
Riot police officers clashed with money changers in Tehran on Wednesday.
The official news media in Iran said an unspecified number of people had been arrested, including two Europeans, in the unrest, which was documented in news photographs, at least two verifiable videos uploaded on YouTube and witness accounts. Economists and political analysts in Iran and abroad said the anger reflected both the accumulated impact of harsh Western economic sanctions over Iran's disputed nuclear program as well as the government's inability to manage an economic crisis that has become increasingly acute.
It came a day after Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, told a televised news conference that the plunge in the value of the currency, the rial - it has fallen by 40 percent against the dollar this past week - was orchestrated by ruthless currency speculators, the United States and other unspecified internal enemies of Iran. He pleaded with fellow citizens to stop selling their rials for dollars, a currency he once characterized as "a worthless piece of paper," and warned that speculators face arrest and punishment.
But Mr. Ahmadinejad, whose stewardship of the economy has been increasingly challenged by other Iranian politicians in the last year of his term, offered no new solutions to arrest the slide in the rial, which is a major inflationary threat and has become the most visible barometer of Iran's economic travails. Because of the sanctions, Iran is facing extreme difficulties in selling oil, its main export, and in repatriating dollars and other foreign currencies, because Iran has been largely cut off from the global banking system.
Comment: With the collapsing of the U.S. and world economy, who will be able to make good on such debts?