Iran International
As protests once again ripple across Iran, the country’s political establishment is moving quickly to revive an economic reform agenda that many Iranians say no longer speaks to the core of their anger.
While demonstrators chant against the entire system, the government of President Masoud Pezeshkian has focused its response on reshuffling economic managers and pressing ahead with long-delayed currency reforms, betting that technical fixes can still defuse a crisis that has increasingly become political.
The renewed unrest was triggered by a sharp bout of currency volatility that briefly pushed the U.S. dollar to around 1.45 million rials on the open market, intensifying already high inflation and accelerating the erosion of purchasing power.
“Protesting the dollar is protesting instability; protesting a life that cannot be planned,” wrote journalist Mustafa Danandeh in the daily Ettelaat. “People who do not know whether six months from now their rent will double, medicine will be available, or their job will survive.”
A new old face
In response, Pezeshkian reshuffled the leadership of the Central Bank of Iran, reappointing Abdolnaser Hemmati and reviving a controversial push toward a single exchange rate—an idea long advocated by economists but repeatedly stalled by politics, sanctions and entrenched interests.
Hemmati, a prominent centrist figure, had been forced out less than seven months into his tenure as economy minister after parliament impeached him over exchange-rate volatility.
His return—this time to a post that does not require parliamentary approval—has infuriated hardline lawmakers and highlighted widening rifts within the political elite.
“This explicitly ignores parliament’s vote and shows disregard for the will of representatives,” said Zeynab Gheisari, an ultra-hardline lawmaker from Tehran. Another hardline legislator, Amir-Hossein Sabeti, said the move demonstrated the government’s “disregard for the people and the country’s economy.”
In his first public remarks after the appointment, Hemmati laid out familiar priorities: controlling inflation, managing the foreign exchange market and tightening oversight of banks.
It’s the economy—or is it?
The reform effort centers on dismantling Iran’s multi-rate currency regime, a system dating back to the Iran–Iraq war of the 1980s, when preferential exchange rates were introduced to subsidize essential imports. Over time, the widening gap between official and market rates turned the system into a major source of rent-seeking, corruption and uncertainty.
As the business news outlet Tejarat News noted, the policy “failed to provide sustainable support for domestic producers and created severe uncertainty for investment and production planning.”
The Entekhab news site cautioned that in an economy burdened by sanctions, fiscal shortfalls and political distrust, inflationary expectations tend to regenerate quickly once short-term interventions fade.
On Thursday, the president announced the immediate elimination of the subsidized exchange rate of 285,000 rials per dollar for basic goods and animal feed imports, saying the subsidy would instead be transferred directly to consumers to eliminate “rent, bribery and corruption.”
In unusually blunt remarks, Pezeshkian acknowledged that public anger was directed at the state itself. Dissatisfaction, he said, was the government’s responsibility, adding that “there is no need to look for America to blame.”
Many protesters appear keenly aware that Pezeshkian’s authority is tightly constrained by entrenched power centers, a reality reflected in slogans that target the theocratic system itself and its supreme leader rather than the exchange rate.
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.