Iran's central bank confirmed on Friday 19 June that the third and final stage of linking Iran's Shetab interbank network to Russia's Mir payment system is being implemented, with completion expected around August12. Shetab clears domestic card transactions inside Iran; Mir is the card scheme Moscow built after 2022 to operate outside Western payment rails. Governor Abdolnaser Hemmati had arrived in Moscow on 16 June and described the goal as "mechanisms independent of prevailing restrictions"3.
The integration runs in three phases that read like a ladder. The 2024 pilot let Iranians withdraw roubles from Russian cash machines; the 2025 stage let Russians pay at Iranian tills with Mir Pay; the final stage now under way lets Iranian cardholders pay in Russian shops with their own cards4. The two governments signed the underlying agreement in May 2022, so this is the completion of a long build, not a reaction to this week.
Hemmati flew to Moscow days after the Islamabad memorandum was signed, and the August completion target lands almost exactly on the close of the deal's 60-day nuclear window. Tehran is building the route around the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) waiver in parallel with the deal rather than waiting for the sanctions relief that the published memorandum left unsigned. That waiver still had not issued by 18 June. The hedge has a ceiling: Mir is itself sanctioned and shunned by banks far beyond Russia, so the rails carry Iran's trade to one isolated partner rather than back into the dollar system.
