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The true face of politics in Iran is not reflected in the endless disputes among regime factions or their media outlets. It is revealed instead on the empty tables of ordinary citizens, forced to chase after basic goods for survival.
On August 25, the state-run Jahan-e Sanat daily exposed this grim reality: “Uncontrolled price hikes of essential goods have forced people to buy even their basic necessities in installments.”
The paper warned of a crisis turning into a “terrifying normality”: “A disaster was quietly moving beneath the market’s surface, but today it is becoming a frightening reality in society. Families must now buy a sack of rice, meat, detergent, and other essentials in several installments.”
This shocking portrait of daily life illustrates how the clerical regime’s policies have stripped Iranians of dignity, reducing households to debt for the most basic items. The report admitted that installment payments now extend beyond protein products to “diapers, detergent, and even dishwashing liquid.”
The #Iranian Regime's Economic Warfare Creates a Multi-Front Crisis for the Peoplehttps://t.co/KoEgu32dxd
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) July 9, 2025
Regime Condemned as the “First Defendant” of Inflation
Even experts quoted by state-run outlets place the blame squarely on the regime itself. Jahan-e Sanat cited one economist who declared: “The government is the first defendant for creating inflation and for pushing the people beneath the poverty line. With the collapse of the national currency, the state has toyed with the people’s livelihoods.”
The scale of the crisis has become so immense that even regime president Masoud Pezeshkian was forced into reluctant acknowledgment. On the same day, the Etemad daily ran a headline “Against Budget Plundering,” exposing how countless regime-linked foundations and institutions fatten themselves on public wealth while producing no measurable benefit for society.
“While the budget deficit grows deeper and more destructive each year, crushing the livelihoods of the poor and middle classes, certain organizations and entities continue to receive ever more funds without accountability, growing fatter each year,” the paper admitted.
Pezeshkian’s confession: Iran’s economy in freefall, society on the brink of eruption https://t.co/HVrpJgh818
— People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) (@Mojahedineng) August 11, 2025
Decades of Corruption and a Nation on the Brink
This picture of systemic corruption has persisted across both monarchical and clerical regimes, serving as one of the central reasons for Iran’s historical stagnation and exclusion from global development. In the clerical regime, the institutionalized plunder of wealth has been paired with political repression, filling prisons with dissidents, devastating water and power infrastructure, and now leaving citizens unable to afford even the most basic goods.
The trajectory is clear: every stage of corruption and repression drives Iran closer to a social explosion. As state-run dailies themselves admit, the combination of hunger, inflation, and unchecked corruption is not merely a crisis of governance but a fuse burning toward inevitable upheaval.