200 Rials

Harrison & Sons printed Iranian banknotes through much of the mid-twentieth century, and this issue falls squarely within that relationship — a working arrangement that continued even as nationalist sentiment in Iran ran high following the 1953 coup that ousted Mosaddegh and restored the Shah. The political irony of a British firm supplying the currency of a government reinstated partly through British intelligence pressure was apparently not lost on Iranian commentators of the period, though it did nothing to interrupt the contract.

Pick 70 is sometimes confused with the closely related Pick 68 and 69 issues from the same series. The distinctions are minor but catalog-significant.