Iran International
A rare on-air admission of economic collapse by a senior Iranian official this week briefly pierced the state’s carefully managed narrative—only to be reinforced hours later by leaked budget talks revealing how little financial room the government actually has.
The moment came during a live appearance by Vice President Jafar Ghaempanah on IRINN, Iran’s state television news channel.
Pressed repeatedly on the economy, Ghaempanah acknowledged that a roughly 30 percent decline in oil revenues, compounded by chronic energy shortages and the continued impact of sanctions, had sharply reduced government resources and damaged livelihoods.
Since the start of President Masoud Pezeshkian’s administration, he said, falling oil income had cut into production, deepened the budget deficit and left the state with far less room to maneuver.
The interview quickly drew attention online—not only for its substance, but for what appeared to be visible strain. Ghaempanah stumbled over basic facts, briefly referring to the June conflict with Israel as the “11-day war” and seeming uncertain about its timing, while at several points losing his temper as the interviewer pressed for specifics he struggled to provide.
Budget behind closed doors
The significance of the appearance became clearer the next day, when the government presented its annual budget bill to parliament in a closed-door session from which leaks soon emerged.
According to multiple reports—some echoed by state television itself—Hamid Pourmohammadi, head of the Planning and Budget Organization, told lawmakers that the government currently has no foreign-currency resources to support the proposed budget, sparking heated exchanges with MPs.
Leaked details indicate that next year’s budget will be around five percent smaller than the current one, an unusual move for a system long accustomed to expanding nominal spending even in difficult times.
That picture sits uneasily alongside public assurances from Economy Minister Ali Madanizadeh, who has claimed the draft was prepared with a near-zero deficit.
Crisis in plain sight
For years, large portions of Iran’s budget have been directed toward ideological and propaganda bodies, as well as institutions linked to powerful security organizations, even as basic services and productive investment have suffered.
Mehdi Pazouki told the reformist Rouydad24 website that budget deficits lie at the heart of Iran’s chronic economic instability. Inflation, he argued, is not a temporary shock but the outcome of sustained mismanagement.
Pazouki urged the government to privatize state- and military-owned companies and to halt the practice of allocating oil to military bodies to sell on the state’s behalf—steps that would challenge entrenched interests.
With oil revenues shrinking, energy shortages worsening and sanctions continuing to restrict access to hard currency, the state faces mounting limits on its ability to cushion economic pain.
Ghaempanah’s faltering television appearance was less an isolated embarrassment than a revealing symptom—one that briefly aligned official rhetoric with the economic reality the system usually works to conceal.
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.