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On October 26, 2025, the First Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Hamidreza Haji-Babai, delivered one of the clearest public acknowledgements yet of the depth of internal fragmentation at the top of the clerical regime. He warned that political camps had “started a war inside the country” and were “not even ashamed of it.”
“What kind of situation have we created?” Haji-Babai said on state television. “Everyone comes and throws their hatred, their quarrels, their broken spear, their broken sword — all of it — at the system. This is all weakening the system.”
He pleaded multiple times: “We truly ask, we ask our politicians: do not use reckless language.”
Haji-Babai described a leadership unable to coordinate even basic diplomatic steps. He asked bluntly “whether Iran is supposed to fight America or fight these few people” — a reference to rival factions. His remarks underline a power structure no longer holding internal discipline, even under direct appeals to unity by the regime’s Supreme Leader.
#Iranian Regime MPs Threaten Foreign Minister Araghchi Amid Nuclear Infighting https://t.co/kpDzSrWbsW
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) September 13, 2025
Food Prices, Malnutrition, and Shrinking Diets
While the leadership argues over loyalty and messaging, state-linked economic monitors now describe a deteriorating public health situation tied to rising hunger.
On October 27, the state-affiliated outlet Eghtesad 24 reported that 120,000 Iranians die each year from nutrition-related causes — roughly one out of every three deaths. The report tied the mortality rate to reduced access to protein, dairy, fruits, and vegetables.
A state-affiliated food economy analyst, Amir-Hesam Eshaqi, cited World Bank data showing food inflation in Iran reached 42.3% year-on-year from April 2024 to April 2025. He warned that the rise is reshaping society: “The shrinking table today can become a social crisis and an erosion of social capital tomorrow.”
Inflation is not only pushing households below nutritional baselines; it is altering the country’s long-term health profile in ways that are extremely difficult to reverse.
#Iran’s Power Structure Buckles Under Political, Economic, and Nuclear Pressurehttps://t.co/abvkCn5vAj
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) September 9, 2025
Agricultural Supply Chains on the Brink
The pressures are visible across Iran’s agricultural sector. On November 27, Naser Nabipour, head of the Egg-Laying Poultry Association, stated that feed shortages and soaring costs could halt egg production nationwide: “If the inputs do not arrive, we will send the hens for slaughter.”
He reported that production costs have risen 62% compared to the previous year. Soy meal that was 1,900 tomans is now selling for 40,000 tomans on the open market; corn priced at 11,300 tomans is trading at nearly double. At the same time, government-managed “preferential currency” allocations for staple imports have been withdrawn quietly — a change that has directly translated into price spikes.
In the meat market, the state-linked outlet Eqtesad Online reported that beef prices have risen by more than 500,000 tomans per kilo over six months — an unprecedented jump in the country’s recorded retail history.
Food insecurity is no longer a risk. It is present tense.
#Iran’s Power Struggle Escalates as State Media Admits Setbacks, Snapback Tightens, and the Street Simmershttps://t.co/sxHEeUIuiK
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) October 12, 2025
Safety Risks and Urban Infrastructure Decay
Another sign of structural stress surfaced on October 27. The Deputy Chief of Tehran’s Fire Prevention Authority warned that 11 buildings in the heart of the Tehran Grand Bazaar are now classified as “critical risk.” The Bazaar — historically the economic engine of the capital — contains hundreds of unsafe structures where fire-control and zoning plans remain unresolved despite years of notice.
“There is still no effective action,” the official said. “The risk remains systemic.”
The warning echoes the same pattern seen in banking oversight, food supply, environmental management, and diplomacy: the system acknowledges the danger but cannot mobilize action. Earlier internal surveys by the same authority have identified thousands of unsafe buildings across Tehran, but the bulk of these cases have remained unaddressed or tied up in administrative stalemate.
#Iran’s Power Struggle: A Fractured Regime Hiding Behind Bold Rhetorichttps://t.co/SzNeQLYdh4
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) October 16, 2025
The Student Flight Becomes a Wave
The country’s universities are also experiencing a parallel loss of capacity. On October 26, the secretary of Iran’s national academic unions stated that 200,000 Iranian university students have migrated, most of them from the country’s top universities.
He noted that the official figure for 2000–2020 was 66,000, but the real number is now much higher: “Each of these students could be the center of a transformation.”
The trend indicates long-term damage to Iran’s research institutions, medical system, engineering sectors, and future economic competitiveness.
From FATF to Bank Meltdown, #Iran’s Power Factions Clash on Every Fronthttps://t.co/FgEBKUNGBg
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) October 27, 2025
A System Under Its Own Weight
Haji Babai’s televised plea was presented as a matter of message discipline. But all indicators point to something more fundamental: a state apparatus struggling to govern its own internal actors while basic systems of economic provision, public safety, and human capital retention erode from below. What is unfolding is not a series of isolated crises, but the loss of the regime’s traditional mechanisms for managing pressure.
Over the past several months, the clerical regime has absorbed strategic setbacks across the region: losing ground in Syria, constrained influence in Lebanon, and growing exposure of its proxy networks to targeted sanctions and more international isolation. The result is a steady contraction of external leverage — the very scenario that the Supreme Leader once warned against when he said that if Iran does not fight abroad, it will be forced to fight inside its own cities.
That inflection point has now arrived. With fewer external outlets for projecting power or exporting instability, the pressures that were once displaced outward have turned inward. The system now faces simultaneous political infighting at the top and a deprived, outraged and restive society at the base.