Iran Intends To Replace Dollar With Local Currencies For Travelers
The Central Bank of Iran intends to offer regional currencies to citizens traveling to neighboring countries, instead of selling them US dollars.
The Central Bank of Iran intends to offer regional currencies to citizens traveling to neighboring countries, instead of selling them US dollars.
Iran this year provided Iraqi dinars, instead of US dollars, to hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who visited Iraq at the end of August and early September for Shiite religious ceremonies. Now it intends to use the same tactic for providing foreign currency to travelers visiting regional countries.
The Iraqi dinars became available to the cash-strapped Iranian government when the United States in June allowed Baghdad to repay the equivalent of $2.7 billion from accrued energy import debts. It was reported at the time that part of funds will be for Iran to spend on Muslim pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Apparently, a portion of the released funds were in Iraqi dinars.
Iran is critically short of hard currencies despite much higher oil exports in recent months in the face of US sanctions.
The chairman of the central bank Mohammad-Reza Farzin told local media on Saturday that Iran intends to use the Turkish lira or the UAE dirham for regular tourism based on the model it employed with the recent pilgrimage to Iraq.
The US dollar and other top currencies are near all-time highs in Tehran’s free market, while the government could sell regional currencies to tourists, possibly at more advantageous rates, converting regional currencies it earns from trade into Iranian rials for government expenses.
Farzin added that the central bank is in the process of expert analysis and planning for the move.
However, as noted in a Khabar Online report, also carried by a few other Iranian websites, the Raisi administration at times appears to be a blend of Ahmadinejad's ideas with his reformist predecessor Mohammad Khatami's slogans. The part of the Raisi administration's discourse which is reminiscent of President Khatami's rhetoric is Raisi's frequent allusions to the ideas of Justice and Republic, Khabar Online wrote.
Apart from his political and economic failures, the report maintained that Raisi's attempt to create a new or copied discourse has also failed, though not entirely due to his actions. The idea of a Republic in Iran has been torpedoed by the government's intervention in elections and its undermining of the role of elected bodies such as the parliament and the Assembly of Experts that was supposed to control the Supreme Leader's behavior.
Nonetheless, the Strategic Studies Center, a research body that operates under the President’s Office published a magazine at the end of the first year of Raisi's presidency to outline his discourse. However, the publication did not grab any attention, as all discussions at the time and later were focused on the government's inefficiency and its failure to sort out domestic and foreign problems.
The publication, according to Khabar Online, aimed to emulate what political scientists and economists had compiled to define President Khatami's discourse. However, some of Iranian academics said openly that real progress under President Raisi was way below the level of the discourse. Nonetheless, what Raisi's men put together also used Ahmadinejad's populist rhetoric.
Conservative analyst Nasser Imani pointed out that what Raisi's aides assembled as his discourse does not align with his behavior and his government's performance. Imani pointed out that the government's overall performance, marked by the infiltration of fake revolutionaries in the government. Imani even pointed out the "paradoxical conflict" between Raisi's performance and the ideas of justice and republican principles. This, he said makes Raisi's statements hard to believe.
Meanwhile, in an interview with Rouydad24, Morteza Ezzati, an academic at the Teachers Training University in Tehran remarked that "The Raisi administration is incapable of detecting the country's problems and making decisions to solve them." Referring to the ill-defined ideals and discourse of the administration, Ezzati added, "No ideal is significant enough for which the government could put pressure on the people."
Ezzati further suggested that infiltrators who do not wish for the country's current situation to improve exacerbate the situation to prevent an agreement between Iran and the West that could help end the country’s economic crisis. He views the presence of infiltrators in the government as the most likely explanation for the current political impasse and economic crisis.
Explaining the impact of ultraconservatives on Iranian society and the country's international relations, Ezzati gave the example of advocates of BRICS as a substitute for a nuclear deal with West. He pointed out, "BRICS is an agreement between governments, but it cannot reduce the impact of sanctions because sanctions are not imposed by the private sector. With or without BRICS, any entity in China trying to engage in further trade with Iran will inevitably come under US sanctions."
He reiterated, "The obstacles to trade will be eliminated only with the coming to power of a government in Iran that attaches a high priority to coming to terms with the international order." On the other hand, he argued that "current decision-makers in Iran cannot make decisions that can overcome the economic impasse by ending the sanctions."
Ezzati concluded by stating, "Raisi's government is not capable of advancing a dialogue to secure Iran's interests because it cannot make decisions. However, under excessive pressure, it may take negotiations seriously."
Although no announcement could be found on CFR’s website, a member of the Council, Iranian Jewish well-known writer Roya Hakakian wrote a post on X sharing information that she was invited to the meeting but turned down the invitation. Iran International wrote to the Council on Foreign Relations asking for clarification but has not received a response at the time of this publication.
The date of the meeting is not clear, but Raisi will attend the United Nation’s annual General Assembly taking place in New York City from September 18-26.
Hakakian replied to the invitation saying, “Thank you for this invitation, which, I'm afraid, I must decline. While I am an absolutist when it comes to the value of dialogue, I see the presence of Ebrahim Raisi at the Council on Foreign Relations as a political baptism for a man who has been implicated in countless crimes…”
Raisi, a hardline cleric, who is fully loyal to Iran’s authoritarian rule Ali Khamenei, was elected president in June 2021, in a vote that excluded all the main candidates by a decision of the Guardian Council, a constitutional body composed of Khamenei supporters which reviews candidate credentials. The review is an opaque process and reasons for rejecting a candidate are never transparent.
Before becoming a president by Khamenei’s anointment, Raisi spent almost four decades in the Islamic Republic’s notorious “Judiciary”, also controlled by Khamenei since the early 1990s. It was there in 1988 when he was appointed to a small and secret “death commission” that decided to execute thousands of political prisoners serving their sentences.
In an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes last September Raisi did not deny his involvement.
Young men and women belonging to opposition groups, some violent, were summarily tried without due process and up to 5,000 were killed in prisons.
“Dialogue is reserved for those with whom we have disagreements. For criminals like Raisi, the only venue for conversation must be a court of law,” Hakakian wrote to CFR.
But Hakakian and many other Iranian Americans are furious not just for Raisi’s culpability in one crime in 1988, but also for his role and responsibility as President during the Women, Life, Freedom protests that rocked Iran after Mahsa Amini’s death in hijab police custody last year.
As young people came into the streets to demand answers for her death, security forces armed with shotguns and military grade weapons began shooting them, a behavior that occurred repeatedly for months. The real death toll has not been announced but human rights groups have estimated that more than 500 civilians were killed, hundreds seriously injured and around 22,000 arrested. After hasty trials without due process, seven people were hanged and several face execution and the death penalty.
Raisi and his government have repeatedly said that the protests were riots instigated by the United States and have not held any law enforcement agent of official responsible. In December, he vowed “no mercy” in dealing with the protesters.
“As a proud naturalized American citizen, I cannot help but think that providing such a storied platform to such a man will be legitimizing him, and it is, therefore, an insult to the memory of the protestors who were, and are, fighting for democracy, and it is, therefore, profoundly unamerican,” Hakakian told the Council on Foreign Relations.
