Iran’s currency fell to a new record low on Tuesday, with traders in Tehran exchanging more than 2.5 million rials to the US dollar in a stark reflection of how the war in the Middle East has steadily eroded the Iranian economy.
The latest decline came just 27 days after the rial hit its previous record low of 2.2 million to the dollar on Sept. 2. The currency has repeatedly reached new lows since the war began in February.
The Iranian economy has been under duress for years in the face of international sanctions. But a US naval blockade on Iranian oil and new sanctions imposed since the start of the war have sent it into free fall.
Meanwhile, Iran’s top diplomat said indirect negotiations with the United States aimed at reopening the critical Strait of Hormuz have become “more serious,” while the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ chief spokesman Gen. Hossein Mohebbi on Tuesday called on Americans to take to the streets and protest the conflict.
Iran's top diplomat raises the prospect of new talks
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Iranian media late on Monday that the “current focus is solely on the Strait of Hormuz,” the chokepoint of the war.
Araghchi made the comments shortly before departing New York, where he attended last week’s gathering of world leaders at the UN General Assembly, and after meeting with Pakistani and Qatari mediators.
Araghchi said the Qatari intermediaries were expected to soon engage with the US side.
“They are set to raise the matter with the American side once more, after which the final US response will be conveyed to us,” Araghchi said. “If there is a response, the Qataris will convey it to us and a decision will be made in Tehran on that basis.”
Officials, including from the US, have confirmed to The Associated Press that mediators are working with Iran and the US on trying to broker a deal to end the fighting and open the strait.
The mediation efforts continue even after US President Donald Trump earlier this week spurned an Iranian proposal to reopen the strait in seven days if the US agreed to lift its blockade of Iranian ports, release frozen Iranian assets and waive sanctions on Iranian oil sales, among other conditions.
Tensions in the Strait of Hormuz were underscored by a report Tuesday that a cargo vessel was struck by an “unknown projectile” while moving through the strait on Monday. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations said it had received a delayed report from a third party.
The strike caused a fire on board that was extinguished, UKMTO said, and all crew members were reported safe, UKMTO said. The vessel, which wasn't identified, continued on its way, the report said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
US targets Iran’s military supply chain with new sanctions
The Trump administration said Tuesday that 10 individuals and entities based in Iran, Hong Kong and Pakistan now face sanctions over accusations of procuring weapons and weapon components for Iran’s defense ministry as it fights its now seven-month war against the US
The United States is targeting people and companies around the globe that it accuses of being financial facilitators or enablers of Iran’s military supply chain, pushing ahead with economic warfare against Tehran at a time when renewed diplomacy between the two countries remains uncertain.
The latest action by the Treasury Department is part of the administration’s “Operation Economic Outcast” campaign, aimed at severing “critical financial lifelines” for the already heavily sanctioned Iranian government.
“Treasury will not tolerate any support to the regime and will continue to identify, expose, and isolate Iran’s enablers,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.
Iran sends a provocative message to the US public
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps on Tuesday made an appeal to everyday Americans to push their government to end the US war against Iran, a provocative message that comes just weeks before critical midterm elections in the United States.
Mohebbi, the Guard spokesman, read a letter during a news conference in Iran's capital, Tehran, appealing to Americans to pressure their government and claiming that the only way for the war to end is for Washington to admit defeat and leave the Middle East.
Mohebbi’s remarks come as Trump’s Republican Party faces fierce headwinds as it looks to maintain control of Congress. But polling shows the war has darkened the American electorate’s mood ahead of the Nov. 3 election in which elevated gasoline prices, a byproduct of the conflict, loom large.
Trump and his top aides are insistent that Iran’s economy cannot sustain a conflict much longer and have expressed confidence that Tehran will be forced to capitulate.
The US president predicted soon after launching the war that the conflict would last a matter of weeks. More recently, he’s said that the war will likely end after the November elections in the US
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a Monday appearance on Fox News said Iran was heading toward an economic “cataclysm.”
Administration officials say that a combination of new sanctions and a US naval blockade aimed at preventing Iranian oil from going to market are having the intended effect.
“And so when you’re denying them money through oil sales and sanctions, you’re not just punishing them,” Rubio said. “You are preventing them from getting access to money that they will use to try and kill Americans and others around the world and their own people and build weapons and threaten the world and ultimately break out to a nuclear weapon program."
