move from reactive to proactive, anticipating citizen needs and completing tasks autonomously.”
Qadi’s El-Charif described this as turning “compliance from a blockage into an API,” accelerating Vision 2030’s ambitions.
“For a thriving economy, the biggest gift you can give businesses is predictable, low-friction compliance,” he said, adding: “When you encode local laws, regulations and internal policies into agents, those checks move inside the workflow. Approvals can happen in days, not months, without lowering standards.”
However, this potential is gated by integration. Some 95 percent of IT leaders cite integration challenges as the primary hurdle to effective AI implementation.
Organizations use an average of 897 applications, with 46 percent using over 1,000, yet integration levels have stagnated.
Opportunity for the Kingdom
For Saudi organizations, moving early to adopt and integrate AI is no longer optional, but a strategic necessity to lead in digital labor and deliver on Vision 2030’s goals of a vibrant society, a thriving economy, and an ambitious nation.
First, deploying AI in ways that deliver positive outcomes for both business and employees is key. The Slack Index showed that AI enhances human connection, not replaces it.
Daily AI users are 246 percent more likely to feel more connected to colleagues and report a 62 percent higher sense of belonging. This counters fears of displacement, showing AI can augment teamwork and culture.
Al-Khotani stressed the principles for positive deployment, noting: “AI must be introduced as augmentation, not substitution. When people understand that agents are handling low-value tasks, while humans focus on creativity, judgment and customer relationships, acceptance is extremely high.”
He added that Salesforce data shows 84 percent of AI users say the technology makes them enjoy their job more, largely because it reduces repetitive work.
El-Charif advocated for a practical Outcome-Workflow-Governance framework to achieve this symbiosis, saying: “We design agents to take over that ‘read, retrieve, reconcile’ loop.
“This doesn’t replace humans, but it elevates them out of the infrastructural gridlock.”
He added: “That, for me, brings a real opportunity of using agentic AI to remove the glue work that exhausts people, and free up talent to focus on strategy, relationships and judgment, which is exactly what Vision 2030 is asking our institutions to excel at.”
Agentic AI can directly accelerate Vision 2030 ambitions. As noted by Goldman Sachs Research, generative AI can streamline business workflows, automate routine tasks and give rise to a new generation of business applications.
For Saudi Arabia, this means modernizing legacy sectors, improving efficiency in health care and financial services, and supercharging nascent industries.
The MuleSoft report confirmed that APIs and API-related implementations now account for 40 percent of company revenue on average, up from 25 percent in 2018, demonstrating the tangible economic value of a connected, AI-ready infrastructure.
El-Charif also highlighted the societal dimension, stating: “For a vibrant society, this technology drives transparency and trust. When rules are encoded into agents, their application becomes consistent and audit-ready. This builds confidence in the market and investors know that compliance isn’t subjective, but structural.”
Finally, this transition will create high-value roles for humans. The integration challenge itself is a source of future jobs. The MuleSoft report found that developers spend an estimated 39 percent of their time building custom integrations, and IT staffing budgets are expected to rise by 61.5 percent year-over-year to meet AI demand.
Al-Khotani foresees specific new roles emerging from the AI integration challenge, saying: “Salesforce’s research shows that organizations adopting AI expect their data and integration teams to grow nearly 50 percent over the next three years.”
He went on explaining that this opens pathways for new roles such as AI integration architects, agent workflow designers, and responsible AI officers and digital trust specialists.
El-Charif identified the emergence of roles such as “Legal Engineer,” — someone who understands both the regulation and how to encode it into logic.
Furthermore, as AI handles routine tasks, workers are freed for more strategic, creative, and innovative work, precisely the skills needed for a knowledge-based economy.
Al-Khotani envisioned this shift elevating Saudi Arabia’s broader economic structure: “As agents take on routine and administrative tasks, Saudi Arabia’s workforce will shift toward higher-value roles that emphasize creativity, human judgment, and strategic decision-making.”
He added that this shift increases productivity per capita, a core Vision 2030 outcome, because the workforce is no longer limited by the volume of manual work it can process. “The macroeconomic structure becomes more innovation-driven and less labor-intensive.”
Global AI adoption is accelerating, worker productivity and satisfaction are skyrocketing with its use, and the next wave of enterprise value lies in agentic AI.
For Saudi Arabia, the mandate is to build the robust, integrated digital foundations today that will allow its organizations and workforce to not just participate in this future, but to lead it, turning the promise of Vision 2030 into an intelligent, automated, and human-centric reality.
As Al-Khotani concluded: “The future economy will not reward automation alone, it will reward nations that use AI to elevate human potential. Saudi Arabia is positioned to be one of them.”
