Al Jazeera reports that under international sanctions, Iranians transfer funds across borders through informal currency exchange networks, intermediary companies, private arrangements, and cryptocurrencies. However, these alternative channels come with high fees, exchange rate losses, fraud risks, and geopolitical shocks. The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned several Iranian cryptocurrency exchanges earlier this year, indicating that cryptocurrencies are not a completely reliable circumvention method. Furthermore, the Iranian rial continues to depreciate, having fallen over 10% against the U.S. dollar in the past month, over 55% in the past year, and nearly 90% in the past five years, severely eroding public purchasing power. Due to sanctions and conflict, Iran's import supply chain has been disrupted, with shipping times from Shanghai to Iran extending from 26 days to 102 or even 120 days.