Iran’s Rial Makes Further Gains After US Allows Iraq To Release Funds

The price of mutton has passed 5,000,000 rials a kilogram (about $10) and some other items like edible oil and dairy products have jumped 30 percent in recent weeks.

According to officials, the monthly minimum wage of less than $150 only suffices for nine days of a family's livelihood.

Farmers and ranchers say if they do not increase the prices of meat and dairy products, they have toclose down their businesses soon.

However, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei claimed Sunday that to resolve the economic woes, the country needs to have nuclear energy, but he declined to say how nuclear energy can help controllingthe inflation. 

A few months into the presidency of Ebrahim Raisi, when inflation was around 40 percent, the High Council of Labor increased the minimum wage by an unprecedented 57 percent in early 2022 after two consecutive years of very high inflation. At the time minimum wage almost equaled $220.

However, the rial lost half of its value in the past nine months and the minimum wage, without housing allowance, has dropped to around $120 a month.

On the other hand, reformist clerics suggested that the government had better stop putting religious pressure on citizens to “guide them to heaven.”

The Imam in Tehran, Mohamad-Javad Haj-Aliakbari, said that "the enemy" is spreading nihilism in Iran, adding that "In a year when we are getting close to the Majles [parliament] and Assembly of Experts elections, the enemy is trying to sow despair and heresy in Iran."

The term enemy, regularly used by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his loyalists, refers to the United States. By making this statement the Friday Imam was attributing Iranian women's defiance to compulsory hijab to a conspiracy by the United States. 

Iranian clerics and regime officials invariably attribute their failures in various cultural, political and economic areas to the United States or the pre-revolution government that was replaced by the Islamic Republic 44 years ago. 

The Tehran Imam said the West is waging a cultural onslaught against Iran to stop the country's progress in areas such as missile development. Meanwhile he accused Iranian women of not being chaste enough as they follow the West's teachings. 

In another development Ahmad Alamolhoda, the Friday Prayers Imam of Mashad said: "The Islamic revolution's aim was not simply feeding the people and improving the economy. We did not simply want to give political control to the pious and expel US mercenaries from Iran. The aim was to allow the people to live freely." 

However, Alamolhoda. a staunch supporter of compulsory hijab and one of the biggest defenders of clerical rule in Iran did not explain how the Islamic Republic or his own ideology would let people live freely. Meanwhile he praised the Islamic Republic's "achievement" in developing a “supersonic missile” that can reach Israel in less than 10 minutes.

Alamolhoda is the father-in-law of President Ebrahim Raisi and enjoys some influence with Khamenei.

As if he was responding to Alamolhoda,Sunni Leader Mawlana Abdolhamid, who led the Friday prayers in Zahedan, said, "Good for you if you can make missiles, but you need to feed the people first." His comment was a reference to Iran's economic crisis that has been pushing millions of Iranians under the poverty line particularly during the past two years.

Meanwhile, Iran's former reformist President Mohammad Khatami criticized the government's approach to hijab and hardliner clerics such as Alamolhoda's insults against Iranian women who brand women without hijab as "unchaste." Khatami said: "Hijab and chastity are two different things," adding that hardliner "clerics should not impose the hijab on the Iranian society." 

He pointed out that hijab is a matter of choice, and it should not be imposed on women. He suggested that hardliners should avoid imposing "backward" ideas on the society. He added that "Islam should respond to the needs of the modern world." Khatami further stressed that "Women need to be respected if we wish to move toward a better future."

Khatami said: "You should be a human being first and then decide whether you want to be a religious person." He reiterated that there should be no difference between men and women in terms of freedom and dignity and we understand that there will be no limit to our growth." 

Meanwhile, Khatami's former chief of staff, Mohammad Ali Abtahi said: "The affairs of the state cannot be furthered by forcing the people and pushing them into paradise, but some of the country's decision-makers believe that this is a good way of running the country and anyone against it should be suppressed." He called on the government to respect the preferred lifestyle of young Iranians. 

In a phone call, Macron urged Iran to "immediately cease" the support it is giving Russia in the war against Ukraine.

Iran has supplied hundreds of its kamikaze Shahed drones to Russia that have been used against military and civilian targets since October last year. The United States and its main NATO allies have repeatedly warned Tehran to stop its close military cooperation with Moscow.

Macron also expressed concerns about the trajectory of the Iranian nuclear program, the statement said.

Britain, France, Germany, the United States and Ukraine say the supply of Iranian-made drones to Russia violates a 2015 UN Security Council resolution enshrining the Iran nuclear deal.

Washington has also said that the resumption of nuclear talks with Tehran that can lead to lifting of economic sanctions partly depends on Iran seizing its weapons supplies to Russia.

The White House said on Friday that Russia appeared to be deepening its defense cooperation with Iran and had received hundreds of one-way attack drones that it is using to strike Ukraine.

