By NASSER KARIMI and DAVID RISING Associated Press
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s currency hit a record low Monday as Washington prepared to announce new sanctions it said would add further pressure on an economy already battered by previous sanctions and a U.S. naval blockade.
The rial dropped to 2.02 million to the U.S. dollar as trading opened on currency markets. Iran’s official Central Bank rate stood at around 1.5 million rial to the dollar, but the market rate is what most Iranians pay.
The currency had already been under pressure before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, as Iran faced double-digit inflation and negative growth, but has repeatedly hit new lows as nearly six months of war have taken an even greater toll.
Iranians find daily staples increasingly unaffordable. Since the war began, rice is up some 60% and prices of beef are more than 150% higher. The International Monetary Fund forecasts that GDP will contract more than 5%.
Still, economic pressure has not yet translated into political pressure. Iran retains a key strategic advantage: Its attacks and threats on ships in the Strait of Hormuz have brought traffic in the vital waterway to a near halt, damaging the world economy and heaping pressure on U.S. President Donald Trump ahead of congressional elections.
The war, as a result, has devolved into a fight over who controls the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil transited before the conflict. Iran is now refusing to fully reopen it unless it can charge ships.
Iran and Oman, which is on the opposite side of the strait, are reportedly in the final stages of agreeing upon a plan for joint management of the waterway. Oman’s foreign minister is set to visit Iran on Tuesday.
In an attempt to break the impasse, Trump’s administration promised even stronger sanctions than those already in place would be announced Monday, including secondary sanctions on countries that continue to do business with Iran.
“President Trump decimated Iran’s economy to a point where the rial has never been weaker and inflation has rarely been higher,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wrote Sunday in an opinion piece in the Financial Times. “The regime’s final refuge now lies in the self-deception of fearful nations that still believe accommodating aggression can secure a durable peace.”
Already last week, the United Arab Emirates announced that it was suspending all trade with Iran. The UAE has long been one of Iran’s largest trading partners and its biggest source of imports.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told reporters in Tehran on Monday that “any escalation of this situation will undoubtedly bring about consequences.”
“Our hands are not tied,” he added.
Pakistan, which played a key role in brokering a 60-day ceasefire in June, sent a high-level delegation to Iran on Monday to discuss ending the war, the military said.
In downtown Tehran, 73-year-old Sadegh Mahmoudi did not hold out hope for a resolution. He joined a line of about a dozen people to purchase U.S. dollars with his remaining savings to hedge against further declines.
“There is no hope for a deal and peace,” he said.
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Rising reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writer Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed.