Press TV - Iran’s national currency the Rial plunged above 6 percent against the US dollar in free market on Sunday thus deteriorating a depreciation streak that started over the past few months. 

The US dollar was traded below 54,000 Rials in early trading of Sunday but jumped to above 57,000 Rials within only hours. It stood at 57,300 Rials at the end of the trading – a level that some media described as the highest ever recorded.

Fars news agency described the rise of the greenback as “strange and unprecedented” and said it was a result of the emotional reaction of the “worried investors” as well as the public.

Mashreq news agency blamed the so-called “dollar dealers” as well as “exchange shops that hoard dollars” for the record rise of the US dollar against the Rial.

Fararu news website said in a report that the public were increasingly worried about the status of the US dollar in the market, adding that a weaker Rial would affect the lives of Iranians over the next months.

ISNA news agency reported that exchange shops had stopped trading the hard currency after it reached record highs against the Rial. This, it added, provided an opportunity to street dealers to take the control of the market in their own hands and sell their dollars “at any price they desired”.

The high rates of the US dollar also helped push up the Euro. It ended the day at 68,500 Rials from lows of around 62,000 Rials in early trading of Sunday, as Fars news agency reported.

Iran’s police shut down several currency exchange shops and arrested a number of money changers after a serious turmoil in exchange rates.

They intervened after the plunge of the Iranian Rial which has dropped to around 45,000 against the US dollar from 37,700 in mid-2017.

Commercial bankers previously linked the Rial’s slide partly to seasonal demand for US dollars, which rises around the end of the Persian year (March 21) when many Iranians travel abroad.

However, some now believe that US President Donald Trump’s hostile rhetoric, including his recent threat to scrap a landmark nuclear deal with Iran, has been effective in the deterioration of the Rial’s depreciation.