The drones serve to supplement Russia’s missile inventory that has been reduced as it attacked civilian infrastructure for months. The cheap drones also are a weapon that can exhaust Ukraine’s air defense missiles, as they are often launched in dozens.

With reporting by Reuters

The hacktivist group produced documents in May showing that it breached 120 servers of the presidential office, getting access to internal communications, meetings minutes, President Ebrahim Raisi’s online conference platforms and about 1,300 computers inside the offices.

The MEK-affiliated Telegram account Uprising till Overthrow has been releasing the documents on its social media accounts. The latest report shows that 190 hectares of government-controlled land in the southern city of Khorramshahr on the Persian Gulf was given freely to the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI).

The head of the Atomic Energy Organization claimed in a letter to First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber that in order to "accelerate the process of exploration and extraction of uranium ore throughout Iran", the government laws should be changed in this regard.

In one of the documents, the security chief of Fordow nuclear plant -- an Iranian underground uranium enrichment facility located 20 miles (32 km) northeast of the Iranian city of Qom – had asked for about 150 hectares of public land to be given to the nuclear facility to increase its security buffer zone as work continued to expand Iran's nuclear capabilities.

Earlier in May, the group Uprising till Overthrow also hacked into the Islamic Republic’s foreign ministry servers, disabling 210 sites and online services and leaking another large batch of documents.

In the new cyberattack, the group is said to have gained access to “tens of thousands confidential documents” but has so far released some of them. The number of the published documents is still so large that analyzing them will take weeks.

The hacker group also published a document that contains information about the request of the Atomic Energy Organization to import 35 vehicles with an engine capacity of more than 2,500 cc.

Hassan Rouhani, President Raisi's predecessor, had banned the import of Completely Built Units (CBUs) in July 2018, allowing only Completely Knocked-Down (CKDs), which are imported in parts rather than assembled.

Any official organization needs to receive foreign currency from the government and permission to import vehicles or machinery, but cars are particularly tightly regulated, because of the cost for the government in hard currencies.

The difficulty with obtaining US dollars or euros for imports became acute after former US President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal and imposed tough sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, the main source of its revenues.

With French automakers withdrawing from the Iranian market after the imposition of the US sanctions, CKD imports of a variety of Chinese vehicles have flooded the market since then.

The group also claimed that their access to the internal systems of the president’s office was so vast that they sent e-mails to the office’s recipients address list with photos of the leaders of MEK and photos of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Raisi with red crosses over them as well as slogans of “Death to Khamenei” and “Hail to Rajavi”, the current leader of the opposition group.

The president’s office immediately reacted, denying that “the official website of the president” was down due to any attack.

Among the released documents, there is correspondence between the president’s office and the office of the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) under besmirched chief Ali Shamkhani, confirming rumors that the regime's top security chief was forced out after the President said he had failed to do enough to quash riots, despite killing over 500 civilians and arresting more than 20,000.

Speaking to Reuters, the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein was given the clearance during a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the sidelines of the Riyadh Conference on Thursday.

The Iraqi foreign ministry source said that the funds will be transferred through the Commercial Bank of Iraq and confirmed that the money will be used for Iranian pilgrims' expenses and foodstuffs imported by Iran.

Iranian officials have claimed that the money in Iraqi banks could be as much as $10 billion or more. Yahya Al-e Eshaq, the head of the Iran-Iraq chamber of commerce, was quoted as saying by the local media Saturday that the Iraqi debt is between $7 to $8 billion but only $2.7b has been released and that part of the funds has been earmarked for pilgrims and another portion has been used to purchase basic goods.

According to the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), Al-e Eshaq also told the media that the payment of the funds to Iran will have a positive impact on Iranian markets, including the foreign exchange and basic goods markets, probably stabilizing them.

Iraq which is heavily dependent on gas and electricity imports from Iran has been in arrears in its payments to Iran since the US government under President Donald Trump imposed banking sanctions on Tehran in 2018, that can target third countries for transferring dollars to Iran.

In late May, a source with direct knowledge of secret talks between Tehran and Washington on the release of Tehran's frozen assets in Iraq and South Korea had told Iran International that the negotiations could result in a deal soon but the implementation of the deal could take time.

South Korea also holds $7 billion of Iran's funds, which it owes for importing Iranian oil prior to full US sanctions imposed in May 2019.

Iran is expected to show more flexibility on issues related to its nuclear program in exchange for the release of its funds in Iraq, and free hostages, presumably US citizens ,but probably also other western hostages with dual nationality, in exchange for its assets in South Korea, the source said.

After 18 months of talks to revive the JCPOA came to a halt in September, the Biden administration has been saying it is no longer focused on the issue and has listed a few conditions Iran must meet, nicknamed by the media as JCPOA Plus.

Iraqi Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ahmed Al-Sahhaf said in a brief statement that Hussein had made progress "regarding financial dues between Iraq and Iran during his discussion with his American counterpart in Riyadh" when asked about the funds.

With Reporting by Reuters