Tehran — In a direct blow to Western-led financial dominance, Iran has officially listed the South Korean won (KRW) for trade on its Iran Currency and Gold Exchange Center (ICE), signaling another clear move in its aggressive campaign to de-dollarize its economy and establish financial sovereignty amid crippling US sanctions.
The Iranian Central Bank’s decision places the won alongside seven other major foreign currencies currently permitted for official trade, including the euro, US dollar, Chinese yuan, Russian ruble, Japanese yen, Indian rupee, and UAE dirham. With this addition, Iran is widening its economic orbit, bolstering ties with strategic Asian economies while deliberately weakening the influence of Western monetary policy tools.
Iran’s growing list of tradable currencies is not just an economic adjustment; it’s a political message. For a country whose economy has been suffocated by layers of Western restrictions, especially those spearheaded by the US, the won’s inclusion underscores Tehran’s calculated pivot eastward. The aim: to escape the stranglehold of the dollar and fortify regional economic alliances that operate outside Washington’s grip.
According to Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization, imports from South Korea reached $580 million in the last Persian calendar year ending in March, with an additional $80 million in goods arriving in the first three months of the new year. These figures demonstrate not only an active trade relationship but also the critical need for currency diversification to streamline transactions and reduce dependency on costly intermediaries tied to the Western financial web.
Moreover, ICE’s rates are significantly lower than Tehran’s volatile black-market exchanges, giving Iranian importers and traders a legitimate and affordable option to conduct cross-border transactions. By formalizing the won, Iran ensures that its trade with South Korea, one of Asia’s technological powerhouses, will face fewer bureaucratic hurdles and less financial friction, something sanctions were designed to intensify.
This monetary development, however, arrives amid a complex geopolitical backdrop. Iran has long demanded the unfreezing of billions of dollars worth of oil revenues held in South Korean banks, funds immobilized due to US-led restrictions. While South Korea has often played the middleman in US-Iran nuclear negotiations and humanitarian trade discussions, this won-based mechanism might be Tehran’s not-so-subtle way of bypassing Seoul’s hesitations and Washington’s vetoes.
It’s no coincidence that this decision follows a string of Iran’s currency agreements with other anti-Western allies. The ruble, yuan, and rupee, all central to the rising BRICS economic order, are already in use within ICE. Now, the won joins this growing currency basket, reinforcing Iran’s long-term plan to rewrite the rules of international trade, exclude the dollar, and slowly dismantle the financial supremacy of the US.
In recent years, Iran’s trade and finance policies have increasingly reflected the broader ambitions of de-dollarization, a goal shared by several nations that have grown weary of America’s weaponization of the global financial system. The Russian military operation in Ukraine, for instance, and the Western sanctions that followed, have only accelerated this trend. Iran’s strategy, firmly in line with Russia’s, China’s, and others in the Global South, continues to erode the foundations of Western financial imperialism.
This move also comes as Iran continues to lead moral and political opposition to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, where US complicity with Israel has enraged much of the Global South. By expanding trade channels independent of the US and the West, Tehran sends a clear signal: a new world economic order is taking shape, one that rejects dollar hegemony and aligns with multipolar, anti-colonial values.
As reported by Mehr News Agency, the official announcement by the Central Bank of Iran underscores a larger strategic shift to retool Iran’s foreign exchange architecture in the service of a post-Western financial reality. The listing of the South Korean won is not just an economic footnote; it’s another nail in the coffin of US-led monetary dominance.
