tehran, iran
AP
—
Iran on Wednesday appointed a new central bank governor amid mass protests following a record drop in the currency against the dollar due to the economic crisis.
President Massoud Pezeshkian’s cabinet has appointed former Economy Minister Abdulnasser Hemmati as the new governor of the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, state news agency IRNA reported.
Hemmati replaces Mohammad Reza Farzin, who resigned on Monday, a day after some of the country’s largest protests in three years began, sparked by the fall of Iran’s currency, the rial, to record lows.
Experts point out that the 40% inflation rate has caused public dissatisfaction. The dollar exchange rate on Wednesday was 1.38 million rials, compared to 430,000 rials when Farzin took office in 2022. Many traders and shopkeepers closed their doors on Sunday and took to the streets in Tehran and other cities to protest.
Government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani told the X that Hemmati’s agenda includes tackling bank mismanagement, as well as a focus on curbing inflation and strengthening the currency.
Hemmati, 68, previously served as Minister of Economy and Finance in the Pezeshkian government. Parliament fired Hemmati in March, accusing him of mismanagement and accusing his policies of undermining the strength of the Iranian rial against foreign currencies.
The combination of a rapidly depreciating currency and inflationary pressures is pushing up the price of food and other daily necessities, adding to the strain on household budgets already strained by Western sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.
Inflation is expected to worsen further due to petrol price changes introduced in recent weeks.
“Any effort to transform protests over economic issues into security insecurity, damage to public property or the implementation of a foreign scenario…will face strong opposition,” Attorney General Mohammad Mobahedi Azad was quoted as saying by the Miza Online news agency on Wednesday.
At the time of the 2015 nuclear deal, which lifted international sanctions in exchange for strict controls over Iran’s nuclear program, Iran’s currency traded at 32,000 rials to the dollar. The agreement was dissolved in 2018, during President Donald Trump’s first term, when he unilaterally withdrew the United States from the agreement.
On Wednesday, Hamed Ostebal, a local judicial official in southern Iran, denied that young people were killed during the protests, Miza Online reported.
Ostevar, head of the Ministry of Justice in the southern Iranian city of Fasa, said the protests turned violent after a crowd broke into the governor’s office and injured three police officers. He said four protesters were arrested.
Witnesses said Wednesday that merchants and traders had closed their shops in Tehran’s main bazaar, as well as in the southern city of Shiraz and western Kermanshah.
