Iran’s Economic Strain and Unrest Fears Drive Khamenei’s Push for Narrative Control

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Iran’s clerical dictatorship is tightening its grip on information as economic collapse deepens and fears of uprising grow. In a meeting with regime-appointed president Masoud Pezeshkian and his cabinet on September 7, 2025, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ordered officials, journalists, and state media to “avoid narrating weakness” and instead amplify “the country’s strengths and capabilities.” He warned that “the enemy intends to impose a state of neither war nor peace,” framing the crisis as externally engineered while ignoring his own decades-long role in creating it.

This posture is deliberate. For over three decades, Khamenei has driven Iran’s regional aggression, sabotaged lasting peace — even refusing reconciliation with the Iraqi government his regime helped install — and used perpetual tension as a political shield. Now, facing sanctions snapback, a collapsing economy, and mounting public anger, he projects himself as an “opposition critic” of his own system, pretending to challenge the very policies he dictated. It is calculated charlatanism designed to deflect blame and preserve his authority.

At the same session, Khamenei coupled demands for narrative control with hollow promises aimed at calming unrest. He ordered the government to guarantee that “ten or fewer basic items” remain affordable, floated expanded use of ration cards, and called for tighter “market discipline.” Pezeshkian, echoing the script, claimed his administration is tackling energy infrastructure, inflation, and food security, pledging monthly ration cards for seven income groups. In parliament, Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf promoted an electronic ration-card scheme to “keep staple prices stable year-round.”

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But these gestures are a diversion from systemic collapse. Decades of mismanagement, corruption, and sanctions evasion have left Iran’s economy stagnant and brittle. Power cuts, water shortages, and rising costs of basic items have become routine, yet Khamenei blames “wastefulness” in state agencies instead of acknowledging structural failure. He even urged officials to plan for gas imports this winter — an extraordinary admission that a country with the world’s second-largest natural gas reserves cannot meet its own needs.

Foreign policy rhetoric followed the same playbook. Khamenei ordered his ministers to “revive production units,” “expand exports,” and “find new and diverse customers” for Iranian crude. But his options are shrinking fast. UN snapback sanctions have tightened restrictions on shipping and banking, while Russia’s wartime oil exports are undercutting Iran in the same gray markets Tehran depends on. Moscow now sells cheaper crude to China and other key buyers, forcing Iran to slash prices and absorb heavy costs. Even when barrels move, profits are gutted by layers of intermediaries, reflagged tankers, and barter schemes required to dodge enforcement. Khamenei’s order to “find new customers” sounds less like strategy and more like desperation.

The hypocrisy runs deeper. By framing Iran’s deadlock as something “imposed by the enemy,” Khamenei conceals that his regime has manufactured this state of “neither war nor peace” for decades. Avoiding real de-escalation abroad gives him cover to tighten repression at home. He has consistently rejected pathways toward peace, even with states where Tehran holds influence, because perpetual instability sustains his rule and distracts from domestic failures.

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— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) August 13, 2025

This explains the heavy focus on messaging. Khamenei’s order to suppress “weakness” is aimed less at foreign audiences than at his own security apparatus. After years of economic decline, collapsing infrastructure, and public discontent, Iran has become an explosive society. If Khamenei signals retreat — whether on his regional doctrine, nuclear policy, or relations with the West — he risks eroding the morale of the Basij and IRGC, the forces he relies on to crush dissent. The regime’s louder rhetoric of defiance reflects deeper insecurity: a leadership fighting to keep its loyalists convinced the system can survive.

Ration cards, slogans about “reviving production,” and token price caps are less economic policies than psychological tools — designed to simulate momentum and control while avoiding concessions that could be read as weakness. But these maneuvers cannot alter the reality.