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   Iranian Riot Police Deployed in Tehran Amid Collapsing Currency

   By Ladane Nasseri
   Oct. 4 (Bloomberg) — Iranian riot police sealed off parts
   of downtown Tehran and fired tear gas rounds after street
   protests triggered by the country’s tumbling currency.
   More than 200 policemen were stationed yesterday around
   Ferdowsi Street, near one of the main areas for traders in the
   capital, and broke up groups of passers-by. They were also sent
   to the city’s merchant bazaar after shopkeepers refused to open
   and trash cans were set alight in the streets.
   “The price of the dollar was unclear so we went on strike
   and decided to shut our store,” said Rouhollah, who works in a
   wholesale food shop in the bazaar. Shopkeepers didn’t know at
   what price to sell their goods, he said.
   President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for calm on Oct. 2,
   blaming the weakening of the rial on foreign pressures. Iran’s
   economy is suffering after the U.S. and the European Union
   tightened trade and financial sanctions in the past year. The
   restrictions, aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear program, have
   limited the country’s ability to sell oil, its biggest export,
   and other goods in return for currencies such as dollars and
   euros.
   “The fact that there are street protests was in many ways
   inevitable given that Iranians are essentially living in a
   pressure cooker,” said Anoush Ehteshami, professor of
   international relations at Durham University in the U.K. “The
   pressure is inherently economic and affecting all strata of
   society.”

   Tumbling Rial

   The Iranian people “will never surrender to pressure,”
   Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said yesterday in an
   address to a group of students, according to the state-run Fars
   news agency. “In the past 33 years, the Islamic Republic has
   been faced with a wide range of political, security, military,
   economic pressures and sanctions but the Iranian nation has not
   only canceled these pressures but also come out of it more
   powerful.”
   The rial, which has declined in value over the past year,
   dropped about 18 percent on Oct. 1, reaching a record low of
   35,000 to the dollar on the unofficial market. It weakened from
   12,100 to the U.S. currency in September 2010 to 13,200 in
   November before slumping to its current level.
   While the Iranian currency was valued at 36,100 yesterday,
   according to the state-run Mehr news agency, traders in Tehran
   said in interviews that most exchange houses have halted dealing
   in the greenback.
   The current street value of the rial is less than a third
   of the official rate of 12,260 per dollar set by the central
   bank, a rate to which most Iranians, except some importers of
   essential goods including medicines, meat and grains, don’t have
   access.

   ‘Lack of Confidence’

   The crisis has been compounded by poor economic policies,
   said Ehteshami. “The protest also reflects the lack of
   confidence in the elite’s ability to sort things out,” he said.
   “People are also aware of tensions at the highest level of the
   state and you put these things together and they want at the
   very least to show their anger.”
   The rial’s dive happened about a week after the opening of
   an exchange center by the government, aimed at stabilizing the
   market. Central bank Governor Mahmoud Bahmani, cited in the
   Donya-e-Eqtesad newspaper Oct. 2, said the institution will
   “fully cover real demand” for foreign currencies. Importers of
   basic goods such as industrial and agricultural machinery can
   benefit from a discount from the market rate at the center.

   ‘Wrong Decisions’

   Ahmad Karimi-Esfahani, head of the society of syndicates
   and bazaar, said the government “isn’t fit” to make decisions
   for the markets.
   “The government’s wrong decisions have fed the price
   bubble for foreign currencies,” Karimi-Esfahani said in a
   report published by Mehr. “The government has incited ordinary
   Iranians to trade currencies and today we are seeing that as
   much as it injects currencies into the market, it still can’t
   meet demand.”
   U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday that
   Iran’s government bears responsibility for the collapse of the
   country’s currency.
   “I think the Iranian government deserves responsibility
   for what is going on inside Iran and that is who should be held
   accountable,” Clinton said at the State Department in
   Washington. “They have made their own government decisions
   having nothing to do with the sanctions,” she said, referring
   to U.S. and international sanctions on the country.
   “Sanctions had an impact as well,” Clinton said. “But
   those could be remedied in short order if the Iranian government
   were willing to work with” the group of countries negotiating
   with it on its nuclear program.
   The U.S., the EU and Israel have expressed concern that
   Iran intends to develop nuclear weapons, an allegation the
   Islamic Republic denies.

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