Iran’s ‘anti-infiltration’ bill targets society not spies

“The worst way of living is life in suspense,” journalist Ehsan Mohammadi wrote on X, "It weighs down the human psyche.”

The business daily Donya-ye-Eqtesad reports basic food requirments now account for 63 percent of spending for those on the minimum wage, raising fears of a food security crisis. Lawmaker Soleiman Es’haghi lamented recently that many households can no longer afford rice, chicken or meat.

Hardliners, however, downplay the threat. The Kayhan daily, overseen by the Supreme Leader’s office, argued sanctions are “not as frightening as the West tries to scare Iran with,” calling their effects mostly psychological.

Economic Hardship

The line drew fire from reformists. Vocal academic Sadegh Zibakalam accused the opposite camp of being detached from reality in a sarcastic post on X.

“The revolutionaries are right: the return of sanctions is nothing new,” he wrote, “but the dollar, the rial and—more importantly—those willful prices do not understand this simple point that the hardliners correctly make.”

Prominent politician Mostafa Tajzadeh blamed the highest office in the land in a statement from Evin Prison following the punishing US-Israeli war in June.

He faulted Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's stated “neither war nor peace” mantra as a failure on both scores, saying the policy drift now has Iranians sliding into poverty.

The rial has broken record lows several times since the return of UN sanctions on September 28, losing 15 percent of its value in less than a week.

Inflation, already near 45 percent, may exceed 90 percent, Tehran’s Chamber of Commerce warned this week, with growth turning negative and unemployment climbing into double digits.

Endless Suffering

Moderate journalist Akbar Montajabi captured the sense of collapse: “With the activation of the snapback mechanism and the return of sanctions, the shot has been fired not at diplomacy but at the dinner table of the middle and lower classes.”

Concerns are also rising about medicine shortages and price hikes. Although formally exempt from sanctions, many in the industry say drug procurement becomes inevitably harder with the secondary impact of other restrictions.

“Maybe a few cancers could be treated with nuclear medicine,” a user wrote on X, mocking official claims of medicinal use for the enrichment program. “But the same treatment would have been available without sanctions too—like in Turkey.”

Another user, posting under the name Saeed Pakdel, summed up the national mood: “All Iranians are preoccupied with the question: what will happen now?! The snapback mechanism has been activated. Every day we hear bad news of war and inflation … Result: confusion and endless suffering.”

Fathi said the accident happened around 8 a.m. near the Dehkadeh Sibland complex. He said rescue teams were immediately sent to the site and that the number of victims could rise.

The road links Tehran to Mazandaran province through mountain passes and is one of the busiest intercity routes in northern Iran.

Police road chief Ahmad Karami Asad said the Scania bus, carrying 33 passengers from Qazvin to Mazandaran, overturned in the Aminabad area. He said preliminary checks suggested the driver had been tired and drowsy.

Emergency officials said two of the injured were taken to Imam Khomeini hospital in Firouzkouh, three to Som’e Shaban hospital in Damavand and three were flown by helicopter to Tehran. Other passengers were treated on site. Several of the wounded were reported to be in critical condition.

IRGC-affiliated Tasnim news agency said some passengers were trapped inside the bus before being freed by rescuers.

Road crashes have become a major public concern in Iran. The Legal Medicine Organization said in May that nearly 19,500 people died in traffic accidents in the last Iranian year, most of them on intercity highways. Official data show more than 20,000 deaths were recorded the year before, the highest toll in 12 years.

At least 26 students have died in 13 accidents involving university buses across Iran over the past decade, the daily Ham-Mihan reported this week, reviving concerns about road safety and vehicle standards.

Mohammad-Jafar Ghaempanah, the President’s executive deputy, told reporters after a cabinet meeting on Wednesday that Iran is “fully prepared” for any new war, though he judged it unlikely Iran's foes would “repeat the mistake”.

Ali Saeedi, head of the Supreme Leader’s Ideological-Political Office, told state media he “could not give a clear answer” on whether war will come.

“The armed forces must be fully prepared, but people should continue their lives and should not be inflamed. At present, we do not observe signs of an enemy attack.”

