Iraqi Dinar Brief - August 28, 2026: Be Prepared

On Monday Iraq ordered 7.5 billion new banknotes. Today the news from the ground is that you cannot buy the old ones. Two separate channels, with no line to each other, describe the same street: dinar cannot be found, cash machines offline or capping withdrawals, everything running card-only, and in Kurdistan public employees given days to get a bank card because salaries are going electronic. The pay trucks have stopped showing up.

The same week, the state showed everyone what happens to money that moves without permission: more than 93 billion dinars recovered for the treasury, another $14 million and 12 billion dinars walked into the central bank on the record, and the second counterfeit currency operation in a week shut down. CENTCOM published its own arithmetic: Hormuz shipping lanes cleared of Iranian mines, 750 million barrels escorted through, and Iran's oil exports at zero. Iraq's export routes that bypass the strait entirely go live September 1.

We walk the ground reports, the seizure ledger, the ideas being floated around the September 30 deadline, Venezuela's amended licenses, and a weekend where the Fed's Jackson Hole keynote, the G20 in Asheville and Iraq's 2027 budget all land at once.