Iran’s currency, the rial, fell to a record low against the dollar over the weekend, due to sanctions and international isolation.
The rial has lost 29% of its value since the start of antigovernment protests in the Islamic Republic sparked by the death of 22-year-old Iranian Kurd Mahsa Amini in September while in the custody of the country’s morality police for allegedly wearing her mandatory hijab improperly.
The dollar was selling for as much as 447,000 rials on Iran’s unofficial market on Saturday, nearly 17,000 more than the previous day, Reuters reported, citing the foreign exchange site Bonbast.com. The drop comes amid threatened Europe Union sanctions against the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp, and crippling US sanctions put in place when the Trump administration left the world powers’ nuclear deal with Iran in 2018. Ongoing negotiations to reup the deal have stalled, also adding to the Iranian currency’s shakiness.
Iran’s central bank governor Mohammad Reza Farzin on Saturday called the rial’s drop a result of “psychological operations” by the Islamic Republic’s enemies based on “media deceit and psychological operations.”