100 Rials

This issue spans the Khatami presidency, a period when reformist political pressure and hardline institutional resistance were creating measurable economic instability. The rial had lost roughly 97% of its value against the dollar since the 1979 revolution, making low-denomination coinage like this increasingly symbolic in daily commerce. By the mid-2000s, Iranian bazaar merchants routinely rounded transactions to the nearest 500 rials simply because smaller amounts had lost practical meaning.