Iran Focus
London, 26 Sep – Reports indicate that the Iranian currency is continuing to drop in the days following the recent incidents which Iran regime’s officials immediately blamed Saudi Arabia, the United States and the United Arab Emirates for it. A video was posted on social media in which the Iranian regime threatened the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia with missile attacks on their capital cities.
The price of gold has shot right up and the value of the Rial, the national currency of Iran, has dramatically dropped. It has been reported that the dollar has hit the 150,000 Rial mark.
Officials have said that the political situation has caused the value of foreign currencies to soar.
However, it goes deeper than this.
Firstly, the European Union and Iran have been trying to keep the 2015 nuclear deal alive. Talks have been held but very little progress has been made. Iran keeps making demands that the Europeans can’t meet. Not least because Iran still hasn’t implemented FATF or any other financial regulations. But the Europeans have been trying to appease Iran as much as possible because they want to keep the nuclear deal alive.
Secondly, there is a lot of uncertainty with regards to the money laundering and financing of international terrorism bills that have been brought up in the United States.
Furthermore, Iran regime’s President Hassan Rouhani and his Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif are due to attend a special session of the United Nation’s Security Council where Iran’s belligerence will certainly be focused upon.
Finally, Iran’s major drop in oil exports is doing nothing to help the situation.
The Rial, at the beginning of the fiscal year (March), was worth 50,000 to the dollar. This has now depreciated three-fold to 150,000. Analysts say that this is largely because of the United States withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal and the increasing tension between the two nations.
Earlier this year, President Trump announced that the United States was exiting the deal because of its acts of belligerence across the region. He explained that he was going to try his hardest to cut the Iranian regime off from the funds that are allowing it to fund terrorist organisations and proxy groups across the Middle East.
A few days ago, National Security Adviser John Bolton said that further sanctions will apply if Iran does not change its policies. He said: “We think these new sanctions coming in will have a significant economic and political effect inside the country.
And that’s what we want. We want massive changes in behavior by the regime in Iran. And if they don’t undertake that, they will face more consequences, because we will find more sanctions to impose and other ways to put maximum pressure on them.”
