10 000 Rials Islamic Revolution

This note carries one of the more awkward production histories in modern Iranian currency. The Islamic Republic, having come to power on explicitly anti-Western principles, continued using Thomas De La Rue in London to print its banknotes well into the early 1980s — a pragmatic concession to the reality that no domestic facility could meet the volume or security standards required. The plates themselves were inherited from the late Pahlavi-era contract, retooled for revolutionary imagery.

Sanctions and political pressure eventually ended the De La Rue relationship, pushing Iran toward other suppliers. This issue sits at that transition.