Two-minute read
While millions of Iranians struggle with rising poverty, inflation, unemployment, and housing shortages, the regime in Tehran continues to treat national budgeting as political theater rather than a mechanism for governance or public welfare. A striking report by the state-run Khorasan daily, published on October 5, openly admits that Iran’s budgeting system has collapsed into a ritual of deception — a tool to mask corruption and sustain the regime’s power structure.
Under the headline “Budgeting for Nothing,” the paper writes: “For decades, our national plans have never been meant for implementation. Everyone knows they are merely formalities. The same applies to the country’s budgeting. All officials — from the heads of commissions to the president and parliament — know that only about 60 percent of approved credits ever materialize.”
This rare confession by a regime newspaper lays bare the structural failure of Iran’s financial system. When top officials acknowledge that nearly half of the national budget is fictitious, it means that the budget is no longer a roadmap for development — it is a symbolic document, designed to create the illusion of governance while concealing vast unaccountable funds.
#Iran’s 1404 Budget: Crushing the Population to Fund Regime Survivalhttps://t.co/WyAw7LLjk7
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) March 6, 2025
Billions Hidden from Oversight
Khorasan reports that while the government claims to allocate 600 trillion tomans to the national budget, only 350 trillion tomans are ever disbursed. The gap — hundreds of trillions of tomans — is absorbed by opaque networks within the regime, flowing into the hands of unaccountable institutions, military entities, and special foundations loyal to the ruling elite.
These inflated figures are not accidental. They serve as a smokescreen for corruption and rent distribution, allowing regime insiders to divert public wealth into private or clandestine channels. Every “unrealized” portion of the budget represents a portion of stolen national resources, redirected outside the reach of audits, parliament, or public scrutiny.
The regime’s budget process has thus become a ceremonial act of state survival, not an instrument of governance. Successive governments, regardless of rhetoric, have used the annual budget not to manage the economy but to simulate normalcy — to pretend that a functioning state still exists in Iran.
These so-called “development plans” are, in fact, formalized promises never meant to be kept, a bureaucratic ritual masking the truth: Iran’s economic planning apparatus serves corruption, not citizens.
#Iran’s 2025 Budget: Prioritizing Propaganda, Security, and Religious Institutions Over Public Welfarehttps://t.co/SRfrZfJxDa
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) February 20, 2025
The People Pay the Price
In this broken system, workers, teachers, pensioners, farmers, and unemployed youth are not beneficiaries of the national budget — they are its victims. The billions lost to hidden allocations could have gone to education, healthcare, housing, and employment programs. Instead, they sustain the regime’s security apparatus and power networks.
The Khorasan article captures the essence of this injustice with biting irony: “Budgeting for nothing” is the repeated game of promises against empty dinner tables.
Behind the grand numbers and false projections lies a deliberate strategy of impoverishment. The regime keeps the population economically weak to prevent resistance and control dissent, fully aware of sleeping on a bomb.
In today’s Iran, the national budget has become a political weapon, not a fiscal plan. It funds repression and propaganda, not progress. Each unfulfilled promise is another reminder that the regime’s priority is self-preservation, not the people — and that Iran’s wealth continues to be drained to sustain a dictatorship built on lies.