As the European Union gets ready to impose new sanctions on Iran amid ongoing tensions with the West, the value of the country’s currency has fallen to an all-time low.
On Monday, the US dollar crossed the 500,000 rial mark on the open market, breaking a crucial psychological barrier that might indicate further depreciation of the embattled national currency in the near future.
To put that number into context, one US dollar changed hands for less than 40,000 rials less than five years ago, when the US unilaterally abandoned Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and imposed punishing sanctions. The rate was less than 300,000 at the start of last September.
A new round of sanctions will soon be imposed, the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and other EU officials announced, prompting Monday’s currency free fall.
The measures, like previous rounds, are anticipated to target Iranian officials and organizations for their response to the deadly protests that erupted across Iran starting in mid-September. The West is allegedly behind the unrest, according to Tehran.
In recent months, the EU and the US imposed a number of rounds of sanctions on Tehran for allegedly providing drones to Russia for its war in Ukraine.
Iran and the EU have also argued about whether or not to label the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a “terrorist” group.
Talks to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement are also still in a standstill, despite repeated requests from the West for Iran to step up its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The international nuclear watchdog has discovered uranium enriched to 84 percent in Iran, which is the highest level ever discovered, according to Bloomberg on Sunday February 19. Tehran claimed that while it does not seek a nuclear weapon, the discovery of “particles” does not indicate that Iran is enriching its uranium beyond the 60 percent it previously declared.
Author-Roberta Appiah
