TEHRAN (dpa-AFX) – The head of the Iranian Central Bank (CBI) has been fired after the national currency’s record low. According to the IRNA news agency, Ali Salehabadi is to be replaced by 57-year-old economist Mohammed-Resa Farsin. That was decided at the cabinet meeting on Thursday. Because of the acute currency crisis, the CBI Vice was dismissed in mid-December.
Observers had expected Salehabadi to be dismissed earlier. Since the beginning of December, the national currency, the rial, has hit a new record low almost every day. In exchange offices on Thursday, the euro exchange rate reached almost 460,000 rials, the dollar exchange rate rose to more than 430,000 rials. That’s a more than 25 percent increase in just three months, according to forex brokers.
According to financial experts, the faltering nuclear negotiations are a major reason for the devaluation of the rial. According to observers in Tehran, the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the West are at an impasse. The reason for this is the brutal suppression of the system-critical protests, which was condemned in the West in the strongest terms and has also led to new sanctions against the Islamic country.
Without an agreement in the nuclear dispute, the international economic sanctions against Tehran will not be lifted. This means, among other things, that Iran can only carry out its oil and gas exports, the country’s main source of income, to a very limited extent. In addition, there are the bank sanctions, because of which Tehran has no access to its foreign accounts. The Federal Ministry of Economics also suspended the foreign trade funding instruments and German-Iranian business formats last week./xx/DP/he