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This Is Why Tehran Has Exploded in Protest

Oct. 3, 2012 5:11pm Becket Adams

Some of you may be wondering about that Iranian “currency protesters” headline on the Drudge Report:

For those unfamiliar with what’s going on over there, here’s the situation: Iran’s currency (the rial) is going through an insane and messy collapse. Analysts blame both Western sanctions against the country’s oil exports and poor fiscal decisions made by Iranian leaders for the country’s current state of affairs.

But regardless of the cause, the bottom line is this: Iran’s currency is falling apart, shedding “more than a third its value in less than a week,” according to the Associated Press, and things are starting heat up over there.

“Police threatened merchants who closed their shops in Tehran’s main bazaar and launched crackdowns on sidewalk money changers on Wednesday as part of a push to halt the plunge of Iran’s currency” the AP notes, adding that the currency meltdown has “put some staples such as chicken and lamb out of reach of many low-income Iranians.”

Yes, it has gotten to the point where merchants in Tehran are staging massive protests:

In fact, even the Iranian state press is publicly mocking Achmed Ahmadinejad for the meltdown:

#Iran papers launch an all-out attack on Ahmadinejad, mocking, “If u can’t fix the rial, how can u manage the world!?”

— RezaAsadi (@RezaAsadi) October 3, 2012

But how about a visualization of Iran’s currency collapse? The following chart from Iranian journalist Reza Asadi illustrates how many rial it takes to buy a dollar over the last 70 days [note: the graph is on the Persian calendar (i.e. it’s 1391)]:

Yikes.

“Iran’s currency hit a record low of 35,500 rials against the U.S. dollar Tuesday on the unofficial street trading rate, which is widely followed in Iran. It was about 24,000 to the dollar a week ago and close to 10,000 rials for $1 as recently as early 2011,” the AP reports.

“Exchange houses were closed Wednesday and currency websites were blocked from providing updates,” the report adds.

For his part, Ahmadinejad insists the rial’s decline is because of “psychological pressures” from international sanctions and currency speculators and not because of government policies.

Follow Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) on Twitter

(H/T: Business Insider). Front page photo source courtesy the AP.

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Comments (65)

vic138
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 6:30pm
The rulers of the world don’t like Iran and are out to pound them into submission. It has happened before and it will happen again. Its their fault they have oil and don’t like to be told what the can and can’t do. Read E

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- ChiefGeorge
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 7:05pm
  I told you the NWO elite do not play!
  
  Want to go off the dollar exchanged for crude oil? Then you end up like Saddam who did it, Mummar who did it, and now Iran who is trying it by selling their oil in gold to China, India and Russia. That dollar for crude exchange rate is cutting into our debt because we fund our debts with that exchange..10% of the profit on crude gets rolled back to the US treasury through the OPEC nations purchasing US Bonds. Less money is coming home in thie Kissinger arranged scheme back in the 70s.
  
  Report this comment
coizinho
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:57pm
This is to make Obama looked good in IRA. First, CHINA and RUSSIA is helping IRA ,and second, I remember BANK in USA send a lot of money to IRA, so this must be a B.S.

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sleezevil
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:57pm
Merchants are stapling chicken meat to lamb meat and using it as currency while their government uses MacGyver-like methods to create a nuclear bomb. If their scientists are anything like their terrorists, then Tehran will probably disappear in a mushroom cloud because the scientists got in a fight over which one gets to enrich the uranium at stage three.

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- DarkJello
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 6:08pm
  Tell us more about stages 2, 3, and 4 por favor.
  
  I have met plenty of brilliant Iranians in the states, they must have some there too.
  
  Report this comment
- Truth4SureNuff
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 7:06pm
  Many Iranians are good engineers, a few are brilliant and so it is with the rest of the world.
  Yes, they also have the lower I.Q. masses, but have you looked at a city near you lately.
  
  Report this comment
PoorKnightofKingSolomon
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:53pm
Obama has already set in motion a Bailout for His Muslim Brothers,I’m sure.

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coizinho
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:52pm
Add your comments

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term limits for congress
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:50pm
and,… Tips to Boost Your Testosterone!

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term limits for congress
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:49pm
Ahmadinejahd [whatever] has a plan, but the people must re-elect him first. Seems like I’ve heard some other muslim say that lately.

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- BeeDee
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 8:27pm
  It’s a secret plan, you know. If anyone told the plan early, someone else might steal it. Or as Peloski would say, we have to elect the fool first, to find out what his plan is.
  
  Report this comment
coizinho
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:48pm
This is to make Obama looked good in IRA, but I remember that USA BANK released a lot of money to IRA. CHINA AND RUSSIA HELP IRA, so this is B.S.

