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Iranian regime supreme leader Ali Khamenei declared the Persian year 1404 (beginning in March 2025) as the “Year of National Production” and claimed that “development” would complement it. Yet, just five months later, the regime’s own president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has effectively undermined this propaganda slogan by admitting: “I do not want to create development at all. First comes people’s bread.”
According to the state-run Fararu website (August 24, 2025), Pezeshkian, during a meeting with media managers, was forced to expose the regime’s parasitic network of institutions: “We have countless institutions and foundations that produce nothing, and we give them money. Why should we pay them when we cannot provide for people’s livelihoods?”
This rare admission sheds light on the core of Iran’s economic and social catastrophe—resources are systematically looted by regime-affiliated foundations and institutions while millions of Iranians struggle to survive.
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“Resources Are Spent on Other Things”
Pezeshkian himself acknowledged the bitter truth: “Financial resources are spent on other things.”
This echoes the cries of Iranian society for the past two decades: national wealth is diverted to corrupt foundations, the clerical establishment, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), rather than to the people. The November 2019 uprising was fueled precisely by the regime’s theft of resources to feed these parasitic networks.
Undermining Khamenei’s Own Slogan
In his remarks, Pezeshkian even contradicted Khamenei’s “Year of National Production” narrative: “Development will not be possible without meeting basic needs. Solving these problems is not simple.”
In effect, he poured cold water on the regime’s official propaganda, exposing the emptiness of its slogans and its inability to address Iran’s deepening economic crisis.
The regime’s own media has been compelled to highlight this reality. The state-run Ettela’at Daily (August 24, 2025) pointed directly at one of the regime’s institutions of repression and corruption: “Mr. President! Start with the Headquarters for Enjoining the Good and Forbidding the Evil. What is its real function? What is its output? When virtue can be promoted in a mosque, why should it receive a budget of 123 billion tomans?”
The same outlet went further, mocking the regime’s hollow slogans: “We have gone from concerns about development to concerns about providing bread. We spend people’s bread money on organizations whose political and cultural weight in society is no more than 25%.”
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Admissions of Defeat
These forced acknowledgments by regime officials and media reflect a deeper reality: despite vast budgets, foundations, and propaganda, the regime has failed to impose its ideological “lifestyle” on society. As Ettela’at admitted: “The Mahsa movement of 2022 and the 2024 elections should have made it clear that most people will not accept the lifestyle the regime wants to impose. No amount of budget or propaganda can change this.”
A System Built on Looting, Not Development
These statements expose what the Iranian people have long known: the regime is not interested in development or meeting people’s needs. Instead, it has built an oligarchic system of theft and privilege for the supreme leader’s foundations, the clerical establishment, and the IRGC’s vast economic empire.
The so-called “Year of National Production” is nothing more than a cover for plunder. The real outcome is deepening poverty, soaring inflation, and the widening class gap between ordinary Iranians and regime elites. These admissions by Pezeshkian and regime media only confirm that the system cannot reform itself—and that its downfall is inevitable.