Cinema attendance in Iran drops 20% as inflation erodes leisure spending
The number of cinema-goers in Iran has fallen sharply this year, with ticket sales dropping from 20 million to about 16 million during the first eight months of the Persian calendar year, according to data from the national cinema management and sales platform.
Between March to early November, total cinema revenues reached 13.2 trillion rials (about $12.2 million), with 16.65 million tickets sold. The figures mark a nearly 20 percent decline in attendance compared with the same period last year, when 20 million people went to theaters.
Economic hardship hits entertainment spending
Film industry observers attribute the downturn to worsening economic and social conditions, as well as public fatigue with repetitive film genres. The news outlet Didban Iran reported that “the 12-day Iran-Israel war and the country’s social climate directly affected audience turnout and cinema revenues.”
Years of soaring inflation and stagnation have sharply reduced the share of entertainment -- including travel and cinema -- in Iranian household budgets. Many families now prioritize basic necessities over leisure activities as the cost of living continues to climb.
Media reports in recent months have pointed to steep increases in food and consumer prices, with the shrinking household table becoming a widely used expression of hardship. The Statistical Center of Iran’s latest data showed broad-based inflation in essential goods and the government’s failure to control rising prices, fueling widespread economic anxiety.
Warnings of deeper economic distress
Economists warn that the country could face severe stagflation if inflationary pressures persist. On November 1, an Iranian economist said that if President Masoud Pezeshkian’s administration fails to stabilize the economy and calm political tensions, inflation could exceed 60 percent by the end of the year.
With inflation approaching 50 percent on a year-on-year basis, the decline in cinema attendance has become another indicator of how deeply economic hardship is reshaping everyday life.
Washington has warned Baghdad that it will not recognize Iraq’s next government if any ministries are handed to armed factions linked to the Islamic Republic, a source in Iraq’s Kurdistan region told Iran International on Friday.
The message was delivered to Iraqi officials as political negotiations over the formation of a new cabinet intensified ahead of the November 11 parliamentary elections, the source said.
“If any ministry is given to militias affiliated with Iran, the United States will refuse to recognize the government.”
Disputes over presidency and premiership
Responding to comments by some Sunni leaders about the presidency, the source said Shiite and Kurdish blocs had already agreed that the post would go to the Kurds, with Tehran also approving the arrangement. However, he said the possibility of appointing a Sunni figure as prime minister “would raise concern in Tehran.”
All Shiite factions, according to the source, oppose another term for Mohammed Shia al-Sudani as prime minister, though Mark Safaya, US President Donald Trump’s representative for Iraq, “has a personal relationship with Sudani and may influence the process.”
Unlike in previous election cycles, the source added, the Islamic Republic “no longer holds the same sway” in deciding Iraq’s leadership. “This time, the United States and European countries are far more determined to shape the outcome.”
Election dynamics and foreign pressure
Reuters reported on November 4 that Sudani has entered the campaign with growing public support, seeking to portray himself as capable of maintaining balanced ties with both Washington and Tehran. The 55-year-old prime minister has focused his campaign on improving public services and hopes to secure the largest bloc in parliament.
As the country moves toward the vote, Sudani’s government faces mounting US pressure to curb Iran-backed militias.
Sudani has said previously that disarming these militias would be impossible as long as the US-led coalition remains in Iraq.
Iran supports Iraqi groups through financing, training, and arms, primarily focusing on Shia militias that are often integrated into the official Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). This support helps groups like the Badr Organization and Kata'ib Hezbollah exert military and political influence, though some factions like Harakat Hezbollah Al-Nujaba have focused more on military operations. The support allows Iran to pursue its regional objectives, gain influence, and destabilize Iraqi politics while coordinating attacks against US forces.
Iran’s disability community is facing an unprecedented economic crisis as inflation erodes already limited incomes, leaving millions struggling to meet basic needs, a leading advocate has warned.
Behrouz Morovati, a disability rights activist, said the situation for people with disabilities has become extremely critical, with government support far below subsistence levels.
