Iran sold its first cargo of imported premium “super” gasoline on the Tehran Energy Exchange on Sunday with the base price set at 658,000 rials a liter ($0.58), state media reported.
The shipment totaled 300,000 liters and will be delivered to a distributor on November 29, with supplies expected to reach filling stations within 7 to 10 days, according to the exchange’s chief executive.
IRNA said the 658,000-rial base is not the final retail price, because transport and station fees will be added, meaning premium fuel for higher-end cars could cost at least 33–35 million rials ($29–$31) to fill a 50-liter tank, and potentially closer to 37.5 million rials ($33) if sold around 750,000 rials a liter ($0.66).
The exchange’s upcoming trading board showed no new premium gasoline offer for Tuesday, suggesting the next batch may be delayed to next week.
The sale comes amid renewed debate over Iran’s fuel subsidies six years after nationwide protests erupted over a gasoline price hike in November 2019.
Officials have framed imported premium gasoline as a market-priced, third-tier option rather than a direct change to subsidized quotas, but President Masoud Pezeshkian has said there is “no doubt” prices must rise, and government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani has put the state’s cost of gasoline at about 700,000 rials a liter ($0.62).
Under the order, the Central Bank of Iran must prepare the shift within two years before managing a three-year phase in which old and new banknotes circulate together.
Once that cycle ends, all transactions will be settled in the new unit and existing notes will be withdrawn, according to Iranian state media.
Parliament earlier approved a law defining the “new rial” as equal to 10,000 current rials, with “gheran” designated as the subunit.
Economists remain divided over the effect of the redenomination. The policy is expected to require printing new notes, destroying old ones and modifying banking and accounting systems.
Critics argue that without wider reforms the move is mainly cosmetic, citing Argentina, Zimbabwe, Romania and the former Yugoslavia, where redenominations did little to restrain prices.
“This policy is largely cosmetic,” economist Ahmad Alavi told Iran International in August. “Without tackling the roots of inflation – from liquidity growth to systemic inefficiencies – removing zeros will not restore the rial’s value.”
Debate over deleting zeros began in the late 1990s and circulated through multiple administrations. Parliament first passed the plan in 2020, but the Guardian Council sent it back for revisions. The current version – retaining the name “rial” and introducing “gheran” – won final approval in October and has now entered execution with Pezeshkian’s signature.
Long path to implementation
Officials say the overhaul aims to simplify calculations, improve the legibility of Iran’s currency and prepare the ground for broader fiscal measures.
The abundance of zeros in the national currency had caused accounting and operational difficulties, Shamseddin Hosseini, head of parliament’s Economic Committee, said last month, adding that similar redenominations had been undertaken by countries such as Turkey in 2003 and 2005.
The reform comes amid persistent inflation of about 40%, a more than 90% loss in the rial’s value since US sanctions were reimposed in 2018, and widespread economic hardship.
With the formal order issued, the central bank begins one of the Islamic Republic’s most extensive monetary reforms, whose outcome still hinges on the government’s broader effort to control inflation.
Tehran’s main dams have fallen to volumes that must be preserved for safety and contingency, said Rama Habibi, deputy head of the city’s regional water authority, on Saturday.
“I cannot say Tehran’s dams have reached dead storage, but they are almost at a level below which the remaining volume is considered strategic and must stay in place,” Habibi said.
While none of the capital’s dams has been taken offline, he said some have dropped so low that water can no longer be pumped out efficiently.
Tehran is now in its sixth straight year of drought. Official data show the capital’s Latian dam at its lowest point in six decades, while the Karaj dam holds less than one-tenth of its capacity. As a result, about 70 percent of Tehran’s water is now pumped from underground sources that are under severe strain and at risk of subsidence.
Pressure management and looming restrictions
Pressure management remains one of the ministry’s key tools to delay wider shortages, said Isa Bozorgzadeh, spokesman for Iran’s water sector. Pressure reductions, he added, are imposed from midnight until early morning when consumption is lower, with milder reductions continuing during the day.
Bozorgzadeh warned that if households fail to meet the ministry’s request for a 10-percent cut in use, pressure limits may be expanded to other hours.
Nationwide drought deepens
Only 3.5 millimeters of rainfall were recorded nationwide over the past 50 days, amounting to just 18 percent of normal levels, Mohammad Javanbakht, head of Iran’s water resources management company said.
20 provinces, according to him, saw no rainfall at all and last year marked Iran’s fifth consecutive dry year. “Tehran and Bandar Abbas experienced the lowest water levels in their operational history last year,” Javanbakht said.
Rainfall, he noted, has fallen roughly 40 percent below long-term averages, leaving the country’s dams with their lowest combined storage in more than a decade.
Mashhad and Kerman reach breaking point
The religious city of Mashhad has entered full rationing, Nasrollah Pejmanfar, a lawmaker, said on Friday.
The city’s Dousti dam, he added, “has no water left to transfer, and the reservoirs supplying Mashhad have reached zero,” attributing the crisis to inadequate watershed management.
In Kerman, south of Iran, field accounts describe collapsing aquifers, abandoned orchards and shrinking wildlife habitats. Local pumping systems are deteriorating, while flood irrigation and unsuited crop patterns continue to drain groundwater.
Water specialists warn that unchecked extraction, losses in distribution networks, rapid urban expansion and limited adoption of modern conservation technologies could make reliable supply unattainable for 30 to 50 percent of Tehran’s population within five to ten years.
They caution that without effective winter precipitation, Iran may face broader rationing and possible localized evacuations in the months ahead.
