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.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
There is another aspect to consider, which wasn’t true about Iran in 1979, but is true now. There were a lot of his supporters and advisors who wanted him to call in the army to crack down, but he declined, stating that he didn’t wish to rule over his country by killing his people. So he left. That is not the mindset of the current ruling durqhas, who have not the slightest inhibitions about massacring the people, no matter how many. That’s b’cos they don’t consider them “their’s”: in 1979, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei was returning to Iran & asked how he felt, he was non-chalant, since he considered himself a citizen of the ummah, not Iran. The “I” in the IRGC stands for islamic, not Iranian
Also, that regime uses its proxies now to prop itself up: it’s the reason that during the MOU negotiations, they demanded that Israel not touch Hizbullah or the Houthis. In past years, it used to be Hizbullah fighters: now the main foreign militia backing the IRGC is Ḥashd ash-Shaʿbī – the popular mobilization morces of Iraq. On top of that, they also have shi’a militias from Afghanistan (called Fatimoun) and Pakistan (called Zahidoun) operating in Iran as their backup militias. Right now, they are pretty active in Sistan-Balochistan, where, despite their presence, there have been several assassinations of IRGC or Basij officers by Balochi separatists (who are also fighting Pakistan). These separatist groups are groups that the Lion & Sun opposition does not support, b’cos they want an integrated Iran to be the end result of this revolution, w/o conceding new countries for anyone – Balochis, Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen, Loris, anybody
What these foreign mercenaries do is police the IRGC/Basij forces, threatening to kill them if they don’t fire on, or kill innocent Iranians. So while some Iranian members of the IRGC may indeed refuse to kill their compatriots, others may still do it, either out of conviction, or out of fear of their own lives. Still, there have been secret defections to the “Immortal Guard” known only to the Pahlavi team, but so far, Reza Pahlavi, Saeed Ghassaminejad & others haven’t deemed it yet the opportune moment for Iranians to revolt. This time, they want to avoid a major bloodletting, given what happened in January
Since politically, there is no support in the US for us embarking on a regime change adventure, the best thing Trump can do is greenlight Netanyahu to go ahead and resume what the Israelis did in Operation Rising Lion, when they took out Khamenei, his entire team, the Assembly of Experts, Larijani, et al. This time, spare nobody: take out Pezeshkian, Ghalibaf, Araghchi, Vahidi, Rezaei and every other bigwig and smallwig in the IRGC/Basij, co-ordinating w/ the Pahlavi team of course
Once that is done, the Pahlavi team can take over and start the transition process of bringing in a democracy through 3 referendums (on whether Iran should be a constitutional monarchy or republic, what should be the constitution, giving the people to vote on that constitution and finally elections for a President if it is a republic and a Prime Minister if it is a monarchy). Then that new government can figure out how to salvage Iran, and take it out of its islamic stupor
Westman says
It seems even Allah is against the Iranian Regime which shames Islam with political murder for all the world to see, claiming it is the 1400 year old will of Allah. No one can be causing the droughts but Allah. It is beyond the power of man and the Mullahs.