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| Protesters in Tehran yesterday |
Iran’s rial is in a
tailspin, having lost more than half of its value against the dollar in street
trading in the past two months as U.S. and European sanctions aimed at curbing
the country’s nuclear program bite.
Riot police yesterday
fired tear gas and sealed off parts of downtown Tehran after the currency’s
plunge triggered street protests.
The current rate of 35,500 rials against the
U.S. dollar, compared with 24,000 a week ago on the unofficial street trading
rate, which is widely followed in Iran. It was close to 10,000 rials for $1 in
early 2011.
At Tehran's Grand Bazaar --
the traditional business hub in Iran's capital – currency exchange shops closed
down to protest the instability in exchange rates and prices that made trading
almost impossible.
The sprawling bazaar has
played a critical role in charting Iran's political course - leading a revolt
that wrung pro-democratic concession from the ruling monarchy more than a
century ago and reportedly bankrolling the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
"Leave
Syria alone, think of us instead" was one of the slogans protesters wrote
on placards, according to Kaleme.com,
an Iranian opposition site.
Other
slogans raised according to Kaleme.com
were, "We Do Not Want Nuclear Energy" and "Leave Syria Now.”
The
Iranian economy is finding it difficult to cope with the West’s economic
sanctions, but the extensive financial aid to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
has not stopped.
The
Times of London reported this week that Tehran has transferred some $10 billion
to Damascus in support of Assad's war on the Syrian opposition.
But
in a think piece titled “Obama
in Tehran’s Bazaar,” political analyst Zuhair Qusaibati suggests the rial is
in a tailspin because of the success of Obama administration’s Iran policy more
than anything else.
“Tehran’s
bazaar did not close in protest against the rivers of blood in Syria or against
the Syrian regime’s diehard though futile attempts” to finish off the Syrian
revolution, Qusaibati writes for the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat.
“Nor
did the bazaar close in solidarity with the Axis of Resistance (comprising
Iran, Syria and Lebanon’s Hezbollah), which is now on the earthquake’s first
fault line stretching from Damascus to Baghdad and all the way to Tehran.
“The
bazaar did not protest the economic fallout on a ‘Great Power’ still lacking
nuclear teeth of funding the Syrian regime’s war.”
The
war on the rial is what closed Tehran’s shops, according to Qusaibati. And American
soft power is what returned
riot police to Tehran’s streets.
“The
bazaar shutdown is a windfall for President Barack Obama as it would enhance
his reelection chances in November. He is the one who brushed aside Benjamin
Netanyahu’s blackmail, insisting that economic sanctions on the Iranian regime
were beginning to bite, thus making the costly military option redundant.”
Qusaibati
notes, “Recourse to sanctions to choke the Iranian economy and dry up regime funding
for its offshoots abroad is probably the Obama Administration’s sole foreign
policy achievement.
“The
Syrian revolution that took everyone by surprise, including the Americans, presented
Obama with a golden opportunity to seize the moment and give his administration
every chance to dismantle the Axis of Resistance without firing a shot or deploying
Marines to the Arabian Sea and Syria’s shores.”
Sanctions,
says Qusaybati, are what caused the Iranian currency to plummet to record lows,
inflamed the tug of war between tottering President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his
nemesis, parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, and triggered the first street protests
in the Iranian capital since the demise of the Iranian Green
Movement.
“The
Iranian Spring might not await the rial’s total collapse, or the unlikely
bankruptcy of the self-styled ‘Great Power’ so long as it can dip into the hard
currency kitty of its proxy, Iraq.
“The
Iranian Spring, for Ali Khamenei, might be the other face of the storm Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad once discounted because ‘Syrians cling to their
leadership.’”
Qusaibati
concludes, “Tehran funds its nuclear program, the battle to salvage Syria’s
regime and its endeavors in Mediterranean territory to remain a stone throw’s
away from Israel, leaving most Iranians struggling economically.”
Much
as Khamenei keeps regurgitating slogans about “resistance against Zionism”
while tyrants crack down on their peoples with Zionists gloating over their
enemies’ stupidity, he will fail to convince protesters in Tehran that Western
leeches are sucking their national currency.
“Iran
is not Syria, but borders don’t hinder either spring or autumn. The enemies
Ahmadinejad has been expecting in the Gulf and Straits of Hormuz continue to
wager their money on sanctions.”
