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The Obama administration is accusing the elite of Iran’s regime and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps of profiting “on the back of the average Iranian” as the nation’s currency plunges under pressure from international sanctions.

The new allegation coincides with the decline in the market value of the Iranian rial, which has dropped about 15 percent against the dollar in the past five weeks and 35 percent since March, according to Tehran’s independent Donya-e-Eqtesad newspaper. The 39 percent difference between the central bank’s official rate and market rates on Dec. 21 was the largest in almost two decades, economists in Tehran and Washington said in interviews.