Currency-Fearful Iranians

 Iranian riot police stand next to a garbage container which is set on fire by protesters in central Tehran, near the main bazaar, on October 3.

Iranians in the majority appear to support their government with respect to the nuclear program that has been the cause of growing sanctions resulting in a tightening economy.  With the world appearing to be aligned so unjustly against them, nationalism is heightened.  But when the results of those sanctions have been so disastrous as to affect the savings and the wealth of the people of Iran, minds turn to someone they can blame.

There is tension and despair to spare.  But according to knowledgable analysts, no reason yet to feel that the public will turn against their theocratic autocratic rulers.  But they have turned against someone.  President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in the crosshairs of their anger over the plummeting rial, now estimated to be worth 36,000 to one U.S. dollar. 

Iran is heading, like Zimbabwe and North Korea before it, to hyperinflation.  In the past ten days alone the Iranian rial has lost fully one-third of its value next to the U.S. dollar.  The government has acted to meet the concerns of the protesters - by sending out the riot police.  The crowds of protesters shout to the heavens that their president is a traitor, for it is he, they aver, who has mismanaged he economy.

The damage done to the Iranian economy by international sanctions has sagged the economy badly.  No one seems yet to be blaming the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, not yet.  And this is just the time when the European Union is talking about accelerating sanctions with a wide reaching trade embargo.  The EU feels a trifle restrained about this for fear of causing harm to the Iranian population.

Perhaps that kind of pressure to be visited upon the population might serve to prompt them to demand sweeping change to the manner in which their country is administered by the Ayatollahs on behalf of the Islamic Republic.  Who have for years used mandates, regulations, price controls, subsidies and bureaucracy to keep themselves in power, and doing so with their oil revenues.

Iran's intransigence over its nuclear program, its threats of closing or mining the Strait of Hormuz, its costly support of the Syrian regime during the revolutionary havoc has all cost the country its economic security as trade dwindles and its financial institutions are hampered by U.S.-mandated constrictions.  Iran's monthly inflation rate has reached staggering proportions.

Iranians saw a 9.65% drop in the value of their currency over the course of a weekend, and it has continued to devalue ever since, swiftly.  Iranians understand fully well that their currency has been devalued to the point where it has almost nil purchasing power.  Manufacturing has been impacted.  Consumer goods are priced sky-high.  Iran is not a happy place.