MidEast

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Experts: With Weak Rial, Sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank Could Pressure Tehran to Reform

Re-imposing sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran, which were lifted as part of the 2015 nuclear deal, while the rial has recently lost nearly half of its value, could “inflict serious damage on Tehran’s economy,” two sanctions experts wrote Wednesday in The Hill.

Richard Goldberg and Saeed Ghasseminejad, respectively a senior advisor and research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote that the rial has fallen roughly 46% since President Donald Trump announced last October that he would no longer certify the nuclear deal.

Goldberg and Ghasseminenejad noted that Iran’s economy was already showing signs of weakness, as evidenced by protests spreading across the country beginning in December against “the regime-controlled banking sector, and lack of economic opportunity and political freedom.”

Declines in the value of the rial have been sparked by the appointments of Mike Pompeo to be Secretary of State and John Bolton to be the National Security Adviser, both of whom are critics of the nuclear deal. In addition to those appointments, “years of pervasive corruption and mismanagement by the clerical regime have left the economy deeply vulnerable.”

Re-imposing sanctions on the central bank at this time, according to Goldberg and Ghasseminejad could “represent the greatest opportunity to regain leverage over the regime on issues like human rights abuses, ballistic missiles, terrorism, and regional expansionism.”

[Photo: Ivar Husevåg Døskeland / Flickr]