Iran International
A prominent academic’s assertion that many of Iran’s problems stem from “the dominance of the economically weak class” in governance has stoked outrage in a country whose theocracy bills itself as a champion of the downtrodden.
In a recent interview, Mahmood Sariolghalam, a US-educated professor of international relations at Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University, argued that senior positions should not be held by individuals from the country’s lower economic strata.
“No one from the lower economic strata should be allowed to become foreign minister or finance minister,” he said, adding that such posts require the “expertise and rational capacity of the mind.”
Sariolghalam, who held senior roles at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies under presidents Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani, framed the remarks as an analysis of development patterns rather than a social judgment.
Critics from across the spectrum accused him of class discrimination, delegitimizing the political agency of Iran’s poor and promoting an elitist technocratic worldview.
But others were more sympathetic as many observers have questioned Tehran's management of deepening diplomatic, economic and resource challenges.
For decades since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, positions of authority from local officials to the presidency have often been filled by loyal cadres often drawn from poorer demographics.
Under pressure, Sariolghalam told the reformist Ensaf News his remarks had been distorted, insisting he had highlighted the developmental role of the middle class, not the poor.
“The middle class matters not only in financial terms but also for its intellectual, educational, and investment-oriented capacities,” he said, citing Japan as an example of middle-class resilience.
‘Oligarchy’
Experts have cited the dangers of sanctions and economic mismanagement to Iran's middle class, which economists and political scientists often view as a key source of dynamism in society.
International academics Mohammad Reza Farzanegan and Nader Habibi published research in the European Journal of Political Economy in which they said sanctions on Iran had decimated the middle class and the political benefits it could bring.
"The sanctions regime on Iran was far from being a surgical strike; instead, it was a sledgehammer that smashed the very group that represents the best hope for a more moderate and stable future," they wrote in an editorial on Al-Jazeera.
In a front-page editorial titled “The Savior Class,” the centrist daily Sazandegi defended Sariolghalam's tack.
“The emphasis on the ‘middle class’ … is not meant to suggest economic superiority,” it wrote, but to underline the need for “security, mental order and relief from livelihood pressures” for sound decision-making.
The paper argued he was criticizing systems that allow “individuals who lack intellectual, managerial, or mental qualifications” into key posts.
A group of academics echoed that defense, arguing governance failures stem from the rise of opportunistic figures who wield power to “compensate for their own life shortcomings.”
Hardline outlets reacted fiercely. Several accused Sariolghalam of equating poverty with “mental deficiency” and advocating a “technocratic oligarchy” at odds with the Islamic Republic’s valorization of the mostaz’afin — often translated as “the dispossessed.”
“The downtrodden and the barefooted are expected to endure a bleak fate… while the aristocrats and the affluent… sit upon their backs and rule over them,” the IRGC-linked Javan proclaimed.
State to blame
Conservative daily Khorasan accused Sariolghalam of shifting blame for failed engagement with the West onto the “lower classes.”
Conservative media also tied the remarks to former president Hassan Rouhani, casting them as part of broader ideological failings among Iran’s technocratic current.
“The mind behind Rouhani’s thinking,” as Mehr News branded Sariolghalam, had exposed “one of the deepest intellectual flaws” of Iran’s centrists: that only they know how to run a country.
Some moderate voices pointed out that the ferocity of the debate revealed deeper structural problems.
Journalist Ahmad Zeidabadi argued in Ham-Mihan that Tehran’s decades-long, excessive rhetorical defense of the poor had created conditions in which “Sariolghalam’s repulsive statement has somehow gained acceptance.”
Tehran’s unveiling of a towering statue depicting the Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling before pre-Islamic Persian King Shapur I has renewed criticism of the Islamic Republic’s appeal to nationalist sentiment following the June war with Israel.
For over forty years, the theocracy purged ancient Persian history from schoolbooks, replacing it with post-Islamic narratives. But after the 12-day conflict with Israel, officials have turned to the distant pre-Islamic past to rally a divided society.
From murals of ancient kings and soldiers to patriotic songs added to Shi’ite mourning ceremonies performed before Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Tehran now embraces imagery once deemed heretical by its own revolutionary ethos.
'Kneel before Iran' campaign
Tehran’s Revolution (Enghelab) Square was the scene of an unusual spectacle on Friday as officials unveiled a massive bronze statue depicting Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling in submission before Sassanid King Shapur I, commemorating Iran’s victory at the Battle of Edessa (260 AD).
The event was held under the slogan “Kneel before Iran,” part of what authorities describe as a campaign to project “national unity and historical pride” following the June war with Israel.
Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, a staunch ultraconservative, said on X: “Enmity with Great Iran can only end in kneeling before this historic nation.”
Municipal official Davood Goodarzi said the installation would be accompanied by visual displays depicting “other victories of Iranians over foreign aggressors,” including the defeat of British forces by local commander Rais-Ali Delvari, Mirza Kuchak Khan’s resistance against Russian troops, and Surena’s triumph over Rome at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE.
The goal, Goodarzi said, is “strengthening concepts such as national dignity, social unity, and Iranian identity.”
The statue, he said, would remain temporarily at Revolution Square before being moved to a city gateway “where it will stand as the first emblem of Iran before diplomats and foreign visitors.”
Unveiled women were allowed to attend the unveiling ceremony—an uncommon scene at events organized by Tehran’s ultra-hardline municipality.
The turn to the pre-Islamic past
The sharp reversal also recalls remarks once made by Khamenei. In a 2011 speech, he asserted that “all the great military victories of this nation came after Islam,” dismissing pre-Islamic accounts as “things that are not documented.”
In 1987, he had said that prophets triumphed over kings such as Cyrus and that “nothing remains of these monarchs in history but names remembered with derision.”
Nevertheless, pro-government social media accounts have now gone so far as to circulate posters equating Khamenei himself with Shapur, showing him standing with a staff as Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump kneel before him. The caption reads: “You will kneel before Iran.”
'Hypocrisy'
Pro-government figures have hailed the move as a patriotic success. Conservative political reporter Hossein Saremi posted: “Today’s grand Iranian gathering showed that people and the state share one essence: Iran itself. Nothing can take our homeland away.”
Others, however, called the spectacle “hypocrisy.” Journalist Gholamhossein Pashaei wrote on X: “Every year you close Pasargadae to stop people from celebrating Cyrus Day, yet you unveil Shapur’s statue in Enghelab Square with drums and fireworks during Fatimiyya (mourning period)!”
Dissident commentator Hamid Asafi called the ceremony “a perfect snapshot of the Islamic Republic’s contradictions.”
On Telegram he wrote: “A week ago they closed Cyrus’s tomb out of fear of the crowds, and now they glorify Shapur in the same breath. The Islamic Republic fears living history but poses for selfies with its corpse.”
He added: “They know people no longer respond to rosaries and sermons. That’s why they’ve brought history back to the stage—in a controlled costume. If they can’t erase the past, they’ll try to own it.”
The irony deepened as UNESCO formally recognized Cyrus’s Charter as one of the earliest human-rights documents.
President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X: “Iran, the cradle of dialogue, justice, and coexistence, can still inspire peace today.”
Users swiftly replied, questioning how such pride could coexist with a government that blocks access to Cyrus’s tomb each year to those wishing to visit it on his birthday.