Footage from Wednesday's closure of the Tehran Bazaar and nearby protests
2051 GMT: Currency All-is-Well Alert. Mohammad Keshti-Aray, the head of the Gold-Sellers Union, has said that the Rial strengthened to 30000:1 to 31000:1 vs. the US dollar --- Tuesday's rate, the last posted on leading website, was 35500:1 --- and that the price for gold coin is down as well.
Keshti-Aray assured that dollar and gold rates would be "clarified" on Saturday,
2047 GMT: Loyalty Watch. Prominent conservative politician Habiballah Asgarouladi has said that "fitna" (sedition) and the "deviant current" do not accept national unity, which is possible only around the Supreme Leader.
2038 GMT: Bazaar-All-is-Well Alert. Mehr assures that the Tehran Bazaar was busy as usual, except for cloth merchants --- "busy" being "half" the normal activity.
The site added the downbeat note that Bazaar wholesalers have refused trade because of the uncertain rate for US dollars and that exchange offices, while open, have not been doing business.
2031 GMT: Not-Quite-Arresting-The-President's-Men Watch. Earlier this week we passed on the report that a warrant had been put out for the arrest of 1st Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi over a major insurance.
Well, it does not appear that Rahimi is facing a night in prison any time soon. Instead, he is in Ankara for economic talks with Turkish officials, including Prime Minister Erdogan, and putting out the hope that trade will reach $25 billion by March 2013.
2025 GMT: Currency Watch. We noted on Tuesday that, in an effort to half the slide of the Rial, authorities were arresting "illegal" currency traders. The judiciary has now said that 16 vendors were detained, calling them the "main players" in the currency crisis.
1655 GMT: Clerical Intervention. Grand Ayatollahs Safi Golpayegani, Javadi Amoli, and Makarem Shirazi have criticised the Government over the current economic situation. Javadi Amoli noted, "Hungry people cannot resist," while Makarem Shirazi jabbed at President Ahmadinejad, "People will hate those who do not accept responsibility and ignore problems instead of solving them."
1340 GMT: Currency Watch. Afghanistan has imposed a cap on US dollar flows into Iran, Afghan police said on Thursday.
The fall of the Iranian Rial by more than 40% in the past 10 days has also hit traders in the western Afghan business hub of Herat. Provincial authorities have set a limit of $1,000 on the amount travelers can take out of Afghanistan.
1300 GMT: Currency Watch. State news agency IRNA reports a rate of 26518:1 Rials to the US dollar in the Central Bank's "trade room" for importers and other selected customers.
The Bank-imposed blackout on the open market rate --- last reported on Tuesday as 35500:1 --- continues.
1250 GMT: Press Watch. State outlet Press TV does not mention yesterday's developments in Tehran, preferring the story "Iran Self-Sufficient in Designing, Building Naval Equipment: Naval Commander".
The website is not completely oblivious to economic crisis --- its Reader's Poll is "Where is the Eurozone Debt Crisis Headed?"
1245 GMT: Nuclear Watch. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, has said that the agency has not agreed a date for further talks with Iran and that he has little hope for a quick resolution of issues over Tehran's nuclear programme.
"We are committed for dialogue and we are ready to have a meeting at an early date but the fact is, that as of today, no specific date is decided for a meeting," Amano said. "We need to see how the dialogue will be when we meet. But it took almost one year and we haven't produced any concrete results so therefore we don't have the reason to believe overnight everything would change --- I don't have that indication either."
Amano said this spring that the IAEA and Iran were on the verge on an agreement over inspections and supervision, but that prediction faded amid the stalement between Iran and the 5+1 Powers (US, Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia) over the future of the nuclear programme.
1225 GMT: Bazaar Watch. AFP summarises, from witnesses, the situation in central Tehran with a "mostly shuttered" Grand Bazaar and "the historic maze...eerily quiet on what should be a very crowded day for Tehranis", as "police patrolled past closed exchange bureaux".
The article claims that "around nine out 10 of the Bazaar shops remained closed", even though police warned that merchants "faced prosecution if they did not re-open".
A clothing vendor who did open said, "I should be closed but I need whatever customers I could get. Maybe I will close later on. The foreign exchange situation can't go on like this."
The vendor blamed the currency situation primarily on sanctions "America wants us to bend but we have our pride."
AFP also notes a reported statement from the Supreme Leader, quoted by the Iranian Students News Agency, "The aim of the pressure against the Iranian people is to make it yield. But it will never yield. That's why the enemy is angry."
