More bad news for Iran’s long-suffering people, just when you thought it could not be worse, can be found here: “Tehran ‘ashamed’ as Iranians struggle to make ends meet,” by Behrouz Turani, Iran International, September 18, 2026:
Iran’s economic hardship has grown so acute that senior government officials are increasingly acknowledging in public the scale of the pressure on ordinary households.
“We are ashamed that the public’s income does not cover their expenses, especially for wage earners,” First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref said Thursday. “You cannot increase salaries by 20% when inflation is running above 60–70%.”
Government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani has disclosed a roughly 310-trillion-toman shortfall in expected tax revenues during the first half of the current year, while the head of the Food and Drug Administration says medicine prices have risen roughly 103% this year.
President Masoud Pezeshkian has offered an equally stark assessment of the public mood, invoking the 2019 fuel-price protests as a warning against imposing further economic pressure.
“People are now on the edge; if I impose another pressure, they may fall off,” he said.
The warning has not prevented the government from doubling the gasoline price for high-volume consumers, highlighting the difficult choices facing Tehran as it tries to contain household pressure while confronting the economic costs of war.
The free-market dollar has traded at around 2.30–2.33 million rials this week, with the Iranian currency losing roughly 44% of its value against the dollar over the past six months….
In 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini took over Iran, the exchange rate was 70 rials to one dollar.
Iranian oil exports have reportedly fallen from around 2 million barrels per day before the war to approximately 220,000–255,000 barrels per day in August, sharply reducing one of Tehran’s principal sources of foreign currency.
Iran has only one resource: its oil. And now its sale of oil has fallen to roughly 10% of what it was before the war with America. How long can the country endure such a catastrophic decline in revenues?
The Iranian regime has to worry that any further decline in the people’s standard of living — 50% of the population now lives below the poverty line — will push them over the edge into renewed countrywide protests. And this time, unlike last January, these protests will not be possible to put down. In 1978, the Shah’s regime was doomed when so many members of the military refused to shoot down the protesters against his rule. It could happen again with this regime, for so many of members of Iran’s military are also suffering from the economic collapse, and may no longer be willing to fire on their protesting countrymen to save a regime that has immiserated the country and blighted their lives, too.
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