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Alarm grows in Iran over reports that hundreds of schoolgirls were poisoned - CNN
Irans currency has fallen to a new record low, plunging to 600,000 to the dollar for the first time
ByJOSEPH KRAUSS Associated Press
February 26, 2023, 5:50 AM
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Irans currency fell to a new record low on Sunday, plunging to 600,000 to the dollar for the first time as the effects of nationwide anti-government protests and the breakdown of the 2015 nuclear deal continued to roil the economy.
Iranians have formed long lines in front of exchange offices in recent days, hoping to acquire increasingly scarce dollars. Many have seen their life savings evaporate as the local currency has deteriorated. Inflation reached 53.4% in January, up from 41.4% two years ago, according to Iran's statistics center.
The dire economic conditions have contributed to widespread anger at the government, but have also forced many Iranians to focus on putting food on the table rather than engaging in high-risk political activism amid a fierce crackdown on dissent.
Iran's currency was trading at 32,000 rials to the dollar when it signed the 2015 nuclear accord with world powers. The agreement lifted international sanctions in return for strict limits on and surveillance of its nuclear activities.
The agreement unraveled when then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from it and restored crippling sanctions. Iran responded by ramping up its enrichment of uranium, and now has enough for several atomic weapons if it chooses to develop them, according to the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog.
Iran insists its nuclear program is entirely peaceful, but experts say it had a nuclear weapons program until 2003 and is developing a breakout capacity that could allow it to quickly build an atomic weapon should it decide to do so.
The Biden administration supports a return to the 2015 agreement, but negotiations hit an impasse last year and appear to have ground to a halt. Iran has further angered Western countries by supplying armed drones to Russia that have been used in its invasion of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Iran has seen waves of anti-government protests since the September death of a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman who was detained by the morality police for allegedly violating Iran's strict Islamic dress code.
The protests rapidly escalated into calls for the overthrow of Iran's ruling Shiite clerics, marking a major challenge to their four-decade rule. Iran' has blamed the unrest on foreign powers, casting it as an extension of the sanctions, without providing evidence.
The Trump administration had hoped that maximum sanctions would force Iran to make major concessions on its nuclear activities, its ballistic missile program and its military involvement in countries across the Middle East, but it has yet to do so.
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Iran's currency hits new low amid anti-government protests
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Iran on Thursday directly acknowledged an accusation attributed to international inspectors that it enriched uranium to 84% purity for the first time, which would put the Islamic Republic closer than ever to weapons-grade material.
The acknowledgement by a news website linked to the highest reaches of Iran's theocracy renews pressure on the West to address Tehran's program, which had been contained by the 2015 nuclear deal from which America unilaterally withdrew in 2018. Years of attacks across the Middle East have followed.
Already Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who recently regained his country's premiership, is threatening to take military action similar to when Israel previously bombed nuclear programs in Iraq and Syria. But while those attacks saw no war erupt, Iran has an arsenal of ballistic missiles, drones and other weaponry it and its allies already have used in the region.
The acknowledgment came from Nour News, a website linked to Iran's Supreme National Security Council, overseen by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Nour News separately is sanctioned by Canada for having participated in gross and systematic human rights violations and perpetuated disinformation activities to justify the Iranian regimes repression and persecution of its citizens" amid nationwide protests there.
The comments by Nour News follow days of muddled comments by Iran not directly acknowledging the accusation by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran had enriched up to 84%.
Bloomberg first reported Sunday that inspectors had detected uranium particles enriched up to 84%. The IAEA, a United Nations agency based in Vienna, has not denied the report, saying only that the IAEA is discussing with Iran the results of recent agency verification activities.
In its comments Thursday, Nour News urged the IAEA to not fall prey to the seduction of Western countries and declare that Iran's nuclear program was completely peaceful.
It will be clear soon that the IAEA surprising report of discovering 84% enriched uranium particles in Irans enrichment facilities was an inspectors error or was a deliberate action to create political atmospheres against Iran on the eve of the meeting of" its board, Nour News said on Twitter. The board, a group of nations that oversees the IAEA, will meet beginning March 6 in Vienna.
The IAEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday over Nour News' remarks.
It wasn't immediately clear where the 84% enrichment allegedly took place, though the IAEA has said it found two cascades of advanced IR-6 centrifuges at Iran's underground Fordo facility interconnected in a way that was substantially different from the mode of operation declared by Iran to the agency in November last year. Iran is known to have been enriching uranium at Fordo up to 60% purity at level which nonproliferation experts already say has no civilian use for Tehran.
Iran also enriches uranium at its Natanz nuclear site.
Weapons-grade uranium is enriched up to 90%. While the IAEA's director-general has warned Iran now has enough uranium to produce several nuclear bombs if it chooses, it likely would take months more to build a weapon and potentially miniaturize it to put on a missile.
The new tensions over Iran's program also take place against the backdrop of a shadow war between Iran and Israel that has spilled out across the wider Middle East. Netanyahu, who long has advocated military action against Iran, mentioned it again in a talk this week.
How do you stop a rogue nation from acquiring nuclear weapons? Netanyahu rhetorically asked. You had one thats called Saddam Husseins Iraq. It was stopped by military force, ours. You had a second one that is called Syria that tried to develop nuclear weapons. And it was stopped by a military action, ours.
He added: A necessary condition, and an often sufficient condition, is credible military action. The longer you wait, the harder that becomes. Weve waited very long.
Late Thursday night, online videos showed explosions and anti-aircraft fire in Karaj, a city about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of the Iranian capital, Tehran. Tracer rounds lit up the night sky, with the thud of blasts heard in the videos.
Iran's state-run IRNA news agency later attributed the activity to an unannounced drill at a base for the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. In 2021, a suspected Israeli strike drone damaged a centrifuge assembly facility in Karaj.
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Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at http://www.twiter.com/jongambrellAP.
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Iran acknowledges accusation it enriched uranium to 84%
New Delhi: A young Iranian girl was hit in the face for not wearing hijab on Tuesday, according to a post shared on Twitter.
In a video post shared by Twitter user Monika Verma, the girl can be seen bleeding from her nose and blood splattered all over her clothes, as she sits on the roadside weeping relentlessly.
Little girl bleeding after getting hit in Iran. Her fault? She didnt wear Hijab. Hijab is a choice is the biggest scam of our times, wrote Verma in the post.
Warning: Scenes of violence; viewer discretion advised
The video also shows two women helping and consoling the girl.
The wearing of a hijab in public is currently mandatory for women in Iran under strict Islamic lawthat is enforced by the countrys so-calledmorality police.
The country has witnessed five months of nationwide demonstrations triggered by the September death of a 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of morality police. Amini had been arrested for allegedly wearing a hijab improperly.
Young Iranian women have been at the forefront of the demonstrations demanding fundamental economic, social and political reforms in the country. A growing number of them, including celebrities, have appeared in public without head coverings or have set them on fire in public.
The authorities have cracked down hard on the protest movement, which has morphed into one of the most serious challenges to the theocracy installed by the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Security forces have killed more than 520 people and detained over 19,000 since the demonstrations began, activists say. Following biased trials, the judiciary has handed down stiff sentences, including the death penalty, to protesters.
With inputs from agencies
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Iran acknowledges accusation it enriched uranium to 84% - The Associated Press - en Espaol