TEHRAN, Iran: As Iranians celebrated the Persian New Year on March 25, the country’s currency, the rial, fell to a record low of 613,500 to the U.S. dollar.

At Tehran’s main hub of currency exchange shops in Ferdowsi Street, people were trying to exchange rials for foreign currencies, but businesses were closed due to the Nowruz holidays, which runs from March 20 to April 2.

The two-week holiday is an opportunity to travel abroad, driving demand for U.S. dollars, euros, and other major foreign currencies.

On the last workday before the holiday on March 18, the rial was 590,000 to the dollar.

As the local currency has depreciated, many Iranians have witnessed their life savings plunge in value. The low currency is now worth some one-twentieth its value in 2015 when Iran signed a nuclear accord with global powers.

Since 2015, the rial has fallen from 32,000 to the dollar to the hundreds of thousands. In February 2023, it briefly nosedived to 600,000 rials to the dollar and has not risen above 439,000 since then.

According to Iran’s Statistics Center, the country’s inflation rate for February 2024 was 42.5 percent, while the Central Bank said it was more than 46 percent. No explanation was given for this discrepancy.

Less than a month before the rial hit its record low, a parliamentary election that saw the lowest turnout since the 1979 Islamic Revolution took place, whose results were dominated by hardline politicians.