Flight tracking data over the weekend showed a rapid deployment of aerial refueling craft to the Al Udeid airbase in Qatar, the largest American military installation in the region.

The last large-scale movement of such assets coincided with surprise US and Israeli attacks on Iran in a brief June war. That conflict sent tens of thousands of Iranian civilians heeding Israeli warnings to flee major urban areas. Hundreds were killed.

Open-source satellite imagery and flight tracking date shows the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and its attendant aircraft operating in the Persian Gulf and docked at Dubai's Jebel Ali port as of last month. Such port calls are largely routine.

Behnam Saeedi, secretary of parliament’s National Security Committee, rejected a link between snapback of UN sanctions and war: “Whether a war restarts or not, in the current circumstances, it has nothing to do with the snapback.”

Still, he described the situation as “not a ceasefire but a suspension of combat operations.”

Military posture: beefing up deterrence

Nour News, a news outlet close to Iran's mercurial ex-security boss Ali Shamkhani, on Tuesday framed new US deployments as a “political message” of support to regional allies and a warning to Iran that the military option is still on the table.

Chief of the General Staff Major-General Amir Mousavi declared the Army and the Revolutionary Guards maintain “extraordinary readiness for a possible future clash.”

Brigadier General Mohammad-Jafar Asadi of the Khatam al-Anbiya headquarters promised Iran would “increase the range of its missiles as far as necessary,” while maintaining that Tehran “will not initiate a war but will give a decisive response to any aggression.”

Competing calculations: low or high risk?

Journalist Hossein Yazdi assessed the probability of renewed large-scale strikes as low. He argued Iran’s nuclear sites, already hit, have not been rebuilt; Israel has extracted its revenge; and the US would likely block further escalation.

“The military phase is over,” he wrote on X, suggesting Israel is now using psychological pressure to sap Iran’s economy.

But others warn that the prospect of strikes are high.

“If you think that the deployment of this volume of armaments, refueling aircraft, fighter jets, and so on by America is random, accidental, or merely for the sake of creating fear and intimidation, congratulations," writer Mohammad-Reza Mohajer posted on X. "You are extremely optimistic, and no other event can destroy this optimism in you."

Political analyst Ali Nasri called endless speculation corrosive: “Keeping society continually struggling to ‘predict’ or ‘await’ a military attack is itself a tool of psychological warfare and collective torture of the Iranian people."

"It aims to further damage the economy and disrupt life. If there is a war, we will respond proportionately," he added on X. "For now, our challenge as citizens is to continue ordinary life.”

Street-level voices: fear, anger, fatigue

Signals of potential conflict are already being priced in Iran's moribund markets.

The rial and gold have reacted, with the dollar rate again breaking records against the prone rial and gold hitting new highs. On social media, frustration dominates.

One user lamented: “Instead of enjoying the weekend, everyone I meet talks about war and the dollar and the misery the clerics have given us!”

Another wrote: “Dollar, sanctions and the possibility of war — I really have no strength left to continue.”

Independent MP Hamid Reza Goudarzi broke ranks on Wednesday, saying the so-called snapback of measures halted under the 2015 nuclear deal has “damaged Iran’s economy.”

His remarks drew sharp criticism from colleagues but resonated with many outside parliament who are struggling with higher prices and a collapsing currency.

The rial, which hovered around one million to the US dollar before the sanctions’ return, surged past 1,160,000 by midday Wednesday, a new low. Food and basic staples are increasingly out of reach.

Another moderate MP, Salman Eshaghi, lamented the strain on his constituents in eastern Iran: “People can no longer afford meat, chicken, rice and other staples,” he said, urging the judiciary to summon local and national officials over the price hikes.

But the dominant voices in the Majles remain combative.

‘They want riots’

Vahid Ahmadi, a member of the National Security and Foreign Relations Committee, dismissed the currency crash as a “psychological” effect.

“Nothing has happened as a result of the snapback,” he insisted. “The rise in exchange rates has no economic reason.”

