The rial (; symbol: ; abbreviation: Rl (singular) and Rls (plural) or IR in Latin; ISO code: IRR) is the official currency of Iran. It is subdivided into 100 dinars, but due to the rial's low purchasing power, the dinar is not practically used. The Iranian toman is the primary colloquial denomination of the Iranian rial.
Currency symbol Although there is no official symbol for the currency, the Iranian standard ISIRI 820 defined a symbol for use on typewriters (mentioning that it is an invention of the standards committee itself), and the two Iranian standards ISIRI 2900 and ISIRI 3342 define a character code to be used for it. The Unicode Standard also has a compatibility character defined .For the proposal, see It proposes the character under the name of ARABIC CURRENCY SIGN RIAL, which was changed by the standard committees to RIAL SIGN.
History
The rial was first introduced in 1798 as a coin worth 1,250 dinars or one-eighth of a toman. In 1825, the rial ceased to be issued, with the qiran subdivided into 20 shahi or 1,000 dinars and was worth one-tenth of a toman, being issued as part of a decimal system. The rial replaced the qiran at par in 1932, subdivided into 100 new dinars.
Prior to decimalisation in 1932, these coins and currencies were used, and some of these terms still have wide usage in Iranian languages and proverbs:
Old currency Value First Issue Dinar -Umayyad Caliphate Shahi 10 DinarsIranian Intermezzo Abbasi 100 DinarsSafavid IranNaderi 1,000 DinarsAfsharid IranRial 10,000 DinarsZand Iran Qiran 100,000 DinarsEarly Qajar IranToman 1,000,000 DinarsLate Qajar Iran
Exchange rate
In 1932, the rial was pegged to sterling at a rate of £1 = Rls 59.75. The exchange rate was £1 = Rls 80.25 in 1936, £1 = Rls 64.350 in 1939, £1 = Rls 68.8 in 1940, £1 = Rls 141 in 1941 and £1 = Rls 129 in 1942. In 1945, the rial was pegged to the U.S. dollar at US$1 = Rls 32.25. The rate was US$1 = Rls 75.75 in 1957. Iran did not follow the dollar's currency devaluation in 1973, leading to a new peg of US$1 = Rls 68.725. The dollar peg was dropped in 1975.
In 1979, 70 Rls equalled one U.S. dollar. The value of the rial declined precipitously after the Islamic Revolution because of capital flight from the country. A study estimated that the capital flight from Iran shortly before and after the revolution in the range of $30 to $40 billion. (dead link) Whereas on March 15, 1978, Rls 71.46 equalled $1, in July 1999, $1 equalled Rls 9,430.
Injecting sudden foreign exchange revenues in the economic system forms the phenomenon of "Dutch disease" in a country. There are two main consequences for a country with Dutch disease: loss of price competitiveness in its production goods, and hence the exports of those goods; and an increase in imports. Both cases were clearly visible in Iran.
Although described as an (interbank) "market rate", the value of the Iranian rial is tightly controlled by the central bank. The state ownership of oil export earnings and its large reserves, supervision of letters of credit, together with current — and capital outflow account — outflows allows management of demand. The central bank has allowed the rial to weaken in nominal terms (4.6% on average in 2009) in order to support the competitiveness of non-oil exports.
There is an active black market in foreign exchange, but the development of the TSE rate and the ready availability of foreign exchange during 2000 narrowed the differential to as little as IR100 in mid-2000. However, the spread increased again in September 2010 because channels for transferring foreign currency to and from Iran being blocked because of international sanctions.
Monetary policy is facilitated by a network of 50 Iranian-run forex dealers in Iran, the rest of the Middle East and Europe. According to the Wall Street Journal and dealers, the Iranian government was selling US$250 million daily to keep the rial exchange rate against the US dollar between Rls 9,700 and Rls 9,900 in 2009. At times (before the devaluation of the rial in 2013) the authorities weakened the national currency intentionally by withholding the supply of hard currency to earn more rial-denominated income, usually at times when the government faced a budget deficit.
The widening of the gap between official and unofficial exchange rates stood at over 20% in November 2011. This shows the correlation between the value of foreign currencies and the domestic inflationary environment.
The unofficial rial to US dollar rate underwent severe fluctuations in January 2012 (the rial losing 50% of its value in a few days, following new international sanctions against the CBI), eventually settling at Rls 17,000 at the end of the period. Besides all the bad effects on the economy in general, this had the effect of boosting the competitiveness of Iran's domestic industries abroad. Following President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's decision to liberalise the mechanism by which bank interest rates are set (granting banks the authority to raise interest rates to 21%), CBI announced that it would be fixing the official rate of the rial against the dollar at Rls 12,260 from January 28, 2012, and seek to meet all demand for foreign currency through banks.
By June 2020, the Iranian rial had fallen nearly five-fold since the beginning of 2018, contributing to the record inflation. Reason cited by analysts is the fact that the government has been printing money in excess of the economic growth.
The rial's exchange rate dropped by 29% after the nationwide protests that began on September 16, 2022, following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22 year old Kurdish-Iranian woman in police custody. Following the regional tension towards the end of 2024, the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, Donald Trump winning the US presidential election and ongoing economic factors brought the rial to its lowest value at the end of 2024, 820,500 to 1 US dollar.
