Iran's currency, the rial, hit a new depreciation record against the U.S. dollar Tuesday in the street market in Tehran, with one dollar exchanged for about 39,000 rials.
The rate on Oct. 29 was 36,200 rials against one dollar, and 35,800 on the same date in September.
The figures represent 7.7 percent and 10 percent decline respectively. The rial has depreciated over the past weeks for the first time since the clinch of Iranian nuclear deal last year.
The new slump comes only a few months prior to Iran's presidential election in May 2017. Iraj Nadimi, a financial consultant to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's administration, said the new surge of the dollar against rial is, partly, due to the supply and demand of foreign currency in the market.
He dismissed the comments that it has something to do with government's manipulation of the rate of dollar to compensate for the budget deficit.
He also mentioned changes in values of the reference currencies in the international markets following the results of the U.S. presidential elections as one of the reasons for the fluctuation in the currency rates.
The rial came under heavy pressure only three weeks following U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's victory.
It is suspected here that Trump's administration might abstain from undertaking Washington's obligations pertaining to last year's international nuclear deal which puts Iran on the path of sanctions relief in return for strict limits on its nuclear program.
The U.S. Senate on Tuesday approved House of Representatives' vote for the extension of the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) for another 10 years.
The bill has to be signed by the U.S. president to become a law. The ISA was first adopted in 1996 to sanction Iran over its controversial nuclear program.
Iran and six world major countries, namely the U.S., Britain, China, Russia, France and Germany, reached an agreement on the Iranian nuclear issue in July 2015, which was implemented in January 2016.
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