Many Iranians living in the United States, who are nationals of the Islamic Republic, are selling their US assets to increase the supply of US dollars inside Iran and help stimulate their country’s economic growth, Breitbart News reported, citing an Iranian expatriate who lives in California but travels to Iran regularly.
“Iranians living here [in America] can seize the opportunity to park their money in Iran while it [the US dollar] is strong today. Markets inside Iran have started reacting positively to the good news for the Iranians of a prospective [nuclear] deal by next week,” he told in an interview to the outlet.
“Iranians are selling their dollar-based assets in the USA because it could buy more rials today than in six months time.”
He noted that the exchange rate was “35,700 rials for every dollar two weeks ago and today [Monday] the rate was 33,080 per each dollar,” which translates to a seven percent appreciation of the Iranian rial against the greenback.
The information comes as US Secretary of State John Kerry is in Switzerland for another round of talks with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif.
The source told Breitbart News that he believes a deal will likely be struck with Iran over the course of the next week or so and that if the deal happens, approximately $100 billion of Iranian assets that have been blocked over the past few years, will be released.
“They feel a deal is imminent and that they are better off investing in the Iranian rial.” He gave the example of teachers, and upper and middle class workers, many of whom had transferred portions of their paychecks into US dollars as a sort of insurance measure and now feel it is time to reinvest in Iranian capital.
Next week, on March 21, is the Iranian new year, Nowruz, and the source said, based on his own contacts among official sources in Iran, that he expects the official rate to start from 28,500 rials — although that value is variable based on what the free market is doing.
“Over the next few months, [Hassan] Rouhani wants to close the gap between the official and free market rates by unifying them to have one single price for the foreign currency,” he said.
The source pointed out that the United Nations has already begun the process of lifting several sanctions that have been imposed on Iran since 2006.
Iranian expatriates based in Europe have also begun looking at investing in their ancestral lands in recent months.
In fact Iranian diasporas living in Europe are being employed by international corporations to enter the Iranian market.
