Iranian currency hits record low after Trump administration says UN sanctions have been reimposed

Iranian currency hit a record low on the unofficial market on Sunday after President Trump’s administration said all United Nations sanctions have been reimposed on Tehran. 

Iran’s currency reached as much as 273,000 rials to the dollar, rising from 267,800 rials to the dollar on Saturday, according to foreign exchange site Bonbast.com, Reuters noted. The value of the rial has lost 49 percent of its value to the dollar throughout 2020, including a loss of 30 percent since June, according to The Associated Press. 

The U.S. declared on Saturday that U.N. sanctions against Iran would be reinstituted because Tehran wasn’t following the Obama-era nuclear deal.

Iranian leaders have labeled the U.S. action as “void and illegal,” with most of the rest of the world agreeing ahead of the U.N. General Assembly this week. 

U.N, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres informed the Security Council on Saturday that he cannot act on the U.S.’s declaration, saying “there would appear to be uncertainty” on the problem, Reuters reported. 

France, Germany and Britain, the three European countries involved in the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, released a statement saying the U.S. action to reinstate U.N. sanctions “would be incapable of legal effect” after the U.S. departed the pact in 2018.

But the Trump administration is expected to release an executive order on Monday that will specify how the U.S. will reinstitute the sanctions against Iran and against any country violating sanctions against Tehran, according to the news services. 

Iran’s foreign ministry criticized the Trump administration’s announcement, calling it “futile” and saying that  “the U.S. approach is a major threat to the international peace and security and an unprecedented threat to the U.N. and the Security Council.”

“Iran emphasizes that if the U.S., directly or with the cooperation of a number of its allies, makes any move in line with these threats, it will face a serious reaction and should account for all its dangerous consequences,” the ministry said, according to Reuters. 

The U.S. reinstated sanctions on Iran after leaving the nuclear deal in 2018. The sanctions, in addition to a decrease in oil prices and the highest coronavirus deaths in the Middle East, have damaged the Iranian economy. 

In 2015, Iran’s currency was 32,000 rials to the dollar.