The rial exchange rate started 2025 at 817,500 rials to the US dollar, and declined all year with annualised inflation rate never lower than 36.4%, rising to 42% late in the year. The exchange rate dropped all year, including following the government of Israel striking Iran and starting the Twelve-Day War in June. In December 2025, the rial dropped to a record low of 1.42 million rials to the US dollar, resulting in the resignation of the Governor of the Central Bank of Iran Mohammad Reza Farzin on December 29, 2025, who took office in December 2022 with the rial trading at 430,000 to the dollar. The collapse in the exchange rate was one of the causes of the 2025–2026 Iranian protests.
On August 23, 2026, the price of the U.S. dollar surpassed two million rials in the open market, and the rial fell further to 2.5 million rials per dollar on September 29, 2026.
+Official vs. free exchange rates (rials per US dollar) Year Official rate Transfer/business/trade/parallel/free rate 2003 8,193 8,193 2004 8,885 8,885 2005 8,964 8,964 2006 9,227 9,227 2007 9,408 9,408 2008 9,143 9,143 2009 9,900 9,900 2010 10,308 10,308 2011 10,800 13,568 2012 12,175.5 26,059 2013 18,517.2 31,839 2014 25,780.2 32,385 2017 33,127 59,500 2018 42,000 135,000 2019 129,500 2020 253,940 2021 273,080202241,850427,0002024767,550767,55020251.42 million1,400,00020262.21 million2,560,000 Current
Pre-unification, rials per US dollar: Market: 8,200 (2002); 8,050 (2001); 8,350 (2000) Preferred: 6,906 (2002); 1,753 (2001); 1,764 (2000)CIA factbook
Current market exchange rates
Exchange rate system Until 2002, Iran's exchange rate system was based on a multi-layered system, where state and para-state enterprises benefited from the "preferred or official rate" (Rls 1,750 for US$1) while the private sector paid the "market rate" (Rls 8,000 for US$1), hence creating an unequal competition environment. The "official rate" applied to oil and gas export receipts, imports of essential goods and services, and repayment of external debt. The "export rate", fixed at Rls 3,000 per dollar since May 1995, applied to all other trade transactions, but mainly to capital goods imports of public enterprises.
In 1998, in order to ease pressure on exporters, the central bank introduced a currency certificate system allowing exporters to trade certificates for hard currency on the Tehran Stock Exchange, thus creating a floating value for the rial known as the "TSE rate" or "market rate". This method finally replaced the fixed "export rate" (Rls 3,000:US$1) in March 2000, and has since held steady at some Rls 8,500:US$1.
In March 2002, the multi-tiered system was replaced by a unified, market-driven exchange rate. In 2002 the "official rate" a/k/a "preferred rate" (Rls 1,752:US$1) was abolished, and the TSE rate became the basis for the new unified foreign-exchange regime. Iran's Central Bank channels more than 90 per cent of hard currency into the local market (2012).
Forex bourse
In a move interpreted as aiming at unifying currency exchange rates, on September 24, 2012, the government launched a foreign exchange centre, that would provide importers of some basic goods with foreign exchanges, at a rate about 2% cheaper than the open market rate on a given day. This project was cancelled following the strong depreciation of the rial between 2012 and 2013 but was put on the agenda again in 2015 for use in the reunification of forex rates (planned for 2017) and the introduction of currency derivatives. through the Iran Mercantile Exchange.
In addition to banks, exchange shops are also available for limited transactions. Exchange shops must operate under the licenses issued by Central Bank of Iran. Foreign currencies can be bought or sold at these exchange shops.
Exchange restriction Exchange restriction arises from limitations on the transferability of rial profits from certain investments under the Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Act and from limitations on other investment-related current international payments under this act.
Multiple currency practices In 2010, the cases of multiple currency practices arose from the following: Budget subsidies for foreign exchange purchases in connection with payments of certain letters of credit opened prior to March 21, 2002, under the previous multiple exchange rate system (see above); Obligations of entities that had received allocations of foreign exchange at subsidised "allocated rates" under the previous multiple exchange rate system to surrender unused allocations to the Central Bank of Iran at the allocation rate.
Until 2012, the dollar had different exchange rates, depending on where you are buying your currency:
Official exchange rate Free trade zone exchange rate Referential exchange rate Black market exchange rate
In 2012, Bank Markazi classified a long list of goods into categories with priorities 1 through 10, leaving it to the parallel market to take of all other needs. Priorities 1 and 2 are food and medicine, receiving foreign exchange at the official rate of Rls 12,260 per dollar, followed by other categories with lower priorities, which are mostly intermediate goods used in industrial production.
Redenomination Because of the current low value of rial, and that people rarely use the term, redenomination or change of currency has been proposed a number of times since the late 1980s. The issue has re-emerged and been under discussion, as a result of issuance of larger banknotes in 2003. Opponents of redenomination are wary of more inflation resulting from psychological effects, and increase in velocity of money leading to more instabilities in the economy of Iran.