Three-minute read
Iran is entering the final days of September under simultaneous pressure from soaring living costs, a weakened currency, fuel shortages and problems across industrial supply chains. What makes the moment politically significant is the state’s response: senior officials are increasingly speaking not only about inflation and production, but about “resilience,” internal cohesion and the danger of popular dissatisfaction being turned against the state.
That anxiety surfaced unusually clearly on September 17, when the regime’s First Vice President Mohammad-Reza Aref acknowledged that ordinary incomes were no longer keeping pace with prices. “We apologize to the people; we are ashamed that today the income and expenses of our dear people, particularly salary earners, do not match,” he said. Referring to inflation potentially exceeding 60 or 70 percent while wages rise only 20 percent, he added: “It is impossible. You cannot live.”
The pressures behind his crocodile tears are real. Iranian reporting this week said food prices have risen between 44 and 293 percent since December, forcing households to reduce purchases of meat, poultry and even dairy products. Meanwhile, on September 19, Iran’s currency-market tracker TGJU put the dollar at roughly 227,500 tomans, about 20 percent higher than one month earlier.
Zahedan Gunfire Shadows Basij-#IRGC Parade Amid Sanctions, Police Abuse and Division
by Amir Taghatihttps://t.co/R9vljTNE3I— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) September 18, 2026
Production Starts to Fray
The squeeze is now moving through industry. Iran Chamber of Commerce data show the broader economy remaining in contraction, with its purchasing managers’ index at 46.9, below the neutral level of 50. More worrying for future production, inventories of purchased raw materials fell to 39.3 in August as businesses reported shortages of foreign currency, import and customs delays, logistics problems and rising procurement costs.
State television provided a stark example from Tabriz’s leather industry on September 17. A district that once had more than 400 active workshops was reported to have only about 70 operating, themselves working at roughly 20 percent of capacity. Producers described waits of several months for foreign-currency allocations, problems repatriating export earnings, obsolete machinery and sudden electricity cuts.
Fuel shortages are adding another layer of strain. Reports from Birjand described long gasoline queues even as the regime’s president Masoud Pezeshkian urged people to reduce consumption of gasoline, gas and electricity so that factories could continue operating. The government has frequently attributed economic difficulties to war and external pressure, but Birjand’s own Friday prayer leader publicly pushed back on September 18, saying gasoline queues “have nothing to do with America and the Zionist regime” and demanding action by domestic officials.
An analysis by @mehdioghbai on how the clerical regime ruling Iran tried to wage a regional war to avoid the real battle at home and how it all collapsed at once. https://t.co/sHYeFSBRa7
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) September 14, 2026
From Economics to Internal Security
The government’s own language increasingly connects these pressures to political stability. Executive VP Mohammad-Jafar Ghaempanah told officials in Zanjan that these were “days of resilience.” Recalling earlier unrest, he said the adversary had sought to “ride on people’s dissatisfaction” and bring about collapse “from within.” He urged Iranians to preserve cohesion and warned against weakening the government, judiciary, police or armed forces.
That message coincided with a large state-organized mobilization in Tehran on September 18 involving Basij and military forces. Officials presented the exercise as preparation for broad defensive organization and said similar mobilizations would be staged across other provinces and cities. Pezeshkian attended, while Basij commander Hossein Taeb spoke of organizing participants into units and conducting further land, air and maritime training.
Attention is also turning toward campuses as universities reopen. In Shiraz on September 18, cleric Ebrahim Kalantari described Iran as confronting simultaneous military, economic, security, cultural and “cognitive” wars. He warned that even one “foreign voice” from a university podium was too many, urging professors, students and administrators to prevent opponents from redirecting campuses; he extended the warning to schools.
"Iran’s clerical regime is entering a phase in which several crises no longer run in parallel but reinforce one another. The pressure is no longer confined to sanctions, factional infighting, or isolated #IranProtests," @MansoreGolestan writes.https://t.co/ychTonyf9l
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) September 15, 2026
Pressure Inside the Establishment
Calls for discipline are also directed inward. Ghaempanah stressed that decisions of the Supreme National Security Council become authoritative once approved by the supreme leader and told political actors not to move either “faster” or “slower” than the approved line. The intervention suggests concern not only about society but about divisions within the establishment over how to navigate the current crisis.
The political atmosphere has become harsher as well. Commentator Ahmad Zeidabadi drew attention this week to a cleric threatening former President Hassan Rouhani with being “sent to the swimming pool”—an allusion to allegations surrounding former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s death in a swimming pool. Zeidabadi called for judicial scrutiny of such threats.
Taken together, the developments depict an economy under mounting pressure and a political establishment increasingly treating the consequences through a security lens. Inflation, gasoline queues and industrial contraction do not automatically produce nationwide unrest. But Tehran’s own statements show that officials are explicitly preparing for the possibility that economic grievance could move beyond the marketplace and once again become a force in the streets.