DUBAI – On Thursday, Iran’s currency, the rial, plunged to near-historic lows amid growing unease in Tehran about European countries potentially restoring United Nations sanctions. These measures, stemming from Iran’s nuclear activities, pose further threats to the country’s weakened economy.
The so-called “snapback” procedure was integrated into Iran’s 2015 nuclear agreement with global powers, intended to be immune from vetoes at the UN. Once triggered, this process could take effect after a 30-day period. This would result in the renewed freezing of Iranian overseas assets, prohibition of armaments trades with Tehran, and penalties for any advancements in its ballistic missile projects, amongst other restrictions.
On Thursday in Tehran, the rial was valued at over 1 million to the dollar. During the 2015 nuclear deal, it was exchanged at 32,000 to $1, illuminating the currency’s steep decline over the years. The rial reached its lowest record in April at 1,043,000 rials per dollar.
France, Germany, and the UK cautioned on August 8 that Iran might provoke the snapback by halting inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency following Israeli strikes during a 12-day conflict in June. These attacks resulted in the deaths of Iran’s senior military figures and forced Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei into seclusion.
Iran appears resigned
Initially, Iran dismissed the threat of reimposed sanctions, showing minimal diplomatic activity in the wake of Europe’s alert. However, recently, there has been a slight diplomatic effort, underscoring the turmoil affecting its government.
Last week, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi expressed Iran’s resigned attitude toward its negotiations with the West, particularly as Israel commenced hostilities coinciding with the planned sixth round of discussions with the United States.
“Weren’t we in the talks when the war happened? So, negotiation alone cannot prevent war,” Araghchi told the state-run IRNA news agency. “Sometimes war is inevitable and diplomacy alone is not able to prevent it.”
At issue is Iran’s nuclear enrichment
Before the war in June, Iran was enriching uranium up to 60% purity, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%. It also built a stockpile containing enough highly enriched uranium to build multiple atomic bombs, should it choose to do so.
Iran long has insisted its program is peaceful, though Western nations and the IAEA assess Tehran had an active nuclear weapons program up until 2003.
It remains unclear just how much the Israel and U.S. strikes on nuclear sites during the war disrupted Iran’s program.
Under the 2015 deal, Iran agreed to allow the IAEA even greater access to its nuclear program than those the agency has in other member nations. That included permanently installing cameras and sensors at nuclear sites. Other devices, known as online enrichment monitors, measured the uranium enrichment level at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility.
The IAEA also regularly sent inspectors into Iranian sites to conduct surveys, sometimes collecting environmental samples with cotton clothes and swabs that would be tested at IAEA labs back in Austria. Others monitor Iranian sites via satellite images.
But IAEA inspectors, who faced increasing restrictions on their activities since the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from Iran’s nuclear deal in 2018, have yet to access those sites. Meanwhile, Iran has said it moved uranium and other equipment out prior to the strikes — possibly to new, undeclared sites that raise the risk that monitors could lose track of the program’s status.
On Wednesday, IAEA inspectors were on hand to watch a fuel replacement at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor, which is run with Russian technical assistance.
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Associated Press writer Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.
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