Iranian Economists on Their Country’s Economic Degringolade

Despite living in a police state, a handful of Iran’s most prominent economists have dared to publish their views on how the Iranian economy came undone. And so far they have not been punished. More on their analyses can be found here: “How the erosion of livelihoods pushed Iran to the brink,” by Behrouz Turani, Iran International, February 10, 2026:

Iran’s January protests were the predictable result of years of ignored economic and social warning signs, according to one of the country’s most prominent economists, who says the state failed to recognize how close society had come to the brink.

In an op-ed published this week in one of Iran’s leading economic newspapers, Donya-ye Eghtesad, the economist Massoud Nili described the country’s current predicament as a failure of governance that left mounting problems and public grievances unaddressed.

“The current situation marks one of the saddest and most critical junctures in Iran’s history,” Nili wrote, “a moment in which thousands of Iranians — mainly young people — lost their lives in less than 48 hours.”

He argued that “a combination of poverty, unemployment, inequality, inflation, psychological insecurity under the looming shadow of war, and cultural conflict placed young Iranians at the center of the crisis.”

The unrest began in Tehran’s historic Grand Bazaar in late 2025, initially driven by slogans reflecting economic hardship. Over the following week, they broadened into nationwide demonstrations calling for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.

Protests peaked on January 8 and 9, following a call for coordinated actions by exiled prince Reza Pahlavi.

As many as 36,500 people were killed during the crackdown on those two days, according to an internal assessment leaked to and reviewed by Iran International.

Among the clearest warning signs, Nili noted, was the existence of nearly 12 million young Iranians who are neither employed nor enrolled in education.

It is Iran’s university graduates who have been affected the most by the economic degringolade. The degrees that once assured success in the job market no longer do so. Many university graduates are without jobs, and they can only hope for the downfall of the regime that has so mismanaged the economy and misallocated resources. The Islamic Republic has spent over $100 billion on its nuclear program, only to see its nuclear facilities in Natanz, Fordow, and in Isfahan, blown to smithereens by the IDF and the American military during the 12-Day War last June. It also spent between $30 and $50 billion to prop up Bashar Assad during the Syrian civil war, but that money, too, was wasted; Bashar lost the war and fled to Moscow, and the new rulers in Damascus are Sunni jihadists who are archenemies of Shi’a Iran. Finally, Iran has been sending at least half a billion dollars annually to Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Iran’s labor market, he wrote, has been effectively stagnant since 2009. While the working-age population increased by 4.4 million, the economy created only about 200,000 jobs, even as roughly 700,000 people lost employment.

Official figures suggest that net job creation has approached zero in recent years….

Iran’s main source of revenue is the oil it sells, but since Trump has just put tariffs on countries that buy Iranian oil, its oil exports are certain to go down. In addition, when he started his second term, Trump put sanctions on Iran, including preventing Iranian imports of American equipment needed to make the oilfields function properly. When Khomeini came to power, Iran produced five million barrels a day. Now it produces 3.2 million barrels a day, and in Trump’s first term, he managed to push Iran’s daily output to below 2 million barrels a day.

Iran not only is selling much less oil than it could without American sanctions on the sales of oil equipment and tariffs on its customers, but the current price of oil is low, at $64 per barrel. In addition, Iran is forced to sell its oil at a steep discount to compensate customers for risking American sanctions and tariffs.

All three of the economists quoted in the Iran International article — Massoud Nili, Mohammad Mehdi Behkish, and Mousa Ghaninejad — were unafraid to go public with their grim view of Iran’s economic decline, that they attribute to two phenomena: First, the mismanagement of the economy at every level, because regime loyalists are in control of the economy instead of talented, but politically unreliable, technocrats. Second, the misallocation of resources, with more than $200 billion already spent by Iran on its nuclear program, its ballistic missile production, and its financial support to its regional proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah. There would have been little point in preventing those economists from providing their assessments; Iranians can see for themselves the dismal economic condition of the country that those economists describe. Now if the regime continues with its crazed spending on its nuclear program and its ballistic missiles — it currently has 2,000 missiles ready for launch, and is producing between 50 and 300 more such missiles every month — Iranians will again take to the streets, not just with shouts of “Death to the Dictator” and “Javid Shah,” but also “We Want To Eat” and “We Want To Work” and “No to Lebanon, no to Gaza, yes to Iran.”

The Iranians are at the end of their tether, and are hoping for an American attack to decapitate the leadership, both religious and military. Will Trump take some minor Iranian concession on its nuclear program — say, Tehran agreeing to hand over to the IAEA the 400 kg. of uranium it has enriched to the just-below-weapons-grade level of 60% — and declare it a “victory” for his deal-making brilliance, or will he do the right thing, put the nuclear program to one side, and focus on what should right now be his highest priority: destroying both the 2,000 ballistic missiles that Iran is estimated to now have, some of them hidden in tunnels, and the plants that keep producing them?