UN (AP) – Iran’s rial currency fell to a new history low on Wednesday, reaching 1,074,000 just before Iranian President Masuud Pezeshkian was scheduled to address the UN.
The currency collapse follows Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s refusal to direct consultations with the US over the nuclear program.
Khamenei’s announcement could be a diplomatic box that Pezeshkian and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragut could have made in New York. Last-minute talks between Iran and European countries also suggested that they would not halt future re-challenges of UN sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. The 30-day window to stop sanctions will close on Sunday.
France, Germany and the UK have sparked a so-called snapback mechanism to revive sanctions over Iran’s failure to comply with the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal that Tehran aims to prevent the development of nuclear weapons.
“Snapback” is designed to be rejected by the United Nations, which launches a 30-day window to reopen sanctions unless the West and Iran reach a diplomatic agreement.
European countries say they are willing to extend the deadline if Iran resumes direct negotiations with the US over its nuclear program, allowing UN nuclear inspectors to access nuclear sites and taking into account the highly abundant uranium 400 kilograms (880 pounds) of uranium as mentioned by UN Watchdog. Iran is the only country in the world that enriches up to 60% of people who have no weapons programme (a short technical step from weapons grade levels).
If no diplomatic contracts are found this week, sanctions will automatically be “snapback” on Sunday. It will again freeze Iran’s assets overseas, with the halt weapons dealing with Tehran, bringing the development of Iran’s ballistic missile programme, among other measures, and further squeezing the country’s involvement economy.
Earlier this month, the United Nations Nuclear Watch Agency and Iran signed an Egyptian-mediated agreement to open ways to resume cooperation, including how to resume testing of Iran’s nuclear facilities. However, the agreement has not yet been fully established.
In July, Pezeschkian signed a law adopted by his country’s parliament, which halted all cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency. It followed a 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June, during which Israel and the United States bombed Iran’s nuclear sites.
Iran has long argued that its programme is peaceful, but the Western countries and the Vienna-based IAEA rated Tehran as having an active nuclear weapons programme until 2003. Khamenei again said Iran is not seeking an atomic bomb.
“We don’t have nuclear bombs, so we don’t have nuclear bombs. We don’t intend to use nuclear weapons,” he said.
However, he added: “Science is not demolished by threats and bombing.”
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Amir Vadat of Tehran, Iran, and John Gambrel of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
