In 1929, one gram of pure gold was valued at three Iranian rials.
Ninety two years later, the value of rial had declined by 6 million times and reached 18 million rials to one gram of gold in February 2022. In comparison to the U.S. dollar, it has declined as much as 16,000 times.
These figures were reported by the Majlis Research Center this July.
How the rial become one of the most worthless currencies in the world?
Today, in the uproar of economic and political crises of the regime, the regrets of the past years have turned into the regrets of the past days, and every day, the situation grows worse for the people of Iran.
Mehdi Pazuki, an economic expert, has recounted the devaluation of the rial in economic terms, and how it turned from a high value to one of the least valuable currencies in the world.
In a July 22 report by Islahat News, Pazuki referred to the sharp decline in the value of Iran’s national currency and its recognition as the weakest currency in the world and said, “Our per capita income has decreased drastically. When the production capacity of a society decreases, the purchasing power of the people decreases drastically”.
Pazuki added that “the main cause is the lack of a system of measures” that does not want to accept the FATF and do business with the world in a reasonable way. He says that the production rate has been zero percent in the past decade. When there is no stability and security in the economy and extremist groups do not realize that without economic investment the country will become weaker and the welfare of the society will decrease, it will lead to the situation that we are witnessing today.
Understatement of money devaluation
In the face of this international scandal, and when it comes to reckoning, regime officials act as if they know nothing of it. Last year, when the ranking of the currencies of the world countries was published and caused the disgrace of the regime in Tehran, they started making ridiculous justifications, such as a report by the official IRNA news agency in February, which stated, “Recently, there was a news in the cyberspace in which the Iranian rial was introduced as the least valuable currency in the world. This type of classification of national currencies is considered the most worthless type of classification”.
In justification of devaluation of national currency, IRNA says, “Countries have due to the increasing inflation and the sharp decrease in the value of their national currency, removed zero from their currencies.”
Iranian rial became the weakest currency in the world!
In a recent report, Forbes magazine classified the Iranian rial as “the weakest currency in the world” despite being “a leading global exporter of oil and natural gas.” Forbes reported that 1 rial is buying “just 0.000024 US dollars (or, put another way, $1 equals 42,273 Iranian rials).” The reality is much worse, with the US dollar trading at around 500,000 rials.
According to Forbes, the currencies of Vietnam, Laos, Sierra Leone, and Indonesia are the second to fifth weakest currencies.
Depreciation of Rial due to structural problems
The devaluation of the national currency is due to structural and policy-making reasons and also the reactionary and predatory nature of the regime of Iran, which usurps the sovereignty of the Iranian people and has no solution for its many crises. After all, how is it possible that they have all these rich resources, but the value of the national currency falls in such a short period of time? According to data from the Bonbast, a website that tracks the value of the rial, Iran’s currency rial lost 51.6 percent of its value against the dollar in the open market in just one year.
In July 2023, Eghtesad Pouya news website quoted Ehsan Soltani, an economic researcher, as saying, “The downfall of the national currency, from 2018 to 2022, equaled to twice as much as the 53 years of the Pahlavi reign, nearly twice of a century of the Qajar dynasty, or nearly three times as much as the eight-year war. Currency price shocks have become the main pillar of Iran’s corrupt and ineffective economic governance.”
In other words, the ruling mullahs are constantly breaking their own records and those of their tyrannical predecessors in destroying the country’s economy
The value of the national currency of any country is an indicator of the growth, progress and well-being of its people, and of course a clear sign of the capability, legitimacy and efficiency of that country’s ruling system. The devaluation of the national currency of Iran is a clear manifestation of the unstable and shaky state of a regime that, after four decades of looting, brutality and massacre, is teetering on the edge of collapse.