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asybot12
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:45pm
What the heck was Amadinijad doing in the US? That was not discovered until 1492

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- AvengerK
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:52pm
  He was being deadly earnest man..deadly earnest.
  
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AvengerK
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:41pm
CHIPS…Blaze removed the post..it was one of those “Hey…my friend made over $1359.83 dollars last month and I’ve been averaging more than 15k a month” ads. I thought I’d jump in on the action.

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ZAP
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:36pm
SigridLopez,tell that B.S. to obammy.

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chips1
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:34pm
“Knock, Knock”
“Whose there?”
“SERTA”!!!!

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Eric_The_Red_State
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:33pm
It’s BILL CLINTON’s fault —

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act

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AlphaProtocol
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:30pm
Can we plese end their suffering?

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- TurboCat
  Posted on October 4, 2012 at 3:41am
  Unfortunately, their own government has created their suffering. Ever since the radical Islamists took over in 1979. The Iranian people used to be very pro-western, but now a lot of them are going to rally around their leaders in a nationalist sort of way because it is human nature to do so. The problem with their nuclear program should have been dealt with way before this point when it was still possible to make it loud and clear that the International community (of free countries around the world) would absolutely not put up with it (while there was still time to avoid a possible war). If we are to avoid a war, we must have leaders who do not equivocate and play “pretty please” with radical idealogues.
  
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OneTermPresident
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:28pm
Sound like anyone we know who also won’t take any of the blame..?

Ahmadinejad insists the rial’s decline is because of “psychological pressures” from international sanctions and currency speculators and not because of government policies.

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- KidCharlemagne
  Posted on October 4, 2012 at 8:33am
  Counterfeiting is an excellent means of waging war:
  
  ————————————————
  In 1776, a printing press was taken out to the HMS Phoenix that was moored in New York Harbor and started an operation that became the first British-sanctioned counterfeiting operation.
  
  “The British counterfeits (colonial currency) of continentals were excellent—so good, in fact, that in April 1777 the king’s counterfeiters ran an ad in a New York newspaper offering to sell their false currency to loyal subjects of the Crown at a rock-bottom price—the cost of the paper it was printed on,” Thomas Craughwell wrote in Stealing Lincoln’s Body (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007: pg. 33).
  
  The counterfeiters were so confident in the quality of their fake bills that they wrote in the ad, that the fake continentals “are so neatly and exactly executed that there is no Risque…it being impossible to discover, that they are not genuine.”
  http://suite101.com/article/revolutionary-war-counterfeiting-a67395
  
  Report this comment
Al J Zira
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:27pm
Maybe the problem is they’re still in the stone age thinking it’s 1391. Keeping people in the dark isn’t going to help anyone.

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- G-WHIZ
  Posted on October 4, 2012 at 10:58am
  …”Anyone godda match?!”
  
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Cavallo
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:27pm
Oh no.. never from government policies. Government is infallible. All bow and worship the state. Who would have thought that even the Islamoweirdos would also bend knee to the power of the State?

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- Truth4SureNuff
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 7:07pm
  I refuse
  
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chips1
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:25pm
Here we go again. Cannibalism!!!!! Didn’t they get enough the first time? Michelle is going to get really mad. Throws off her school lunch program.

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AlphaProtocol
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:25pm
Here we go again…. Can we just nuke the region please?

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- Magyar
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 6:24pm
  Talk to Bibi….
  
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AvengerK
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:25pm
“Ahmadinejad insists the rial’s decline is because of “psychological pressures” from international sanctions and currency speculators and not because of government policies.”

Ahmydinnerjacket’s excuse for Iran’s economic woes sounds like he got advice from Obama’s campaign managers. Eerily similar.

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- TurboCat
  Posted on October 4, 2012 at 3:44am
  O-blame-a. Mitt should get Sununu or one of his campaign people to “accidentally” refer to him by that name. On cable. In an interview or something. I think it would catch on.
  
  Report this comment
IntheDirt
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:23pm
The story is even more amazing when you consider our currency is so watered down we are paying almost $4.00 a gallon for gasoline.

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CWPrequired
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:23pm
Coming to a town near you if we don’t fire our current idiot in chief.

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- drs1969
  Posted on October 4, 2012 at 12:31am
  It may, anyway. The Fed will still be there.
  
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resme
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:23pm
The CIA knows all about devaluing a currency. *hint hint*

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- Norm D. Plume
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 6:26pm
  Yep. They learned their lessons well. The Bernanke (silent ‘E’) is a great teacher.
  
  Report this comment
dumpdabums
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:22pm
If Obama is not defeated.. Be prepared.. cause We are next !!!!

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sasquatch08
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:21pm
Too bad this is the road we’re headed down too.

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