The rial continues to sink. In 1979, when Khomeini first came to power, one dollar was worth 70 rials. Now one dollar is worth 2.35 million rials. Fuel prices have just doubled. The official unemployment rate is 9%; the real rate is 33%. The year-on-year inflation rate is 85%. Forty million Iranians — half the population — now live below the poverty line.
A snapshot of the misery — a report on how Iranians in their late teens and early twenties try to avoid destitution by becoming street vendors, has just appeared here: “Iranian Street Vendors are Under Economic Pressure and Police Raids,” IranWire, September 11, 2026:
“The clearance plan for unauthorized sidewalk vendors in the Karimkhan area will be strictly and continuously enforced.” This warning, emblazoned on municipal banners across Karimkhan and Iranshahr streets in central Tehran, signals the city’s latest crackdown. Yet, amidst Iran’s severe inflationary environment, these warnings fail to deter the young men and women forced onto the streets to survive.
Along these bustling corridors, small vendors line the sidewalks. Most are high school students or young university undergraduates enrolled in arts and technical disciplines. To cover basic living costs and high tuition fees, they work in constant fear, aware that municipal enforcement officers could arrive at any moment to confiscate their modest inventory.
Sitting beside a display of handmade jewelry, Narin, a teenage vendor, scrolls through her Instagram page in hopes of securing online orders. “It’s evening and the street is crowded, but most passersby aren’t buying; they are just walking,” she explains, holding up an intricate ring. “I made this by hand from an old metal spoon, priced at just 350,000 tomans. But people can no longer afford even these small items. Every evening, we lay out our goods, fearing a municipal raid and hoping to sell a few handcrafted items to cover daily expenses, university tuition, and semester supplies. But this year, conditions are far worse. Foot traffic is down, people are demoralized, and most young people walking by have no money to spend.”
A short distance away, Arshia, an art student at the University of Tehran, has laid out a collection of personal belongings rather than handicrafts, including old cassette tapes, vintage vinyl records, and used university textbooks. “These textbooks are out of print and very hard to find,” he notes. “I value them and will need them in future semesters, but I urgently need cash today to cover next semester’s tuition.”…
The desperation, of course, is not only among the young. Everywhere in Iran there is destitution, or the threat of it. The only people who are exempt, and who live quite well, are the senior clergy and the members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basiji forces. Given that there is no possibility of economic improvement, and things can only get worse, how long will it be until tens of millions of Iranians conquer their fear and return again to the streets, not to hawk a handful of pathetic goods, but to bring down those who have immiserated the country and blighted their lives?
࿗Infidel࿘ says
The main thing holding Iranians back is that the IRGC & Basij have all the weapons. Hopefully, during all these months of ceasefires, MOUs & so on, there is a clandestine process underway behind the scenes to arm the Iranian people – at least enough of them that the IRGC/Basij can no longer massacre them in the thousands, like they did in January
In the meantime, US/Saudis should do what they can to completely eliminate Hashd-ash-Shabi (Popular Mobilization Front of Iraq), so that they, like Hizbullah, are no longer in a position to provide manpower to IRGC or Basij. One of the things keeping the regime alive are those foreign shi’a fighters from Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. For instance, in Sistan-Balochistan in their South East, Afghan fighters – known as Faqiroon – are backing up the IRGC while combatting the Balochis, who may or may not be separatists. These fighters are there to ensure that Iranian IRGC/Basij members do their job of massacring Iranians, and if they refuse, these foreign fighters are to kill them instead
So maybe the Israelis, whenever they resume getting involved, should focus on destroying these foreign fighters, so that the IRGC/Basij collapse is complete, and that the Iranians can take things into their own hands
David M says
I’m not happy the Iranian people are struggling, they are people just like us. I liked Trump because he said he wasn’t going to get involved in any bullshit Middle East wars, but then he went back on his word. All he does is lie now, he let me down. Now we are paying for it with higher costs for everything.