1125 GMT: Bazaar Watch. Mehr reports that the Guilds Union have agreed to re-open the Tehran Bazaar on Saturday.
ILNA writes that half of the gold market in the Isfahan Bureau is closed today.
1038 GMT: Ahmadinejad Watch. ILNA reports that President Ahmadinejad will soon visit Evin Prison "for better cooperation between the Government and judiciary to improve the situation of prisoners".
1028 GMT: Economy Watch. A notable intervention from Mohammad Nabi Habibi, whose conservative Motalefeh Party is connected to the Tehran Bazaar --- he said currency devaluation and unemployment are the sources of people's concerns: "People expect that their subsistence problems will be solved."
Abdolreza Azizi, the head of Parliament's Social committee, has attributed currency fluctuations to Government mismanagement and said that President Ahmadinejad must accept responsibility.
1024 GMT: Bazaar Watch. The opposition website Kalemeh reports that the Tehran Bazaar is still closed today.
The site writes that shopowners came. Some lifted their roller blinds halfway; others lifted them completely, but sat in dark shops.
An EA correspondent explains, "Sitting in shops without lighting is an effective method to oppose the pressure of the regime and the Guilds Union [to open]."
1020 GMT: Clerical Intervention. Grand Ayatollah Safi Golpayegani has advised, "Economic problems are because people do not observed the rules of Islam."
Safi Golpayegani said he grieved because some people believed problems had come from the clergy.
1015 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Translator Nazanin Deyhimi has been summoned to serve a one-year sentence.
0742 GMT: CyberWatch. News of the latest cyber-attack on Iran or a bit of PR to justify the regime's pursuit of a "national Internet" which can be insulated from unwanted websites, e-mail servers, and search engines? Reuters reports:
"Yesterday we had a heavy attack against the country's infrastructure and communications companies which has forced us to limit the Internet," Mehdi Akhavan Behabadi, secretary of the High Council of Cyberspace, told the Iranian Labour News Agency.
"Presently we have constant cyber attacks in the country. Yesterday an attack with a traffic of several gigabytes hit the Internet infrastructure, which caused an unwanted slowness in the country's Internet," he said.
"All of these attacks have been organized. And they have in mind the country's nuclear, oil, and information networks."
0734 GMT: Higher Education Watch. Fararu reports on an effect of the currency crisis --- it claims 48,000 Iranian students abroad are in limbo because they cannot get foreign exchange at the official rate, under which dollars and other currencies are only 1/3 as expensive as the open-market price. The reply of officials? "Be patient!"
0729 GMT: Economy Watch. Bloomberg posts an overview of the economic situation --- some take-away first-hand quotes:
People “are nervous about tomorrow and next week because they don’t know how much more expensive things will be,” said Mostafa Daryani, 52, whose family owns a Tehran supermarket chain. “They only buy their daily needs and ignore most of the things that are not urgent for daily life. Instead of one bottle of milk, they buy two.”Prices of home appliances have doubled in the past six months and some shopowners prefer to hoard goods rather than sell them in the hope that they can get higher prices in the future, said Yahya Ebrahimi, 48, who owns an electronics store in central Tehran. Merchants are increasingly using the dollar value of items as the basis for sales, he said....
Daryani’s brother, Mohsen, said their supermarket chain started to delay purchases of inventory this week due to the rial’s fall. “We stopped making large purchases because prices aren’t fixed,” Mohsen Daryani said. “Factories are changing the final cost of their products because of the changes in the foreign currency exchange rate every second.”
0725 GMT: Currency Watch. The Rial-to-Dollar rate is still suspended on leading websites such as Mesghal and Mazanex.
The rate was last posted on Tuesday afternoon, putting the Rial at 35500:1 vs. the dollar. The Central Bank has reportedly ordered websites to stop posting the information.
0705 GMT: We start simply this morning. Were Wednesday's protests, following the closure of the Tehran Bazaar, merely a limited expression of discontent over the economic situation and the Government's handling of the situation? Was this merely a combination of frustration that, for "security reasons", shops had to be shut and of Bazaaris, normally supportive of the regime, highlighting their concern?
Or is this the start of a convergence between the deteriorating economy and a political challenge to those in power?
While we look towards today's developments, we post a summary in a separate feature, "A Currency's Fall, Bazaar Closed, Protests...."