{"id":347272,"date":"2026-08-13T10:33:40","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T09:33:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=347272"},"modified":"2026-08-13T10:33:40","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T09:33:40","slug":"you-cannot-shoot-hunger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/iran-protests\/you-cannot-shoot-hunger\/","title":{"rendered":"You Cannot Shoot Hunger"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Protestors
Protestors gather on a street in the Jannatabad neighborhood of Tehran at night, lighting small fires on the pavement\u2014January 8, 2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Iran’s economy of humiliation, and the psychology of a society that will soon stop being afraid<\/em><\/h3>\n

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The video is thirty seconds long and it was filmed inside an empty shop. A middle-aged man, sweat on his collar, holds the phone at arm’s length and shouts at no one and at everyone: “How am I supposed to keep this wreck standing? It’s ten in the morning \u2014 how am I supposed to work? How do I pay the rent on this shop? Last night the power was gone from eight until ten. Today it’s been off since nine and it still hasn’t come back. How do I fill my family’s stomachs? And if we say anything, you tell us it’s war against God.”<\/em><\/p>\n

That last sentence is the whole country in eleven words. Moharebeh<\/em> <\/a>\u2014 enmity against God \u2014 is the charge the clerical regime hangs people for. The shopkeeper knows it. He filmed himself anyway. This is not the behavior of a frightened population. It is the behavior of a population that has run out of things left to lose, which is a very different and far more dangerous thing.<\/p>\n

Western capitals are currently telling themselves a comforting story about Iran. The clerical regime absorbed a war with the United States and Israel and is still standing. It holds a hand on the throat of the Strait of Hormuz and is trading that grip for sanctions relief. In January it killed protesters in the thousands and the streets eventually emptied. Ergo: durable. Ergo: a partner to be managed rather than a system in terminal decline.<\/p>\n

That analysis mistakes the absence of a funeral for the presence of health. Regimes are not overthrown by macroeconomic aggregates; they are overthrown by what those aggregates do to the inside of a human being. And what is happening inside Iranians right now is not measured in percentage points. It is measured in a baker throwing away dough.<\/p>\n

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State-aligned #economist<\/a> Hossein Raghfar: Iran\u2019s oligarchs are part of the regime. Post-war \u201cprivatizations\u201d handed resources to cronies (\u201ctrustees\u201d). He warned Pezeshkian & Raisi: change or the Islamic Republic falls. When insiders say this, the system is rotting from within. pic.twitter.com\/jgIqo2MCeO<\/a><\/p>\n

— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) August 12, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n