For months, since the imposition of harsh, American-led sanctions over Iran?s nuclear programme, the country?s leaders have sworn they would never succumb to Western pressures, and they scoffed at the idea that the measures were having any serious impact. But after a week in which the Iranian currency, the rial, fell by a shocking 40% and protests began to rumble through the capital, no one is making light of the mounting costs of confrontation. In Tehran, all anyone can talk about is the rial, and how lives have been turned upside down in one terrible week. ?Better buy now,? one rice seller advised Abbas Sharabi, a retired factory guard, who had decided to buy 900 pounds of Iran?s most basic staple in order to feed his extended family for a year.
While only a few people actually need to exchange the rial for foreign currency, its value is one of the few clear indicators of the state of the economy, and its fall has sharply raised the prices of most staples. Many residents spend their days calling on money changers and visiting banks, deliberating whether to sell their rials now or wait for a miracle that would restore the rates to old levels, or for even a modest rally from the panic-driven lows of the last week.
Experts are divided about whether the crisis has been caused more by Tehran?s longtime mismanagement of the country?s economy or by sanctions, which have been imposed over Iran?s refusal to halt a nuclear programme that the West suspects is a cover for developing weapons. Whatever the cause, members of the once-vibrant middle class have turned into cynics.