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Iran Conflict 2026
21JUL

Iran's rial slides past 189,000 toman

3 min read
10:16UTC

The free-market rate reached 189,300 to 189,450 toman to the dollar on Tuesday morning, up as much as 1,600 toman over the day's trading, according to the aggregator alanchand.com.

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Key takeaway

Iranian importers clear at this rate, not the official one, and shop prices follow within weeks.

Iran's free-market exchange rate reached between 189,300 and 189,450 toman to the dollar late on Tuesday morning, up roughly 1,000 to 1,600 toman over the day's trading, according to the Iranian rate aggregator Alanchand.com 1. Iranians quote prices and shop in toman rather than in rials, so this is the number a Tehran household actually recognises.

Iran runs more than one exchange rate at a time. The central bank grants an official rate for designated essential imports, and everything outside that allocation clears on the open market, which is the number the aggregators publish and the number an importer pays once the official allocation is exhausted. Iranians do not buy their groceries in dollars. Their importers do.

Rice, animal feed, machine parts and the pharmaceutical ingredients that Iranian factories formulate into finished medicines are bought abroad in dollars and sold at home in toman, and the conversion happens here rather than at the official window. Feed and pharmaceutical importers tend to show a move first, because both run on thin inventories and neither has a domestic substitute to fall back on. A rate that shifts a thousand toman before lunch has repriced the replacement cost of a warehouse before the week is out.

OFAC, the US Treasury's sanctions bureau, let General License X1 lapse at midnight on Friday 17 July without issuing a successor, closing the last lawful channel for Iranian oil sales . The dollars that stand behind this rate are earned selling crude, and there is now no legal way to sell it. A household in Ahvaz never sees the licence number. It sees the shelf price, a few weeks later.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Iran effectively runs more than one exchange rate. There is an official rate the government uses for approved transactions, and a free-market rate, which is what ordinary people and most private businesses actually pay to buy dollars. On Tuesday, that free-market rate hit about 189,300-189,450 toman to the dollar, according to Alanchand, a widely used Iranian rate-tracking website, up roughly 1,000-1,600 toman on the day. This matters because most everyday imports, such as food, medicine and machine parts, are bought using the free-market rate, not the official one. When that rate rises, those goods get more expensive for Iranians within weeks. The move follows the lapse four days earlier of the last US-authorised channel for Iran to sell its oil abroad, cutting off a source of dollar income the country relied on to keep its currency from sliding further.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

General License X1, the wind-down authorisation that had let Iran continue limited oil sales after its main waiver was revoked, expired at 12:01am on 17 July with nothing issued to replace it. That closes the last authorised route for Iranian crude to earn hard currency through a US-tolerated channel.

When that dollar inflow to the Central Bank of Iran stops, the bank has less capacity to fund the managed NIMA foreign-exchange allocation system that keeps the official and semi-official rates from diverging sharply from the free market. Demand for real transactions (imports, remittances, savings) then falls almost entirely on the free market, which is what moves first and fastest when the licensed channel disappears.

What could happen next?
  • Consequence

    A widening free-market rate typically raises the price of imported food, medicine and machine parts within weeks, since these categories are usually priced off the free-market rate rather than the official one.

  • Risk

    With no successor to General License X1 in place, the Central Bank of Iran's capacity to slow further depreciation through managed allocations may weaken further if no new oil-dollar channel opens.

Sources:Al-Sharq·Masrawy·UN Meetings Coverage
Mentions:Iran →Alanchand →General License X →General License X1 →US Treasury →Ahvaz →OFAC →Tehran →
First Reported In

Update #158 · Qatar bills Iran at the Security Council

Al-Sharq· 21 Jul 2026
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