Iran’s currency market was in turmoil yesterday as the central bank tried to impose an exchange rate on dollar sales to shore up its beleaguered rial but some traders refused to sell at that rate.

Even though some media and a key website tracking the open-market rate of the currency (www.mesghal.ir) said the rial was now suddenly worth 21 per cent more than two days ago, other media and some traders gave a dramatically different rate. Some exchange shops had shut their windows, bluntly refusing to sell dollars at the new rate of 14,000 to the dollar they said had been imposed by central bank inspectors.

Instead, street money-changers in the centre of Tehran were walking around discreetly offering the much-higher rate of 15,700 to the dollar.

The IRNA and ISNA news agencies posted a rate of 15,600.

The confusion came as authorities reacted to an unprecedented slide in the rial on Monday, when it suddenly lost 12 per cent of its value to hit a new low of 17,800. The fall occurred after the United States at the weekend enacted new economic sanctions targeting Iran’s central bank and financial sector.

Iranian Commerce Minister Mehdi Ghazanfari on Tuesday said the central bank had been asked “to inject more foreign currency into the market, and the central bank has promised to do so,” according to the official IRNA news agency.

He added that the government was considering “a number of measures to control the exchange market,” without elaborating.