Iran currency falls to record the dollar level as tensions rise

By Nasser Karimi and Jon Gambrell | Associated Press

Tehran, Iran – The currency of Iran Rial exchanged on Saturday at a record level compared to the US dollar while the country returned to work after a long vacation, which costs more than a million rials for a single greenback while the tensions between Teheran and Washington push it even lower.

The exchange rate had plunged more than a million Rials during the Persian New Year, Nowruz, while the currency stores closed and only the informal trade took place in the streets, creating additional pressure on the market. But while merchants resumed work on Saturday, the rate dropped even more at 1,043,000 for the dollar, reporting that the new lower seemed here.

On Rue Ferdowssi in the Iranian capital, Tehran, in the heart of the country’s silver scholarships, some traders have even extinguished their electronic panels showing the rate in force when uncertainty is looming how the Rial could fall.

“We are disabled because we are not sure of successive changes in the rate,” said Reza Sharifi, who works in an exchange.

Tensions with us tighten the Rial

The Iranian economy was seriously affected by international sanctions, in particular after the American president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the Teheran nuclear agreement with the global powers in 2018. At the time of the 2015 agreement, which saw Iran considerably limit its enrichment and the storage of uranium in exchange for international sanctions, the Rial was negotiated at 32,000 to uranium.

After Trump returned to the White House for his second term in January, he restarted his alleged campaign of “maximum pressure” targeting Tehran with sanctions. He has once again taken businesses that exchange Iranian crude oil, including those who sell to a delivery to China.

Meanwhile, Trump wrote to the supreme chief of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, trying to relaunch the direct talks between Tehran and Washington. Until now, Iran has argued that it is arranged for indirect talks, but such discussions under the Biden administration have not progressed.

Meanwhile, Trump continues an intense air campaign targeting the Houthi rebels supported by Iran in Yemen, the last force in the self -proclaimed “resistance axis” of Tehran, capable of attacking Israel after other militant groups were mutilated by Israel during his war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Mehdi Darabi, market analyst, said he thought that foreign pressures in recent months had caused “expectations for the possibility of decreasing oil sales and more inflation, and this has caused a higher rate of hard currencies”, according to the economic newspaper Donay-E-Eqtesad de Tehran.

A retiree who only gave his first name, Saeed, for fear of reprisals, said that if Iran had stopped its hostile policy towards the outside, a financial aid could be possible.

“If we want to live a comfortable life, we should maintain good links with our neighbors,” he said. “We shouldn’t bother our teeth. They will do the same. “

Economic pressure ignites the Iranian public and politics

Economic upheavals have evaporated public savings, pushing the Iranians medium to keep hard currencies, gold, cars and other tangible wealth. Others continue cryptocurrencies or fall into rich rich patterns.

Meanwhile, internal political pressure is still ignited on the compulsory hijab, or scarf, women always ignoring the law in the streets of Tehran. Rumors also persist on the government, potentially increasing the cost of subsidized essence in the country, which has triggered national demonstrations in the past.

Iran’s theocracy has responded by largely reappearing the application of the hijab and softening it with restrictions on at least one political figure.

On Saturday, the IRNA news agency managed by the State even cited part of a declaration by Mehdi Karroubi, a Shiite religious, speaker of the Parliament and double presidential candidate who is detained at his home since the demonstrations of the 2011 Arab Spring. Karroubi, who was also one of the leaders of the Iranian demonstrations of the Green Movement 2009, is being released as a residence.

“The end of my residual assignment coincided with a supercrust that … put the country on the verge of a devastating war,” said its press release.

The fall of the Rial also exerted more pressure on the Iranian reformist president Masoud Pezeshkian. In March, while the rate was 930,000 Rials in the dollar, the Iranian Parliament dismissed its Minister of Finance, Abdolnasser Hemmati about the crushing Rial and accusations of mismanagement.

Anger on public spending has also seen Pezeshkian dismiss his vice-president responsible for parliamentary affairs, Shahram Dabiri, for having made a luxury cruise in Antarctica, reported the state media. Although Dabiri would have used his own money for the trip with his wife, the published Instagram photos of his journey made an angry an Iranian audience who managed to survive.

“In a situation where economic pressures on people are enormous and the number of disadvantaged people is a massive and expensive recreational journey by civil servants, even by their own personal fund, is not defensible and reasonable,” said Pezeshkian in dismissing Dabiri, who has so far proposed any public explanation for his trip.