Three-minute read
Iran’s power structure is wrestling with overlapping, self-inflicted crises—soaring prices, a looming currency unification near 100,000 tomans per dollar, fuel-price hikes, and public allegations of entrenched corruption—that have spilled into open feuds in parliament and unusually stark warnings in state media. The chorus of “alarms” is less about protecting the public than preserving the regime amid rising anger.
State Media Says “Fear the Inside”
On November 9, the state-run Jomhuri-ye Eslami warned that the real danger is domestic, urging senior officials to hang an old admonition on their walls: “fear the inside.” The paper explicitly tied the threat to neglect of livelihoods, psychological pressure on society, and rampant economic graft, even naming high-profile corrupters as cautionary examples.
The editorial’s subtext is not policy reform; it is crisis management. By acknowledging grievances while avoiding responsibility, it aims to dissipate fury without changing the causes of it.
Read bluntly, the paper is telling officials that the next shock—economic or otherwise—will come from the street, not from abroad, and that their job is to head it off to preserve the system.
#Iran's Regime Floats Tehran Evacuation Contingency as Water Runs Outhttps://t.co/LRTfl2An9A
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) November 10, 2025
Parliament Erupts Over Fuel, FX, and Corruption
On the floor, hardline MP Hamid Rasaee blasted the failure to repatriate export earnings as “about 80 million tomans stolen from the pocket of every Iranian,” and alleged that a prosecutor removed for corruption two years ago has been reappointed in another city. He framed “dollarized costs with rial wages” as a national-security risk.
MP Amir-Hossein Sabeti said the government has approved a three-tier gasoline scheme and challenged the regime’s president Masoud Pezeshkian to keep his campaign pledge not to raise fuel prices—“if it was a mistake, say so.” He also flagged a controversial 50-billion-toman travel budget request by a senior environmental official as emblematic of excess.
Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf urged the cabinet not to repeat “unsuccessful experiences,” while MP Javad Nikbin cited bakers’ protests in Mashhad and railed at opacity in rice imports, where traders, he said, take subsidized FX yet sell at sky-high retail prices. The common thread in these interventions is not relief for households; it is alarm that missteps could trigger unrest that threatens the state.
#Iran's Economic Strain and Unrest Fears Drive Khamenei’s Push for Narrative Controlhttps://t.co/F51d8EVrf4
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) September 8, 2025
Currency Reset, Failing Scorecard, and Evacuation Talk
Lawmakers say the heads-of-branches session moved to scrap the 28,500-toman rate and unify the exchange rate to 100,000 tomans per dollar. Paired with prospective energy price hikes, that points to a fresh inflation wave with direct household impact.
Parliament then handed the Pezeshkian administration a 37/100 for economic performance. MP Tajgardoun put power-sector losses from energy imbalances at 303 trillion tomans for last year. Vice President Mohammad-Reza Aref conceded deep structural mismatches, acknowledging arrears to key suppliers rising to $6 billion despite partial payments.
Meanwhile, elite rhetoric over the water crisis escalated. Former Rouhani adviser Hesamoddin Ashna posted that “even with rain… not only Tehran but Iran must be evacuated,” while Kayhan castigated the president for “injecting despair.” These warnings and counter-warnings serve one purpose: to prime society for hardship while keeping a lid on social anger.
#Iran’s Leadership Faces Growing Fears of Unrest Amid Snapback Sanctions and Internal Divisionshttps://t.co/vHMBfE7JON
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) August 30, 2025
Secrecy Order Tightens Narrative Control
After a legislator publicly boasted that China and Russia had met Iran’s weapons requests—citing rapid air-defense deliveries during a recent clash—the General Staff ordered media not to publish information about military-defense cooperation without coordination, calling unsanctioned comments “invalid.”
The order does not resolve substance; it manages optics. As with the economic message, the goal is to control the story—signal strength outward, suppress details inward—so that anger at shortages and price shocks does not converge with unease over security policy.
Taken together, these developments sketch a preservationist state confronting multi-system strain: a currency reset toward 100,000 tomans that will reprice essentials; fuel hikes that risk replaying past shocks; open claims of recycled judicial corruption; infrastructure deficits that feed evacuation talk; and a security establishment narrowing acceptable speech. The through-line is a two-language strategy—alarm and discipline—deployed not to solve root causes but to manage public reaction. In the near term, policy signals point to tighter belts and sharper controls; medium term, the combination of austerity without accountability and secrecy without competence is the classic precursor to broader instability, which even state media now tacitly acknowledges by telling officials to “fear the inside.”