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Three powerful explosions were reported in Zahedan on September 30, the fourth anniversary of the city’s “Bloody Friday” massacre, adding a new security incident to a week already marked by armed clashes in neighboring IranShahr. Local sources reported three blasts in Zahedan’s Jomhouri district, around Police Station 19, and published images from the area. State media confirmed that an explosion had been heard there. Zahedan Governor Jamshid Rakhshani-Nasab described it as involving a “sonic object” but said its origin and cause remained under investigation. No credible source had established responsibility or a motive by publication time.
The timing is nevertheless significant. September 30 marks the 2022 crackdown known as Bloody Friday, when security forces opened fire following Friday prayers in Zahedan.
Commemorative activity had already been reported before Wednesday’s explosions. Opposition sources documented dozens of actions in cities across Iran marking Bloody Friday, while Resistance Units in Zahedan had displayed banners and placards honoring those killed. These activities should not be conflated with Wednesday’s blasts, for which responsibility remains unverified.
Inflation Approaches 90% as the Central Bank Intervenes
While security tensions remained acute in the southeast, new official statistics exposed a rapidly deteriorating economic picture. The Statistical Center of Iran said point-to-point inflation reached 89.8% in September, up from August, while monthly inflation stood at 4.2% and annual inflation at 73.6%. In other words, an average household paid almost 90% more than a year earlier for the same basket of goods and services.
Students in Iran are putting tuition, inflation, unemployment, compulsory #hijab and political repression into the same slogans—as the dollar hits a new record and retirees again take to the streets.
The lines between economic, social and political discontent are fading.
Today’s…— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) September 28, 2026
The underlying breakdown was even more severe in some categories. The figures included point-to-point inflation of roughly 121.8% for food and beverages, 162% for tobacco, 124.6% for household furnishings and maintenance, and 122.7% for communications. The same official statistical system recently reported that GDP contracted 10.1% year-on-year in the first quarter.
The rial continued to fall despite an unusually large intervention. The free-market dollar moved above 256,000 tomans Wednesday and briefly reached around 257,000. The Central Bank responded by announcing up to $2 billion in cash-dollar sales, beginning with $1 billion through selected banks and bank-affiliated exchanges; adults can purchase as much as $10,000 with identification. Yet the official remittance dollar remained around 174,181 tomans, leaving a gap of more than 80,000 tomans with the free market.
Even Fars, affiliated with the IRGC, complained that management of Tehran’s dollar market had “effectively” fallen into the hands of U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, while faulting Central Bank officials for failing to explain the currency’s rapid rise. The significance lies less in Fars’s attribution of responsibility than in a state-aligned outlet publicly describing monetary authorities as unable to control the narrative—or the market.
Hours of heavy gunfire shook IranShahr as security forces deployed armored vehicles and drones.
Elsewhere, the dollar broke 250,000 tomans, police arrested currency traders, #medicine supplies strained, teachers quit, and compulsory hijab moved toward the national-security…
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) September 29, 2026
Teachers and Nurses Begin Walking Away
The economic crisis is increasingly appearing not merely in protests but in withdrawal from state institutions themselves. Videos of teachers, nurses and other employees announcing their resignations have proliferated. Some hold up final payslips and resignation papers; others describe exhaustion, low wages, ideological pressure and loss of professional dignity.
The Education Ministry dismissed reports of a broader wave of teacher resignations, with Minister Alireza Kazemi framing the reports as part of a wider “cognitive, perceptual and cultural war,” saying education officials’ foremost duty was to defend the “integrity of the system” against what he called rumor and manipulation. Yet domestic outlets including Fararu and Asr Iran continue to report that resignation videos have become a visible trend, while education expert Mohammad-Reza Niknejad said a teacher with around 15 years’ experience earns about 25 million tomans a month against estimated living costs of 60–75 million tomans, arguing that the publicized resignations may represent only part of a wider livelihood crisis.
The Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations has blamed inadequate pay, deteriorating working conditions and systematic neglect, while the education system was already estimated to be short at least 100,000 teachers. The significance is institutional: when skilled employees decide unemployment or uncertain private work is preferable to remaining in schools and hospitals, the crisis moves beyond purchasing power into the state’s ability to retain professional labor.
Tehran’s infighting is testing Mojtaba Khamenei’s authority.
Hardliners are turning on FM Araghchi over his #NewYork contact with the U.S. envoy—despite reports the Leader approved the talks. MPs demand impeachment. Pezeshkian is under fire too.
Loyalty to the Leader is looking…— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) September 29, 2026
Internet service is also showing renewed instability. Users in Hamedan, Kurdistan and Mashhad reported repeated slowing and disconnections, while network-monitoring data detected degraded domestic and international routes. The state-run Citna claimed there has been no evidence of a nationwide shutdown, but recorded active disruptions and substantial packet loss on some routes.
Mobilization, Policing and Infighting
There were further signs of the authorities widening coercive and mobilizational measures. Human-rights sources reported that some ordinary prisoners at Fardis Prison in Karaj were offered reduced penalties or release on easier terms if they signed repentance forms, joined the Basij and registered with the government’s “Janfada” mobilization campaign.
Public anger over policing surfaced separately in Sanandaj after footage showing the treatment of teenagers by patrol officers circulated widely. Fearing a social backlash, Kurdistan police hastily acknowledged an “unprofessional and inappropriate” encounter, claiming to have summoned the officer involved and opened an internal investigation.
Meanwhile, institutional conflict at the top continues. Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf warned that if the regime could not sell oil, “no one” in the region would, and that if its security were not guaranteed, “no infrastructure” would be safe. Yet in the same speech he conceded that external power required “livelihood security” at home and said officials could not build a balance of power abroad while delaying solutions to people’s economic problems.
Mojtaba Khamenei calls Iran the world’s “fourth superpower”—even No. 1 by “divine calculations.” Yet #IranProtests persist across the country, the rial is at record lows, inflation is called a security threat, critics are jailed, social restrictions tighten, factional battles…
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) September 29, 2026
That contradiction captures the wider picture. Currency collapse, near-90% inflation, professional resignations, degraded services, regional security incidents, public resentment of policing and growing reliance on organized loyalist mobilization are not isolated pressures. They increasingly reinforce one another.
The risk for the ruling establishment is therefore not simply another economic or security crisis. It is the formation of a self-made perfect storm in which years of economic mismanagement, repression, institutional erosion and political confrontation produce pressures that the same system must then spend ever greater resources trying to contain.