Iran is experiencing its greatest drought in history. Many of its dams are no longer working. Lakes have shrunk or dried up altogether. The government is considering moving the entire population of Tehran — ten million people — to another place where there is more water. The topsoil in the Zagros Mountains is disappearing. The rial has sunk to its lowest level in history, with 1.25 million rials to one dollar, whereas in 1979, when the Khomeini regime began, the ratio was 70 rials to the dollar. More than forty percent of the population now lives below the poverty line. The unemployment of college graduates has climbed to 60 percent. In Iranian cities, there are between three and seven days a year without dangerous air pollution. The budget deficit stands at 40 percent and is expected to rise in 2026 to 50 percent, which Iran experienced only once before, in 1987, at the height of the Iran-Iraq war. Iran’s oil income has sunk to a new low, for three reasons: the glut of oil on the world market has driven prices down to $62 per barrel, and is expected in 2026 to sink to $55 per barrel; Iran is forced to sell its oil at a steep discount of $11 per barrel to its main buyer, China; Iran’s oil output continues to sink: it has gone from 2 million barrels in 2024 to 1.5 million barrels in recent months. Inflation is predicted to rise to as much as 3,000 percent in 2026. Iran’s investment in its nuclear program of more than $100 billion was destroyed by the IDF during the 12-day war last June.
More on this economic degringolade can be found here: “The Year in Review: Iran’s Deepening Economic Crisis,” by Dalga Khatinoglu, Middle East Forum, December 27, 2025:
Iran experienced one of its worst economic and energy crises in 2025. Negative economic growth coincided with 49 percent inflation, shortages and rationing of energy and water, a collapse in the value of the national currency, an unprecedented government budget deficit, extreme urban air pollution, and a twelve-day war with Israel that inflicted heavy damage on Iran’s nuclear program—along with the return of United Nations sanctions.
Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Iran never has faced such a long list of simultaneous crises—even during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. During that war, average annual inflation stood at around 20 percent, and the rial depreciated by only about 15 percent per year. The country did not suffer from massive energy shortages; major cities did not experience today’s extreme air pollution—where mazut burning leaves them with only between three and seven clean-air days per year—and Iran was not under comprehensive international sanctions.
Data from Kpler show that Iran’s discharges at customer-country ports of crude oil, gas condensates, and petroleum products including fuel oil and kerosene have fallen from around 2 million barrels per day last year to about 1.5 million barrels per day in recent months. At the same time, global oil prices have dropped by 22 percent to around $62 per barrel. More importantly, Iran’s oil discounts to China have surged to as much as $11 per barrel, while sales to Beijing have declined from 1.55 million barrels per day to 1.25 million.
Even in the opening months of Iran’s fiscal year, beginning on March 21, the country faced a budget deficit of around 40 percent. It remains unclear how large the deficit will become until March 2026 given the decline in oil revenues in recent months….
Iranians should expect their living conditions to deteriorate even further next year.
Iranians must ask themselves two questions. First, is there anything the government can do to improve the lot of ordinary citizens? There is one thing: it must stop spending tens of billions of dollars on its military, including restarting the hideously expensive nuclear program, and rebuilding both its ballistic missile plants and its ballistic missile arsenal that were destroyed during the June war. But these are the very things that the Islamic Republic will not do, for its reason for being is war, war with the Zionist infidels of Israel in the first instance, but not only with Israel. Israel is the Little Satan, but America is the Great Satan. And now Europe, too, which supports the UN sanctions on Iran, has been formally recognized as Iran’s enemy. President Masoud Pezeshkian has declared that Iran is in “a total war” with Israel, America, and Europe.
