Iran International
Iran’s economic hardship has grown so acute that senior government officials are increasingly acknowledging in public the scale of the pressure on ordinary households.
“We are ashamed that the public’s income does not cover their expenses, especially for wage earners,” First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref said Thursday. “You cannot increase salaries by 20% when inflation is running above 60–70%.”
Government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani has disclosed a roughly 310-trillion-toman shortfall in expected tax revenues during the first half of the current year, while the head of the Food and Drug Administration says medicine prices have risen roughly 103% this year.
President Masoud Pezeshkian has offered an equally stark assessment of the public mood, invoking the 2019 fuel-price protests as a warning against imposing further economic pressure.
“People are now on the edge; if I impose another pressure, they may fall off,” he said.
The warning has not prevented the government from doubling the gasoline price for high-volume consumers, highlighting the difficult choices facing Tehran as it tries to contain household pressure while confronting the economic costs of war.
The household squeeze
The free-market dollar has traded at around 2.30–2.33 million rials this week, with the Iranian currency losing roughly 44% of its value against the dollar over the past six months.
Food and beverage inflation has officially exceeded 127% year on year, contributing to a sharp contraction in consumption of protein, dairy products and legumes among urban working-class households.
State-run ILNA has published unusually blunt reports on the cost of living, including unofficial bread-price increases in Tehran, families cutting meat from their diets and rents doubling.
The financial daily Donya-ye Eghtesad has warned of signs of a “new inflationary regime” in which persistent price rises are shaping contracts, expectations and everyday economic decisions, making confidence in the rial increasingly difficult to restore.
The approaching academic year provides another measure of the squeeze.
According to Donya-ye Eghtesad, equipping a single primary or secondary-school student with basic uniforms, a schoolbag, shoes and stationery now costs between 150 million and 200 million rials.
A basic pack of notebooks that cost around 3.5 million rials last year now costs approximately 15 million, forcing some lower-income families to reuse old school supplies.
War adds to the strain
Iranian oil exports have reportedly fallen from around 2 million barrels per day before the war to approximately 220,000–255,000 barrels per day in August, sharply reducing one of Tehran’s principal sources of foreign currency.
The Economy Ministry has established an “Economic War Headquarters” as officials increasingly frame the economic crisis as part of the broader confrontation with Washington. But falling oil revenues leave the government with fewer resources to cushion households against rising prices and a weakening currency.
Oil-industry workers have staged weekly Monday protests over pay and taxes at offshore platforms and in Assaluyeh, while nurses demonstrated in Kermanshah on September 8 over unpaid wages.
Accounts in Iranian media offer a more immediate picture of the pressure behind such discontent: street vendors struggling with higher rents, households going months without eating meat and parents weighing school expenses against basic food costs.
The combination of high inflation, declining purchasing power and sharply reduced oil revenues leaves Tehran with increasingly limited room to ask households to absorb further economic costs from the war.
