Three-minute read
As poverty deepens and food vanishes from the tables of ordinary families, the Pezeshkian government prepares a massive fuel price hike while new scandals expose the corruption, hypocrisy, and paralysis consuming the clerical regime.
In late October 2025, Iran’s embattled leadership finds itself engulfed in overlapping political, economic, and social crises that have shattered what remains of its governing credibility. From the prospect of a 300–500% gasoline price hike to soaring food insecurity and a widening gulf between impoverished citizens and ruling elites, the clerical regime is confronting the kind of volatility that once preceded nationwide uprisings.
A Government Preparing to Light the Fuse
According to regime media, the Pezeshkian administration is preparing to raise fuel prices to between 5,500 and 12,000 tomans per liter—up to a fivefold increase. Officials justify the measure by citing unsustainable subsidies and the “need for optimization,” but even parliamentary insiders have admitted it would amount to a social explosion in the making. The Speaker of Parliament recently confessed that Iran “buys fuel at 50,000 to 60,000 tomans and sells it for 2,000 to 3,000,” effectively acknowledging that the state’s economic model is bankrupt.
Such admissions echo a broader truth: decades of corruption, mismanagement, and institutionalized plunder have hollowed out the national economy. The clerical establishment, dominated by the Supreme Leader’s office, the Revolutionary Guards, and their vast economic networks, is now forced to extract more from a society already driven into destitution.
#Iran’s Class War: Inequality as a Regime Strategyhttps://t.co/GgEGSzTdJJ
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) September 18, 2025
The Vanishing of Meat — and Dignity
Nothing illustrates the collapse more vividly than the disappearance of meat from Iranian tables. Once a symbol of modest prosperity, meat has become a luxury item. United Nations data shows global per capita meat consumption averaging 41 kilograms per year, while in Iran it has fallen to below 12 kilograms—a level more typical of famine-stricken regions.
The price of lamb has soared past 900,000 tomans per kilogram, meaning the monthly subsidy for one low-income individual cannot even buy a single kilo of meat. Even the middle class has been pushed toward vegetarian diets not by choice, but by economic compulsion. In Tehran and other cities, ordinary families now rely on bread, rice, and tea, while protein sources have all but disappeared.
The consequences are catastrophic: rising malnutrition, weakened immune systems, and growing health disparities. The Ministry of Health recently confirmed that malnutrition contributes to 35% of all deaths in the country—equivalent to over 140,000 preventable deaths annually.
How Many #Iranians Live Below the #Poverty Line?https://t.co/fClcBw6aLX
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) September 11, 2024
“Luxury for Them, Starvation for Us”
As living standards collapse, the ruling class flaunts its privileges with impunity. The release of a video showing the extravagant wedding of Ali Shamkhani’s daughter, featuring lavish décor, luxury attire, and a reported cost of 1.4 billion tomans, ignited public outrage. The contrast between opulent elite lifestyles and the desperation of millions encapsulates the moral bankruptcy of the regime.
Shamkhani, a longtime insider of the regime’s military-security complex, symbolizes the corruption at the system’s core. His family, deeply embedded in oil and shipping contracts, represents the web of power and privilege that shields the regime’s top figures while ordinary citizens bear the cost of their excesses.
Even regime-affiliated media admitted the scandal’s implications. As one outlet wrote, “How can officials demand patience under sanctions while they themselves live like global elites?”
#Iran’s Imploding Economy Exposes a Regime Beyond Preservationhttps://t.co/7N3OT7UFT2
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) October 17, 2025
Programs in Ruins
The crisis extends to the collapse of all economic planning. The regime’s “20-Year Vision Plan,” once touted as a blueprint for prosperity, has ended in total failure. Its promise to make Iran the region’s leading economy by 2025 has instead produced record poverty, negative growth, and unprecedented isolation.
Likewise, the Seventh Development Plan, introduced as the flagship program of Pezeshkian’s government, is faltering. Official data shows that over half of its economic targets remain unimplemented, with economic growth turning negative in mid-2025. The regime’s own statistics admit a 27% funding gap, chronic mismanagement, and zero progress in job creation.
The Price of Survival
Faced with fiscal collapse, regime factions are now at war over who should bear the cost. Raising fuel prices risks a repeat of the 2019 and 2022 uprisings, when similar policies triggered nationwide protests brutally suppressed by security forces. Yet without such measures, the regime faces a deeper budgetary implosion.
Caught between economic implosion and social explosion, the clerical state appears incapable of either reform or restraint. Its response—tightening repression at home while feeding its war machine abroad—has only deepened the spiral.
#Iranian Regime Officials Caught in Massive Corruption Scandal Over Gift Cardshttps://t.co/9M3p5c4GU6
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) May 28, 2025
A Nation on the Edge
Iran’s economy is no longer in crisis; it is in free fall. Inflation has hovered above 40% for nearly a decade, unemployment remains rampant, and more than half the population now lives below the poverty line. Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Guards and institutions tied to the Supreme Leader continue to drain the nation’s wealth through untaxed empires and offshore accounts.
In the words of one frustrated economist, “The regime is not governing the economy—it is scavenging it.”
As hunger spreads and corruption festers, even many within the establishment privately warn that the system’s social contract has collapsed. The contrast between the rulers’ opulence and the people’s destitution has never been starker.
What remains is a nation exhausted, impoverished, and ruled by men whose only remaining tool of control is fear.