Iran: Regime Removes Four Zeros From National Currency Amid Coronavirus Outbreak, a Clear Sign of Its Absolute Economic Deadlock and Failure

Written by
Shamsi Saadati

Iran: Regime removes four zeros from national currency amid coronavirus outbreak, a clear sign of its absolute economic deadlock and failure
Iran: Regime removes four zeros from national currency
The Iranian regime’s parliament passed a bill to change the national currency from Rials to Tomans, eliminating four zeros from the national currency. This a clear sign of the regime’s absolute economic deadlock and failure.

Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), described the inevitable action following the Rial’s freefall as the most important sign of the official recognition of the economy’s bankruptcy.

Along with its dangerous economic outcome for the regime, this action, particularly amid the coronavirus outbreak, increases the inflation rate and puts a tremendous pressure on the Iranian society.

Removing zeroes from the national currency is more a political measure from the government rather than an expert and technical one and is a part of the package of economic reforms. In the mullahs’ regime, with its institutionalized corruption, and its use of country’s wealth for terrorism, this would result in a higher inflation rate and more pressure on the people.

The Iranian regime’s economic system, with its institutionalized corruption, has only been made to fund the regime’s illicit activities, such as terrorism and oppression, or fill the pockets of the mullahs and their relatives. The regime’s malign activities and race toward a nuclear bomb has put this regime in an unprecedented international isolation and under comprehensive sanctions. Instead of using the national wealth to help the Iranian people, the regime plunders people’s wealth to further continue its adventurism. The regime’s economic mismanagement has caused the Iranian national currency to decrease, in comparison to the dollar, sometimes as much as two hundred thousand times.

The regime’s economic failure has resulted in a high inflation rate, with an increasing trend. This has resulted in the increasing of goods’ prices as much as 3600 times within the last four decades.

In other words, the Iranian currency has no value, but the mullahs’ regime tries in vain to cover up this absolute economic failure by removing four zeros from the national currency. The regime tries to cover up the increasing inflation and decrease of people’s purchasing power to somehow control the restive Iranian society.

In this regard, Abdolnasser Hemati, head of the regime’s central bank, in October 2019 said: “The national currency, due to the inflation in many years, has practically lost its formal efficiency. Changing this form is a necessity.”

Some of the regime’s economic expert, have described this action, as “removing public sensitivity over the embezzlements,” and “erasing the problem instead of solving it.”

Deleting zeroes from the national currency can only be effective when it is accompanied by anti-inflation policies and austerity measures in the realm of financial policies, financial regularities of the government as well as attempts to get rid of long-lasting budget deficits and reliance on oil revenues. Otherwise, removing zeroes will soon lose its psychological effect and the zeroes will return with even more strength. In other words, the best solution to combat the rising inflation and to execute the economic stability program is independence of the Central Bank from the government and removing the problem-making economic policies. So, in a nutshell, the regime, due its institutionalized corruption is unable to eliminate problem making economic policies; because eliminating these policies means cutting the hands of all its corrupted institutions, particularly those under the supervision of the Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), which is impossible. The regime needs every penny to survive and fund its oppression and terrorism machine. Therefore, it has no solution. On the other hand, due to the sanctions and the decrease in oil prices, along with its corruption, the mullahs’ regime is unable to use oil revenues to help Iranian economy.

The regime’s maneuver of deleting zeros from the national currency, amid the coronavirus outbreak and the Iranian society’s poor economic situation, was meant only to control, or rather postpone, an upcoming nationwide uprising by the army of hungry and unemployed people; but this wouldn’t work.

In this regard, the state-run Aftab-e Yazd daily wrote today: “It has been a year that the Iranian people are experiencing hard days. If the Europeans are grappling for only two months with the coronavirus and experiencing desperation and depression, we have been grappling with various problems and hardships for month and will experience more incidents and crises in a near future. Therefore, the [people’s] tolerance is about to end. Wrong decisions with negative psychological effects could end this tolerance faster. There is enough negative news, particularly amid the coronavirus outbreak. This decision [of removing zeros from national currency] did not make anyone happy. Officials should have waited.”

Yet the truth is that the regime’s officials are not able to wait any longer, and this regime is rapidly reaching its end.