Three-minute read
Iran’s political establishment spent the past week in open confrontation. Parliament turned into a battleground over inflation and collapsing living standards. Hard-line media escalated an organized assault on former president Hassan Rouhani. Cabinet ministers faced coordinated impeachment threats. And the sitting president Masoud Pezeshkian—under pressure from all sides—warned, via state outlets, that Tehran may soon require water rationing and even partial evacuation if the drought continues.
Each faction is using the country’s deteriorating conditions to shield itself from blame and to corner rivals before public anger spills into the streets. Official data and even regime-adjacent analytics tend to understate the gravity of the crisis; the political reaction to that crisis is now the clearest measure of regime fragility.
Parliament Turns Its Fire Inward
The December 3 session of the Majles opened with MP Ahmad Naderi citing Central Bank figures showing enormous overdrafts and bad debts in several private banks, claiming their large facilities exceed “three times the annual cash subsidy” of the population. His proposed fixes—forced mergers, tighter controls—carefully avoided the political networks behind the banks’ rise.
Others were blunter. Jamshid Qaem-Maqam admitted, “we know what we’ve done to people’s tables,” listing inflation, unemployment and “astronomical” rents. MP Sepahvand attacked the recycling of “retired white-collar elites” through quasi-state holding companies. Nakhai-Rad said wages are “eaten by inflation before they reach people’s accounts,” pointing to collapsing small producers and currency volatility so sharp “people don’t know what price they will wake up to tomorrow.”
The outrage is selective. Inflation is approaching 50% year-on-year, food prices rising even faster, yet MPs frame the disaster as the fault of the current cabinet or a handful of “bad managers.”
#Iran’s Ruling System Is Fracturing Under the Weight of Its Own Criseshttps://t.co/m58yalvjdr
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) December 3, 2025
Impeachment as a Weapon
Deputy speaker Ali Nikzad confirmed that signatures to impeach five ministers have reached the legal threshold and warned that any case brought to the floor “will pass.” If more than half the cabinet falls, the government loses its mandate. Some MPs openly float this as a goal for 1405.
Speaker Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf has sent mixed signals—calling for a “coordinated reshuffle” while keeping impeachment on the table. The ministries targeted—housing, agriculture, energy, labor, health—correspond directly to daily grievances. But historically, impeachment in Iran reshuffles personnel, not policy.
It is leverage, not accountability: a tool to hem in Pezeshkian while leaving the real centers of corruption and plunder—Khamenei’s office and the IRGC’s economic networks—untouched, and using cabinet reshuffles as scapegoating theater to deceive the public rather than to repair any sector.
#Iranian Regime’s Crisis Deepens as Infighting Overshadows Governance Failureshttps://t.co/n4KehhfYgk
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) December 1, 2025
Pezeshkian Under Pressure
Facing factional crossfire, Pezeshkian has begun acknowledging core defects—“inflation is printed into existence by governments and banks,” he said this month, describing it as wealth taken “invisibly” from citizens. Yet his administration is simultaneously implementing the most sensitive price adjustment since November 2019: a three-tier gasoline system combining 1,500-toman subsidized fuel, 3,000-toman semi-subsidized fuel, and a new 5,000-toman over-quota tier that MPs warn could deepen distrust among low-income households.
Meanwhile the water crisis has reached a point where the president—in remarks carried by state media—warned that rationing in the capital is imminent and that, if drought persists, relocation of parts of Tehran may be unavoidable. Scientists cited by national outlets report that more than 20 provinces have seen negligible rainfall since late September and key dams feeding Tehran are near historic lows.
Yet none of the officials voicing alarm are willing to touch the real causes: decades of destructive policy that diverted rivers, pumped aquifers dry, and covered the country with unscientific dams that shattered Iran’s natural water balance.
#Iran Elites Warn of Unrest as Fuel Hikes and FX Reset Ignite Infighting https://t.co/UNktmnSmzy
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) November 10, 2025
Rouhani’s Return Sparks a Counterattack
The feud widened when Rouhani re-emerged with pointed criticism of military boasting—calling it a path to “miscalculation”—and with claims that power centers blocked early vaccine imports. Extremist media and politicians responded with ferocity: Babak Zanjani, once paraded as a “corrupt tycoon” and newly pardoned, attacked Rouhani as unfit; Kayhan cast critical analysts as tools in a “proxy narrative war.”
Other commentators countered that the attacks expose the system’s contradictions: if Rouhani’s alleged offenses are so grave, how did he spend decades in top security roles? Here too, the dispute is less about truth than about delimiting who may speak—and how loudly—inside a closed system.
Hassan Rouhani's disqualification marks a significant shift in #Iranian politics. With his extensive tenure spanning parliament, the Assembly of Experts, the Supreme National #Security Council, and the presidency, his exclusion carries weight beyond past election spectacles,… pic.twitter.com/subbX4sajO
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) January 31, 2024
What This Week Reveals
The eruption of intra-regime conflict is not pluralism—it is a warning sign. When insiders attack each other in the language of opposition while avoiding the core of power, it reflects a system losing its ability to manage scarcity without political fallout.
The Majles shouts about poverty to weaken the cabinet. Extremist factions associated with Khamenei attack Rouhani to quell internal rivalry. Pezeshkian warns of drought and war to dodge responsibility. Each faction is trying to survive the next shock.
And that is the real significance of the past week: a political order that once contained crises now depends on them to police its own factions—while hoping the public does not conclude what the officials themselves already signal in their panic.