People lined up outside currency exchange points in Tehran and other Iranian cities to buy cheaper dollars offered by the government, to sell it at higher market rate and make a quick profit.

Every Iranian is entitled to buy $2,200 or its equivalent in other currencies once a year at favorable official rates. In recent days, the government offered dollars at 226,000 rials; much cheaper than the free market rate of more than 240,000 rials.

Buyers could earn around 40,000,000 rials when they sell the dollars in the black or open market. This is a handy profit for many ordinary Iranians who have sustained financial losses in the current economic crisis in the country. Infaltion stands at around 40 percent leading to huge price increases. Many have gone from middle class status to poverty. Wages for wrokers are delayed and more people have lost their jobs.

According to a currency trader quoted by Tejarat News on Monday, in the past few days the gap between the official and open market rates has dragged many to foreign exchange bureaus. The trader has, however, speculated that the amount of currencies that enter the open market this way is not likely to affect the rates on street corners in the long run but may bring the price dollar lower temporarily during day trading.

Iran's national currency has lost more than fifty percent of its value since the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21) alone. The dollar traded at around 160,000 rials in late March. In early August the dollar rose to as much as 260,000 rials but the Central Bank's injection of $2.5 billion in export revenues into its own consolidated forex system known as NIMA helped the rial to regain around 10 percent of its value.

Iran’s currency has lost its value eightfold in the past three years, as the Trump administration decided to pull out of the 2015 nuclear agreement and reimpose sanctions on Iran. People realizing that oil revenues would decrease, and an economic recession would be unavoidable, began buying more US dollars.

A few months before US sanctions were imposed in 2018, the dollar was around 30,000 rials.

The government which always injected dollars into the market to boost the rial, now does not have petrodollars to help its currency.