“Even in the best case, when a person with a severe disability receives a stipend, subsidy, and livelihood allowance, the total comes to around thirty million rials per month (nearly $28),” Morovati told the ILNA on Friday.
“In a country where the poverty line is estimated at 300 to 700 million rials (around $277 to $650), this gap shows how impossible it has become for people with disabilities to meet basic needs.”
Years of delay in job fund implementation
The Employment Opportunity Fund for Persons with Disabilities was supposed to launch in 2018 but has made no progress after nearly seven years, ILNA reported.
The fund’s legal framework, Morovati said, dates back to 2004 but has been repeatedly stalled by bureaucratic disputes, objections to its bylaws, and political disagreements over leadership appointments.
“This delay has only deepened the financial strain on disabled people,” he said.
Incomplete welfare payments and unfulfilled quotas
The government, according to Morovati, has failed to fully implement Article 27 of the law, which requires that monthly disability payments equal at least 20 percent of the annual minimum wage. Around 300,000 eligible people are still waiting for assistance, he added.
He further criticized the government for not meeting the legally mandated three-percent employment quota for persons with disabilities, saying only about one percent of those positions have been filled.
According to Iran’s Welfare Organization, there are more than 9.7 million people with disabilities nationwide -- around 11.5 percent of the population -- with roughly 60,000 new cases added each year, mostly from road accidents.
Iran’s rental crisis reached its peak in October 2025, slowing the pulse of public welfare as official data showed annual rent inflation climbing to 36.5 percent -- a level economists describe as “severely burdensome” for tenants.
Tehran tenants ended the Iranian month of Mehr (late September to late October) facing a 34 percent year-on-year jump in rental prices, according to data from the Statistical Center of Iran cited by Khabar Online.
The government’s promised measures to regulate the housing market, the report said, have failed to materialize, with renters still squeezed by weak supply and spillover demand from the unaffordable homeownership market.
In major cities such as Tehran, typical monthly rents for standard apartments range from around $400 to $1,800, depending on location and quality.
On a broader national average basis, one-bedroom urban rentals are reported at approximately $250-$300 per month. However, the average monthly net salary is around $200.
While officials have highlighted a minor decline in the overall pace of housing inflation, figures published by the center confirmed rents continue to surge. Monthly housing inflation stood at three percent in late October, year-on-year housing inflation at 34.2 percent, and the annual rate at 36.6 percent -- only slightly below September’s 37.5 percent.
The outlet Tabnak reported that despite the withdrawal of genuine buyers, prices rose another three percent during the period, widening what it called the gap between “the expectation to sell high and the buyer’s zero purchasing power.” A 36.6 percent annual inflation rate, it added, compared with stagnant wages, has pushed first-time buyers out of reach of homeownership.
With both housing and rental prices rising together, accommodation costs now absorb a growing share of household income, fueling urban sprawl and eroding living standards.
The depreciation of the rial -- now trading around 1.08 million per dollar -- has intensified broader economic strains, which analysts link to renewed pressure following the reactivation of UN sanctions under the snapback mechanism.
Iran has approached Washington to ask whether US sanctions could be lifted, US President Donald Trump told the leaders of the C5+1 Central Asian countries at the White House on Thursday.
“Iran has been asking if the sanctions could be lifted. Iran has got very heavy US sanctions, and it makes it really hard for them to do what they'd like to be able to do. And I'm open to hearing that, and we'll see what happens, but I would be open to it,” Trump said.
Earlier this week, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said cooperation between the two countries was impossible as long as Washington continued to support Israel, maintain military bases, and interfere in the Middle East.
“As long as America supports the Zionist regime and interferes in the region, cooperation with it is neither rational nor possible,” Khamenei said on Monday.
Trump also said that the United States directed Israel’s first strike on Iran during the June conflict. “Israel attacked first. That attack was very, very powerful. I was very much in charge of that,” Trump told reporters late on Thursday.
“When Israel attacked Iran first, that was a great day for Israel because that attack did more damage than the rest of them put together.”
After taking office for his second term in January, Trump reimposed his maximum pressure campaign on Iran, a policy aimed at preventing Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon. In June, the United States bombed Iranian nuclear sites, further straining ties between the two countries.
