August 16, 2024
The current Persian year has been quite erratic with a violent military exchange with Israel, a president killed in a helicopter crash, a special presidential election, a Hamas leader assassinated in Tehran and yet another military exchange with Israel. All that would seem to kick the rial around quite a bit.
And the rial has bounced about erratically. But there does not appear to be any relationship between the political ups and downs and the rial’s ups and downs. The chart at right shows the daily closing prices for the rial each day since Now Ruz. It also shows the dates of major political events and disruptions.
But there is little seeming correlation: • After Israel killed two Pasdaran generals in an attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus April 1, the rial, unsurprisingly, lost value; • After Iran bumbled its retaliation against Israel for that attack and after Israel modestly but successfully retaliated against Iran A huge fire at an Iran-Afghan border post has destroyed more than 500 fuel tanker trucks and killed at least one Afghan driver.
The August 5 fire at the Dogharoun border station on Iran’s side of the border is a near duplicate of the fire in February 2021 at the Islam Qala border post, which is the Afghan counterpart located a few miles east of Dogharoun. That massive fire Fire closes Afghan border post again BLAZE — More than 500 trucks were burned to a crisp when one truck loaded with gasoline blew up. and assorted explosions also erupted in a tanker truck sitting at the border.
That fire closed the border completely for five days. The two border posts are on the highway that links Mashhad in Iran with Herat in Afghanistan and is the biggest and busiest border crossing between the two countries.
The closure is particularly significant as Afghanistan heavily depends on Iranian fuel deliveries via tanker trucks for its survival. Afghanistan announced many months ago that it had stopped all imports of Iranian fuel. That was not true. However, the Afghans have rejected many tanker trucks, charging that the fuel is contaminated, and has forced the trucks to return to Iran fully loaded.
Iranian and Afghan officials stressed that the August fire and destruction of property was not foul play by third-party actors but an electrical fire from one of the poorly maintained trucks.
Fire brigades from nearby cities were dispatched to the scene to extinguish the fire. Firefighters in the area said the blaze was contained after two hours but flared up again after a short while for unknown reasons, forcing firefighters to return to the scene. for that retaliation, the rial gained substantially and surprisingly in value;
• After President Raisi died in a helicopter crash, the rial strangely remained stable for three weeks;
• After Masud Pezeshkian surprisingly came in at the top of the first round of the presidential election then won the run-off, the rial gained in value but only briefly; it soon lost all it had gained;
• After Hamas leader Esmail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran, the rial basically but oddly remained stable;
• While the world waited for Iran to attack Israel after the Haniyeh killing, the rial actually strengthened. Some of those rial shifts made sense, but others did not. Political events seem to have only minimal impact on the value of the rial, which is anyway almost valueless.
