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Iran's rial hits record low

August 24, 2026

Iran's rial fell to 2.02 million to the dollar as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent prepared to detail a new economic pressure campaign on Monday.

AP News reports that the rial dropped to 2.02 million to the U.S. dollar as trading opened, against an official Central Bank rate of around 1.5 million, and notes that the market rate is what most Iranians pay. thenationalnews.com carries the same record low and adds the earlier level of 1.53 million in early March. AP News also reports that the International Monetary Fund forecasts a GDP contraction of more than 5 percent, corroborated by thenationalnews.com. On the diplomatic track, AP News reports that Pakistan, which helped broker a 60-day ceasefire in June, sent a high-level delegation to Tehran on Monday, and that the United Arab Emirates suspended all trade with Iran last week, a step CNN and CBS News also carry.

CNN reports that Bessent will set out the details of the campaign at a Monday news conference, corroborated by CBS News, and adds a former Treasury official's assessment that Washington is likelier to enforce existing sanctions more strictly than to expand them, with pressure falling on Iran's oil ecosystem. CBS News reports Mohsen Rezai, head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, saying on state television, "We declare to all countries ... do not join the economic war waged by the United States. Any country participating in the imposition of economic restrictions against us is considered an enemy," corroborated by CNBC. AP News reports that Iran and Oman are in the final stages of agreeing a joint management plan for the Strait of Hormuz, and CNN reports that Oman's Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Al-Busaidi travels to Tehran on Tuesday to discuss the waterway.

The framing of the pressure campaign is where the accounts part. One account presents the Treasury op-ed as an echo of a threat Trump made last week, including his vow of tremendous economic consequences for countries doing business with Tehran, while a competing account carries the op-ed without that link. The difference matters for whether the campaign reads as a personal presidential ultimatum or as a Treasury program on its own timetable. Tehran's answer runs along the same fault line, since the spokesman Baghaei called the threat a recipe for an abysmal return to full-scale classic colonialism and said Iran has been "playing chess for a long time," adding that in recent years "we've also learned to play poker." What holds across the accounts is the currency's record low, the IMF contraction forecast, the UAE trade suspension, the Financial Times op-ed and the Monday news conference, and Iran's public warning to third countries. What has not yet landed is the exact content of the measures.

Still developing

The specific sanctions Bessent will name at the Monday news conference are not yet on the record, and the accounts differ on whether his op-ed restates a threat Trump made last week. Talks over the Strait of Hormuz also remain open, with Oman's Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Al-Busaidi due in Tehran on Tuesday and a joint management plan described as in its final stages.

How settled the reporting is

Reported 91% · Contested 2% · Developing 7%

Sources