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Telecommunications retirees protested on October 19 in Isfahan, Kermanshah, Sanandaj, Hamedan and Lorestan, while defrauded investors demonstrated in Yazd. Protesters accused institutions tied directly to the power structure of stripping them of their rights, chanting that they had built the telecommunications sector only for the IRGC and the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order to take it over. Other slogans focused on collapsing purchasing power: “Our salaries are in rials, our expenses are in dollars” and “Justice is dead in this country.”
The protests came as official economic assessments grew markedly darker. Driven by a concern of inevitable unrest, Babak Negahdari, head of parliament’s Research Center, warned that inflation is being driven not by one external factor but by budget deficits, unstable policymaking, currency volatility, unbalanced banks creating unbacked money, inefficient state structures and privileged access to rents. He said the government should cut unnecessary expenditure, reform bloated institutions, eliminate unjustified exemptions and withdraw rent-seeking privileges before imposing more adjustment costs on households. IRNA quoted him saying that ordinary people can buy fewer goods with the same income and retirees increasingly do not know whether their pensions will last until month’s end.
That diagnosis is especially significant against official inflation data showing the scale of the deterioration: September point-to-point inflation was reported at 89.8%, while food inflation was running above 120% and had approached 150% in some provinces. At the same time, Iran’s crude-export revenues have been severely constricted by the maritime blockade. The combination is squeezing both household purchasing power and the state’s access to foreign exchange just as demands on pensions, subsidies and public salaries are rising.
Iran’s regime is increasingly governing by emergency: retirees protested across multiple cities, the Assembly of Experts urged nightly rallies to continue until “full security” is restored, Tehran lost 7,000 students, 70,000 nurses are reportedly out of the profession, and #oil…
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) October 18, 2026
Infighting defies Khamenei’s calls for unity
The sharper political development is the escalation of conflict inside the establishment over whether Iran should compromise to avoid another war. Hossein Marashi, secretary-general of the Executives of Construction Party, demanded state action after demonstrations outside Hassan Rouhani’s home, insults directed at Mohammad Javad Zarif in his office and death threats surrounding Abbas Akhundi. He warned that political disagreement is “not a crime” and cannot justify assassination or threats that political opponents will “end up in a swimming pool.”
The reference is politically explosive because the swimming-pool phrase evokes the death of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and one of the clerical regime’s foundational power brokers. Marashi is therefore doing more than complaining about factional intimidation: his rhetoric implicitly raises the specter that forces within the system are prepared to eliminate senior figures from rival camps. That directly cuts against Mojtaba Khamenei’s repeated instructions to preserve unity, avoid political division and prevent disputes from weakening the state. In a July message, Khamenei described avoiding “division and conflict” as a general duty and placed particular responsibility on officials and revolutionary loyalists to maintain cohesion.
Iran’s regime is acting like one afraid of the next eruption: 11 people arrested months after #IranProtests and branded part of a foreign “coup,” 44 million screened for extra food aid, and hardliners accusing rival insiders of serving Washington. The fear is that these pressures…
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) October 17, 2026
Yet the rival camp is escalating in the opposite direction. Kayhan editor Hossein Shariatmadari has portrayed advocates of compromise as effectively serving US interests and has called for security and judicial action against figures promoting what hardliners describe as surrender. Ahmad Alamolhoda, the Friday prayer leader in Mashhad, went further by welcoming the failure of diplomatic and mediation efforts, saying such initiatives had “fortunately” produced no result. The language shows that this is no longer an argument merely over negotiating tactics. One faction increasingly treats calls for compromise as a security offense, while the other warns that the confrontation itself could endanger the system.
Zarif has made that divide explicit by arguing that “survival is the first priority” and that when the country’s existence is endangered leaders may have to accept decisions as painful as a Turkmenchay-like agreement. Gholamhossein Karbaschi, former Tehran mayor, has been still more damaging to the official victory narrative. He has argued that authorities keep repeating claims of “victory” partly to preserve morale, while acknowledging that the damage Iran has suffered is not comparable to what it inflicted on its adversaries. He has also described the present situation as worse than the circumstances surrounding the historical Turkmenchay settlement.
Those statements explain the ferocity of the hardline response. The dispute is becoming an argument over the basic survival strategy of the state: whether retreat risks destroying deterrence, or whether refusing to retreat risks destroying the country.
Tehran’s response to the rial’s slide past 270,000 tomans isn’t restoring confidence—it’s rationing it. A $2B dollar sale that fades in days. A $10k purchase scheme that requires 2.5 billion tomans most people don’t have. A crackdown on #Tether and gold. All while chasing $21B in…
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) October 17, 2026
Economic collapse narrows the regime’s room for maneuver
The economic context makes that confrontation more consequential. Official institutions themselves are now describing inflation as a product of state fiscal disorder, rent extraction and dysfunctional banking, while households face near-doubling of overall prices and still faster increases in food. Iran is simultaneously confronting a sharp loss of oil-export income, depriving the state of the foreign currency needed for imports and reducing the fiscal space available to contain social pressure.
The broader picture is therefore of a regime being squeezed from three directions at once: economic deterioration, recurring social protest and increasingly open conflict within its own elite. Yet neither camp is retreating. Hardliners continue to demand confrontation abroad and coercive discipline at home, while rival insiders increasingly warn that this course itself threatens survival. The political logic appears to be that any visible weakness could prove fatal; the result is a system that keeps repression and warmongering at high intensity even as the pressures beneath it deepen.