Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct. 3 /Trend S.Isayev, T. Jafarov/
General Secretary of Islamic Market Associations Ahmad Karimi Isfahani said that the merchants and shopkeepers were forced to close down their shops because of the protesters in the streets.
"They at first did not want to close the market, yet there was an initial plan to do so for security reasons. The market will be open tomorrow," Isfahani said.
He added that by themselves the merchants at the market do not breach security, however those people outside the market behave differently, so the decision has been made to close the open markets for today.
Following the unstable ups and downs of Iran's currency markets, people at the market are gathering up, burning tires and shouting slogans against government, Iranian media outlets reported.
Opposition website Kalemeh says protesters are out on the street, planning to march to the Imam Khomeini Square. These reports have not yet been confirmed.
Mehr reported that local shopkeepers and merchants have closed their shops for security reasons, protecting their businesses from people in the streets.
According to Mehr, people hit the streets on Wednesday noon, in Nasir Khusraw street and Tehran bazaar.
Dollar prices at Iranian markets have risen to new heights after yesterdays conference of Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, ILNA reported.
After Iran's president held the Tehran press-conference, the dollar price started to grow, reaching 36, 200 rials.
On Monday, a USD was sold at 29, 700 rials in the morning, but sharply increased to 35,500 rials by the evening. As a result of the rapid drop, as much as 660 trillion rials in cash assets of country's citizens were lost on Monday evening.
After the press conference the dollar prices at Iran' open markets risen up by 3000 rials, reaching 36,200 rials per dollar.
Today morning the dollar prices were not available at Iran's online currency rate websites. British pound is currently being exchanged at 58,100 rials per pound, and Euro is being exchanged at 47,100 rials per one Euro.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking at Tehran press-conference yesterday said tha the Central Bank of Iran will eventually sort out this problem of jumping currency rates.
Today morning several gold and currency rate websites have become unavailable, one of which was the independent Iranian currency rate website Mazanex.
The website posted a message that "access to the website, and several other similar websites has been closed". While the website itself is accessable, it is not being updated.