Protests broke out among shopkeepers in central Tehran on Sunday after a sharp slide in the rial, with videos sent to Iran International showing crowds chanting antigovernment slogans.
Mobile phone traders gathered outside the Iran Mobile Center and the Alaeddin Mobile Shopping Center on Hafez Street in central Tehran, according to eyewitness accounts and videos sent Iran International.
An eyewitness said the chants began with shopkeepers, with passersby later joining in on Jomhouri Street near the Hafez underpass on Sunday.
Reports also circulated on social media of protests at Tehran’s Charsou mall.
Separately, iron market traders in Tehran stopped work on Sunday morning, closing their shops to protest the rial’s decline, according to reports on social media.
The protests come as Iran’s rial weakened to new historic lows on Sunday, falling to about 1,445,000 per dollar, 1,700,000 per euro and 1,950,000 per pound, according to Tehran's open market rates.
A day earlier, the rial was trading at about 1,370,000 to the dollar. About a month earlier, it was valued at around 1,140,000 per dollar on the open market.
In recent months, runaway inflation and the rial's declining value have added to concerns over worsening economic conditions in Iran.
Over the past year, prices of food items in Iran have risen by an average of more than 66 percent, according to official data.
Iran’s Statistics Center said on Saturday that year-on-year, or point-to-point, inflation rose to 52.6 percent.
