The Central Bank of Iran announced the commencement of its first foreign-currency investment fund on 15 August, in a statement published on its own site that also emphasised pursuing claims against the Iraqi government over Iranian reserves held there1. The bank gives no size for the fund, no launch mechanics and no timetable for the Iraqi claim, and the announcement is its own account of its own action.
The bank moved in two directions at once, launching a fund at home and pressing a claim abroad, two answers to the same shortage of hard currency. A domestic vehicle that lets Iranians hold foreign currency through a regulated fund is an instrument for a country whose rial has spent the year under pressure, and which posted only its first weekly gain in weeks on 6 August. The approach to Baghdad is different in kind: Iraq holds Iranian money that sanctions have kept parked, and Tehran is pursuing it bilaterally while simultaneously demanding that Washington unfreeze Iranian money as a price for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The same asset class is being worked as a negotiating chip in one channel and as a debt collection in another.
