As artworks are displayed, prices in the tens of billions of Iranian rials – hundreds of thousands of pounds – light up the large Samsung screen on the wall.
Some ice ages have come at intervals of as much as 120,000 years or as little as 80,000 years, says geophysicist José Rial of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
At the Western states' urging, the United Nations Security Council has imposed crippling sanctions on Iran's oil industry and financial sectors, which have cut oil revenue in half and stripped the currency, the rial, of more than 50% of its value.
"It's not our favorite part of the day," Mrs. Rials said of paddling, which she has done hundreds of times in four years as principal.
Even if you don't have thousands of rials to drop on a feathered friend, the shop's ranks of falcons and accessories (landing pads, electronic guidance systems) offer a fun window into this Qatari pastime.
But he apparently changed his mind after panicked selling of rials for other currencies and gold by Iranian households and small investors, which increased sharply on Monday, when the European Union announced its intention to stop buying Iranian petroleum.
The glaring absence had caused a surge in illicit money changing in Iran, in which buyers who needed dollars were willing to pay ever-increasing numbers of rials for them, pushing the unofficial market rate to about 19,000 rials to the dollar.
The Central Bank has since eased some restrictions but still limits exchanges of rial to the equivalent of $2,000.
Easy, if you could get greenbacks at the subsidized import rate of 1,750 rials to the dollar and resell them at the market rate of 8,000 to the dollar.
Licensed foreign-exchange shops dutifully advertise the government-set rate of 28,500 rials to the dollar, 25% higher than the open-market rate at the peak of the currency crisis, on October 2nd.
