Three-minute read
As snapback sanctions bite and the 12-day war exposes strategic limits, Iran’s rulers are compensating with louder threats at home and abroad. In one week, a senior MP scrapped the informal 2,200-kilometer missile cap, the Foreign Ministry declared the Cairo understanding with the IAEA defunct and acknowledged a halt in inspections, and parliament descended into public rows over runaway prices, banking corruption, collapsing exam scores, an NPT walk-out debate, and multiple impeachment drives. The escalation language is less policy than performance—a bid to stiffen a demoralized base and to warn a volatile society—even as it risks deeper isolation and fewer exits later.
Missiles without limits, diplomacy without exits
On October 8, MP Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani, a member of parliament’s security committee, said the regime would expand its missile program “as far as Iran itself deems fit,” adding that the Supreme Leader’s earlier 2,200-kilometer cap “is removed.” He paired the announcement with a negotiating red line: “If zero enrichment is to be accepted from the outset, there is no reason to negotiate.”
Three days earlier, Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baqaei put the nuclear track in starker terms: “Without doubt, the Cairo understanding no longer has efficacy… we currently have no inspections in Iran,” noting only a recent visit to Bushehr under a Russia contract. He claimed Tehran had shown “logical flexibility” in New York—including openness to a multilateral session where a U.S. representative would be present—then blamed European counterparts for failing to deliver. Future steps, he said, would be decided by the Supreme National Security Council.
Parliament in Panic: #Iranian Regime Lawmakers Admit to Deepening Economic Collapsehttps://t.co/6XzvubTIBn
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) October 9, 2025
The truth inside
If foreign-policy bravado is meant to signal momentum, some occasional admissions from within the security establishment cut the other way. On October 6, former National Security and Foreign Policy Committee chair Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh described how promised repayments from Damascus for years of Iranian support have failed to materialize. A 5,000-hectare land transfer arrived without water rights for six months; phosphate exports were blocked because Tartus was effectively in Russian hands and Latakia sat under Israeli fire; a transferred “dairy” was, he said, “not a cow, not a dairy—just a ruin”; and the much-touted “oil well” was “not a well; it’s land—dig and maybe reach oil,” with a new 12.5% fee demanded by Damascus even if oil were found. The ledger reads like an invoice for sunk costs, not strategic dividends.
Inside the regime’s parliament, the week’s debates exposed the domestic strain the rhetoric aims to paper over. On October 8, MP Rahim Karimi said “the people’s tables are shrinking day by day,” with the prices of bread, meat and dairy rising so fast that “prices change moment to moment.” In the same session, MP Amir-Hossein Sabeti accused the government’s economic team and the central bank of shielding rogue private lenders, warning against creating “three new dens of corruption,” and telling the central bank governor to act—or resign.
Iran, under the ruling theocracy, is characterized by a stagnant economy, pervasive corruption, and political repression. As Major #Iranprotests erupt every now and then, #Iran's state media continue warning about a looming nationwide uprising. https://t.co/bwdPUbY2BX pic.twitter.com/ZfZoZiMWMM
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) September 16, 2022
Education was pulled into the crisis narrative. On October 6, MP Mohammad-Reza Sabbaghian called a nationwide average of roughly 10/20 in final exams a “pedagogical earthquake,” and rebuked the education minister for declaring himself “a soldier of the Security Forces Chief Radan,” language Sabbaghian called “dangerous.”
The political fractures are not confined to committee rooms. State media have reported that four ministers have been moved into the impeachment queue, adding that some lawmakers appear determined to brand the cabinet as inept. Earlier, a floor fight over whether to even debate leaving the NPT devolved into procedural accusations and open sniping between MP Koochakzadeh and Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf—hardly the picture of the “cohesion” officials claim.
Meanwhile, a policy move with real-world consequences triggered cross-factional blowback: 230 MPs signed a letter opposing the dissolution of the Tribal Affairs Organization, warning of “irreparable” risks to food security and service delivery if the plan proceeds.
#Iranian Officials and Analysts Sound Alarm Over Imminent Social Explosionhttps://t.co/Ag4aIychti
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) March 29, 2025
Victory talk, brittle reality
Against this backdrop, First Vice President Mohammad-Reza Aref tried to close the loop politically, asserting on October 9 that the 12-day war had “closed the regime change file” and produced “cohesion and solidarity.” The timing—bracketing the scrapping of inspection-based cooperation and the removal of a missile-range ceiling—lays bare the core purpose of the week’s script: stiffen regime morale and warn the street that pressure will not yield concessions.
Officials insist that snapback is a Western gambit to trigger unrest. MP Ardestani went further, arguing Europeans “think street protests will form.” Read plainly, that line places the regime’s performance not on the international stage but the domestic one: use escalation language to deter society from testing the state.
It is a wager with obvious risks. Missile signaling invites tighter European alignment on enforcement and raises defense salience from the Gulf to the Mediterranean. An oversight blackout makes even limited technical steps back to the IAEA harder to justify. And the pocketbook pain that MPs now acknowledge—shrinking the people’s livelihoods, volatile food prices—has fueled protest cycles before.
For all the volume, the week’s moves do not add capacity; they purchase time. They may rally the faithful and delay a reckoning, but at the price of fewer exits later and greater exposure to the very pressures officials say they have neutralized. In that sense, the bravado is not a sign of momentum. It is a mask for paralysis—worn in front of a society that is watching closely and impatiently.