Ahmadi argued that sanctions were simply a continuation of war by other means: “The 12-day war against Iran was intended to trigger regime change and national disintegration. Now that our enemies have failed and begged for a ceasefire, they aim to confront the Islamic Republic through snapback sanctions.”

Another senior MP Ahmad Rastineh echoed this line: “the snapback is designed to incite riots in Iran,” he asserted. “We seek the destruction of Israel, and we will continue to pursue that goal.”

Cracks in hardline narrative?

Hossein Ali Haji Deligani, notorious for his incendiary remarks, took it a step further.

“The European troika is a slave and servant of the United States,” he said. “It is not in Iran’s interest to remain in the 2015 nuclear deal or the Non-Proliferation Treaty.”

Many interpreted this as an open call to review Iran’s nuclear doctrine, edging toward weaponization.

Such hardline voices dominate Iran’s parliament, but cracks are widening as economic pressure intensifies.

Hossein Samsami, an MP for Tehran, tied rising prices directly to the collapsing exchange rate, contradicting colleagues who blamed foreign plots or “psychology.”

The fact that even conservative outlets like the Students News Network are publishing such remarks shows how far the looming crisis has pushed officials: denial still dominates, but moments of candor are breaking through.

By calling negotiations with the United States “pointless” and “harmful,” the 86-year-old theocrat closed the door in advance, after which Pezeshkian delivered one of the harshest speeches of his career on the UN rostrum.

The choreography left no doubt: foreign policy remains Khamenei’s domain, and presidents, however reform-minded are confined to carrying out his script.

Since taking power in 1989, Khamenei has built a structure designed to withstand shocks. He has consolidated control over the military, judiciary and intelligence services, silenced dissent before it could spread, and constructed a security state that has absorbed everything from economic collapse to mass protest.

Khamenei’s doctrine is simple: so long as no foreign power places “boots on the ground” in Tehran, the Islamic Republic can survive.

Regimes in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan collapsed only when foreign armies physically invaded. Iran’s ruler wagers that Israel lacks the capacity — and Washington the will — to do the same in Iran.

Weapon of time

Airstrikes, sabotage and cyberattacks may wound the system, but the Islamic Republic has bunkers intelligence tools designed to outlast them. This is the logic of endurance: time, not compromise, is Tehran’s strongest weapon.

Yet the June war with Israel revealed how fragile that calculation may be. Precision strikes and AI-driven targeting allowed Israel to decapitate Iranian command structures in hours.

For the first time, senior officers rather than foot soldiers became the primary casualties, along with hundreds of civilians. In such a war, no bunker guarantees safety.

Khamenei’s confidence is shaped not only by military assumptions but also by diplomacy.

One formative lesson came in 1997, when a German court found Iran responsible for the assassinations of three dissidents in a Berlin restaurant. European states briefly withdrew their ambassadors in protest, only to quietly return them months later.

For Khamenei, this was proof that Europe’s resolve is fleeting, its economic and political interests overriding its outrage. He has leaned on that lesson ever since.

Sanctions, what sanctions?

Even now, as the snapback mechanism is reactivated, he assumes enforcement will fray. He expects Europe’s divisions and Washington’s caution to leave loopholes that allow Iran to keep exporting oil, especially to China and India, at discounted rates.

Sanctions, in the octogenarian’s view, are never airtight. They are survivable obstacles, not existential threats.

Khamenei’s rhetoric serves multiple aims: it projects deterrence abroad by drawing red lines; reassures loyalists at home by projecting strength; frames any Western retreat as weakness; and, above all, buys time.

The longer Iran resists, the thinking goes, the more likely international resolve will weaken—as it has before.

But the strategy is not without risk.

Internal unrest can erupt faster and wider this time. Sanctions may dig deeper into the economy, hollowing out the state’s support base. Warfare itself has changed in ways that undercut the assumption that endurance alone ensures survival.

Khamenei continues to rely on the playbook that has carried him through three decades: repression at home, resilience abroad and a conviction that the West will ultimately step back.

The gamble is that history will repeat itself. The danger is that this time, it may not.