And the second question is this: Iranians, not just the students and the bazaris and the hijab-flouting women, but also, most importantly, disaffected members of the military, must ask themselves if they are now prepared to rise up and overturn the regime that has made their lives hell for 45 years. This looks more possible now than at any time in the past.
rick says
Iran is being run by a bunch of nincompoops – as all countries that have ayatollahs or imams in charge of the affairs of their nation. They have one driving motivation and that is “Destroy Infidels Starting With Israel”. Their attention is not taken up with things like the economy – until it gets so bad they realize we may be dragged out of our offices by the Iranian people and kicked to the streets. That very idea motivated the religious class to soften their ban with punishment on dress codes and allowing infidel music and celebrations to take place without sending in the Iranian Gestapo to bust heads and make arrests. The mullahs probably cried at night in their beds when they had to do it or face a popular revolution against them. Mullahs, priests, and rabbis cannot run a nation’s affairs from A to Z . They can make cultural recommendations but that is as far as it goes. When given a chance they can be more dangerous and arrogant that any dictator and when their basic beliefs go against the very essence and joy of what it means to live a life, they will always turn into dictators.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
I just wonder – to what extent has the IRGC, Basij and other islamic forces managed to recover since the 12 day war earlier this year? Is it to the extent that they’re now as solid as they were before Israeli strikes on Iran last year?
Cynthia says
There were a hundred thousand in the streets today. We’ll find out soon enough how many have been identified and carted out to prison.
The IRCG has the most to lose as they have the economy locked up with ownership of land, goods and services.
Hoi Polloi says
Can’t imagine how a full-on islamic regime which sanctioned “marriage” to little girls, rape and slaughter of women who allow a lock of hair to escape the pedo-worship scarf, and the idea that it can wage jihad on the rest of the world could fail.
What concerns me is that even at this low level, the people haven’t revolted.
MJ Raichyk, PhD says
What looks like pedo is not pedo… It’s really
the FOUNDATION of SUBJECTION OF WOMEN to
the rest of Sharia oppression…
That overly young body is NOT READY FOR BIRTHING and the stats show a horrible prognosis of birthing failures and misery…
All of which then enters the mind as birthing realities in the minds of the rest, making the ‘fair sex’ a LOT MORE WEAK and SUBMISSIVE to all oppressive ideas…..
Don’t you see it?
ttyl
Hoi Polloi says
It’s gut-wrenchingly evil.
BIG L says
If Trump happens to die, there’s a good chance Vance will help the Shah. Raza Pahlavi is smart, something on the level of Haftar.
OLD GUY says
Any time a government is oppressive the population under oppression is not going to prosper. Happy people make happy workers and happy citizens when they share in the fruits of their labor.
Walter Sieruk says
Those Muslim despots of Iran have only themselves to blame for Iran’s economic problems. For instead on imposing the oppression and restrictions of Sharia on the Iranian people those tyrants should allowed freedom for the people which included the full function of the free enterprise would invigorate the economy.
Likewise, if those viciously aggressive Islamic dictators invest all those billions that their tyrannical regime has in building a better infrastructure instead on the construction of nuclear and non -nuclear weapons , as well its funding of dangerous and murderous jihad terror entities as Hamas and Hezbollah , the economy of Iran would be much better.
Nevertheless , those evil and economically foolish tyrants in power in Iran will not change their polices of aggression an oppression.
Huapakechi says
No sympathy for a self inflicted wound.
John Silvis says
Seems that Allah isn’t so great. Maybe he is finally punishing Iranians for being sociopaths. Muslims
believe in divine punishment except when things go badly for them. Then they say they are being punished for not being psycho enough and double down on being evil like Mohammad commanded.
John Galt III says
Iran’s Economic Crisis Deepens”
Allah, be praised!!!
Winston 101 says
😲😆😉 By their own logic.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of mullahs.
Walter Sieruk says
First point: much, if not all, of that money Iran has now obtained, thanks to Obama and Kerry, will now go into funding weapons and other supplies to Iran murderous terror proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas.
Second point: a young Iranian woman who now lives in an American city that I now also live in. This city has a newspaper and she wrote an article how she and her mother had returned from visiting her sick and dying grandmother in the hospital in Tehran in Iran In that article this young women explained that the medical and health care in Iran’s hospitals is so terrible that the people of Iran view hospitals s place that people go to not get better but to die. The reason the this second point is brought up is that the mullahs and ayatollahs as well as others in power in this Islamic tyranny Iran will not invest those news funds from, Obama and Kerry, in better health care in hospitals but instead use that money to engage in more support for brutal and murderous militant jihad organizations For those tyrants in power in Iran don’t care, at all, about the Iranian people. They are only interested in furthering their mad jihad Islamic quest.
gravenimage says
Iran’s Economic Crisis Deepens
……………………………………….
Is this the “will of Allah”?