International Politics

[killamajig]

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/18/iran-key-services-shut-as-rial-plunges-amid-energy-crisis-regional

Tehran, Iran – Tens of millions of people across Iran are facing major disruptions as authorities shut down services in the face of an exacerbating energy and currency crisis amid historic regional tensions.
This week, government offices, schools, banks and businesses in major provinces and in the capital Tehran have been largely closed due to worsening fuel and power shortages as temperatures dropped to subzero levels.
Energy Minister Abbas Aliabadi said on Wednesday that 13 power plants are out of commission due to a lack of fuel.

This comes a month after President Masoud Pezeshkian announced blackouts – ones that were rolled out within days – claiming electricity will be cut because the government does not wish to burn cheap fuel that would pollute the air.

But Tehran and major cities have been constantly drowning in a sea of smog that has been visible even in satellite images, while the blackouts – which at times are also accompanied by communications outages as cell towers and internet substations go offline – have persisted.

The energy crisis bears down on the country as Iran’s national currency, the rial, continues to hit new all-time lows on a near-daily basis.

The battered rial broke above 770,000 per US dollar on Wednesday on the unofficial currency market, continuing a trend that has picked up pace since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza last year, and specifically in the aftermath of the fall of longtime President Bashar al-Assad in Syria last week.