The two sides held five rounds of nuclear talks before a 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June. Negotiations have since stalled over uranium enrichment, with Western powers insisting Iran end enrichment on its own soil, a demand Tehran has rejected.
Last month, Khamenei described negotiations with the United States as “useless and harmful” and declared any talks with Washington forbidden. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also said no direct dialogue had taken place, adding that Tehran would discuss only nuclear matters and would never negotiate on regional issues.
It was eleven o’clock at night in Tehran when I opened the phone lines for my live program from Washington. It was the middle of June and Iran was under Israeli fire: calls flooded in from around the country.
The war between Israel and the Islamic Republic had lasted twelve days: missiles tracing parabolas over cities, generals vowing annihilation, state television baptizing destruction as victory.
Yet what reached me that night was not the language of battle but of exhaustion.
A mother whispered from Tehran: “We hear bombs every night. We have no quarrel with anyone.” A caller from Kermanshah, his voice trembling: “If Israel were our enemy, it would bomb the people of Iran. It doesn’t. Our enemy is here, in our own country.”
Those voices said what no Iranian newspaper dares print: this was not their war. It was the government’s.
The Dutch-based research institute GAMAAN, led by Iranian political scientist Ammar Maleki, has now measured what those voices intuited in a report released on Wednesday.
A crack in the wall
In its latest nationwide survey, 63% of Iranians described the recent Iran–Israel conflict as a war of the state, not of the people.
For the first time since 1979, data quantify an open rupture between ruler and ruled.
44% of respondents said Tehran instigated the war; only 16% believed it achieved anything. Even in a confrontation marketed as “resistance,” the public saw defeat.
Asked whom they blamed more—their own government or Israel—they chose their government by almost two to one.
These are not the cries of an enemy nation. They are the lucid admissions of a society that has stopped believing in its revolution.
The collapse of faith
For four decades, the Islamic Republic has thrived on an emotional economy of fear and sacrifice. “War is a blessing,” Ayatollah Khomeini once declared, and the state built an empire of endurance around that creed.
Martyrdom became its moral currency; hostility, its substitute for legitimacy.
But the GAMAAN figures reveal that the spell is broken. Nearly 70% of Iranians want the government to abandon its “Death to Israel” slogan. 62% favor direct negotiations with the United States. Nearly half want nuclear escalation to end. In a society long taught that compromise is betrayal, such pragmatism is radical.
Even religion—the last reservoir of the Islamic Republic’s sanctity—is ebbing.
Only 40% of Iranians now consider faith important in their lives; 57% say it is not. For a theocracy, that is not merely erosion. It is an existential reckoning.
The voices beneath the silence
As the program went on, the conversation widened. A war veteran from Golestan said he had fought eight years against Iraq, only to discover that “our real enemy was at home.”
Callers understood what the Islamic Republic cannot admit: that foreign hostility sustains domestic repression. A government unable to deliver dignity must deliver enemies instead.
A nation turning inward
If the 1979 revolution was born from a hunger for purity, the quiet revolution unfolding now is born from a hunger for normalcy.
Iranians want what most citizens of the world take for granted—work, safety, connection, a normal life. They are not turning West out of ideology but out of fatigue.
The same survey finds that more Iranians view the United States favorably (53%) than Russia or China, Tehran's chosen patrons.
After forty-five years of anti-Western indoctrination, that reversal is historic. What began as disillusionment has become a civilizational shift: a people disentangling their national identity from the myths that have imprisoned it.
The most dangerous peace
Authoritarian systems can survive rebellion, even sanctions. What they cannot endure is indifference. The most lethal threat to a system built on conflict is a population that no longer wishes to fight.
Today’s Iran is precisely that: a country where the government wages war while the nation quietly insists on peace.
The missiles may have ceased after twelve days, but the deeper conflict—between state ideology and what people actually want—continues.
And if the numbers are to be believed, the people are prevailing. Not with slogans or arms, but with fatigue, clarity and the unyielding will to live.
I ended the program that night by thanking everyone for their participation and slowly walked away from my studio thinking: There is still hope for my people.
