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Iran’s overlapping political, economic, and social crises entered a new phase this week as senior officials traded accusations, lawmakers warned of societal “collapse,” and even state media exposed widening fissures inside the ruling elite. From a bribery scandal in the Health Ministry to open revolt among clerics over official propaganda, the picture that emerged was not one of a regime managing national emergencies, but one struggling to manage itself.
Rouhani Reappears—and Reignites Old Battles
Former president Hassan Rouhani’s unusually blunt remarks at a private gathering of former ministers set off the latest round of recriminations. Five months after Iran’s 12-day war with Israel, Rouhani said the country remained stuck in a state of “neither war nor peace,” and—more damningly—that “a sense of security does not exist.”
He argued that the conflict might have been avoided entirely had Iran restored the JCPOA in early 2021: “If we had returned to the nuclear deal in early 2021, the 12-day war would not have happened… the snapback would have had no meaning.” He added that both his own final months and the first two years of the 13th government squandered opportunities for deterrence, leaving the country exposed.
Rouhani’s critique triggered an immediate backlash in the press and in parliament. One MP—who only weeks earlier had suggested Rouhani deserved execution—again labeled him “liar,” insisting his government’s failures on sanctions, banking, and the pandemic remained “crimes without consequence.” State-aligned dailies accused him of “manufacturing polarization” and recycling “the model favored by the West.”
But the ferocity of the attacks reflected something deeper: Rouhani had directly contradicted Khamenei’s narrative that the 12-day war demonstrated Iran’s strength, exposing a leadership not only divided over responsibility for the crisis but unable to agree on the story it tells its own public.
A System That Can No Longer Close Its Rankshttps://t.co/HLZzsWenvs
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) November 4, 2025
A Healthcare Scandal the System Could Not Contain
As political factions traded blows, a corruption scandal inside the Health Ministry forced the resignation of its most senior education official. After a mother from Bandar Abbas publicly posted a handwritten note describing how Jalil Hosseini, the ministry’s deputy for medical education, allegedly demanded five gold coins to schedule her child’s surgery in Tehran, the story went viral.
According to her account, Hosseini told her that without the bribe she would wait “three to four years” for surgery in a public hospital. Within 24 hours—and with the ministry refusing to comment—he resigned.
The scandal struck a nerve: systemic bribery in healthcare has long been whispered but rarely admitted, and its exposure arrives amid soaring medical costs and medicine shortages. Even lawmakers who normally defend the government called the case “a window into structural corruption.”
Infighting in #Tehran as Elites Fight Over Mediation, Censorship and Blamehttps://t.co/FYY5zZfGkI
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) November 30, 2025
Parliament Becomes a Battleground
As inflation bites, wages stagnate, and the government moves toward a gasoline price hike, parliament has become an arena for unusually raw admissions of the country’s state.
One MP compared living conditions to “blood pressure rising from 11 to 20,” warning the regime’s president Masoud Pezeshkian that the country was approaching “social stroke.” Another read a message from a retired bank employee now forced to work as a building guard for 8 million tomans a month.
MPs lined up to describe schoolteachers under the poverty line, workers holding two jobs to avoid “shame before their children,” and border guards who “cannot cross the border of poverty.” A representative from Kerman said dozens of farmers face prosecution because they cannot access fuel or irrigation: “Their crops rot on the ground while officials argue.”
Others attacked the judiciary’s reflexive turn to prison sentences: “Jail fixes nothing. It only destroys what little people have left.”
The breadth of the complaints—spanning wages, fuel policy, health care, agriculture, and justice—revealed a parliament not suddenly attentive to people’s hardship but terrified of the public’s mounting fury toward the entire ruling establishment.
#Iranian Regime Admits to Internal Attacks on Khamenei as Crisis Convergence Drives Disunity https://t.co/XcyNmeZSeO
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) November 24, 2025
A Regime at War with Its Own Messaging
Perhaps the most revealing rupture came from an unexpected place: a photograph.
State media affiliated with the Leader’s office published the image of Niloufar Ghaleh-vand, a girl killed in the recent war, without altering her appearance to meet official hijab norms. Extremists erupted. Clerics accused the Leader’s media team of violating his own standards; one warned that “people will think the Leader cannot manage his own household.”
Others within the conservative camp defended the publication, arguing that in wartime the nation must honor “all its martyrs.” Yet the regime’s attempt to spin this moment as proof of its own ‘restraint’ and magnanimity only backfired. With the ideological scaffolding of the Islamic Republic weakened, the system can no longer sustain its own political maneuvers: the very gesture meant to project confidence instead exposed a state trapped in contradictions of its own making—torn between the morality policing it enforces and the softer image it now needs to survive.
#Iran’s Clerical Regime Braces for Unrest as Crises Convergehttps://t.co/DTW801sJoV
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) November 15, 2025
A Government Consumed by Itself
What ties these crises together is not simply mismanagement but political paralysis. Rather than confronting inflation, corruption, medical shortages, or environmental decline, officials have spent the week attacking each other over narratives, loyalties, and past grievances.
Rouhani says the nation lacks deterrence and confidence; parliament says the people cannot breathe under economic pressure; clerics say the ruling system cannot even control its own propaganda. And through it all, the public watches a leadership that appears to be fighting every battle except the one outside its window: the battle for basic governance.