Iran International
As food prices spiral and farms shut down across Iran, even establishment figures are openly questioning how a country capable of producing precision missiles cannot manufacture affordable cars or keep chicken within reach of ordinary families.
Former Industry Minister Mostafa Hashemitaba says the crisis is rooted not only in consumer markets but across the country’s collapsing production chain, from fertilizers to poultry farming.
Writing in Sharq on May 20, Hashemitaba said the price of a 50-kg bag of triple-phosphate fertilizer had jumped within months from three million rials to 70 million rials, a nearly 24-fold increase. Other fertilizers, he added, rose by more than 1,100 percent over the same period.
The result, he argued, has been the shutdown of farms and poultry operations, feeding directly into soaring prices for fruit, vegetables and meat.
A report published by Etemad described growing despair among Iranians struggling with job losses, displacement and rapidly rising living costs after the conflict.
Columnist Nayereh Khademi interviewed a 40-year-old university-educated man who said that after losing his job during the war, he briefly considered living in a cardboard box with his wife.
“What frightened me most was a future in which nothing was certain,” he said.
Another man described the horror of watching missile strikes destroy homes around him. When he realized his own house was still standing, he said he felt guilt rather than relief.
For many who lived through the attacks, the war’s aftermath brought a second shock: rapidly rising prices and shrinking access to basic necessities.
One resident interviewed by Etemad described it as “surreal” to walk past shops selling everyday goods that had suddenly become unaffordable.
Several Tehran newspapers reported last week that a kilogram of poultry meat had reached 1.5 million tomans, roughly one-tenth of an ordinary worker’s monthly salary.
Even some members of parliament, usually focused on rhetoric about national strength and resistance, publicly acknowledged the severity of rising food prices.
Hashemitaba contrasted the economic deterioration with what he described as unrealistic official ambitions elsewhere in the economy.
He recalled that in September 2023, then-President Ebrahim Raisi’s industry minister proudly showed him an electric vehicle and promised that 100,000 units would be produced by March. By spring, he wrote, it became clear that the display model was effectively the factory’s only output.
“How can a country that manufactures precision missiles fail to produce cars?” Hashemitaba wrote.
The worsening economic picture is also reinforcing arguments inside parts of Iran’s political establishment that some form of relief through negotiations with Washington may be unavoidable after months of war and financial turmoil.
While hardliners continue to frame diplomacy as resistance management rather than compromise, even some conservative figures have increasingly acknowledged the scale of economic pressure facing ordinary Iranians.
The strain is now extending beyond households. Cafés and restaurants in Tehran that once offered a temporary escape from political tensions and economic anxiety are also reportedly struggling to survive amid surging supply costs.
Government officials, including President Massoud Pezeshkian, who once tried to downplay the scale of the crisis, have increasingly acknowledged the depth of the country’s economic problems.
But hardline critics on Thursday attacked Pezeshkian simply for publicly recognizing the extent of public hardship—a reaction that underscored how disconnected parts of the political establishment appear from the realities facing many ordinary Iranians.
Iran’s streets and comment sections increasingly project the same official mood: unity, defiance and loyalty. Nighttime rallies supply the images – flags, portraits, organized crowds. Online, many Iran-related posts draw a parallel chorus of praise for the Islamic Republic, celebration of its military posture and attacks on critics, often alongside tributes to slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his still-unseen successor, Mojtaba Khamenei.
What the screen does not show is the pool of people removed before the argument even begins.
As Iran’s internet blackout pushes deeper into its third month, the question is no longer only what people are saying online.
It is who still has the connection, the permission, the protection or the incentive to say it.
The latest crisis did not begin with one switch. During the January uprising, internet access was cut on January 8 and remained fully restricted until January 28. After US-Israeli strikes began on February 28, authorities imposed a new shutdown that has now moved toward its third month.
A normal comment section, however flawed, allows some collision between competing voices. A blackout changes the sample.
Many ordinary users are pushed onto restricted domestic services. Others ration expensive workarounds. Some businesses cannot reach customers. Students lose access to material. Families abroad struggle to maintain daily contact. At the same time, state-aligned users, approved institutions and privileged accounts remain visible on global platforms.
The asymmetry has not been hidden. In March, Iran’s government said it was providing special internet access to select users capable of promoting its messaging online. A government spokeswoman did not use the term “white SIM cards,” but said connectivity was being offered to “those who can better deliver the message.”
That is the controlled sample: not a country speaking freely, but a narrower population still able to speak outward.
The most revealing development is not only who receives access. It is what some people are asked to do to regain it.
Some Iranians whose SIM cards or internet access had been blocked over alleged online activity against the Islamic Republic said they were told to submit handwritten pledges, provide guarantors and publish pro-government content to restore access.
The notices asked for home and work addresses, bank account information, images of bank cards and links to social media accounts. They also instructed recipients not to publish content deemed harmful to the country’s “psychological, social or political security.”
Some were told to publish at least 20 posts supporting the Islamic Republic and send screenshots as proof.
The posts were not to be uploaded all at once. They had to be spaced out so the activity would appear natural.
Others were ordered to attend nighttime government rallies, photograph themselves carrying flags or images of the Supreme Leader, and provide identification documents from guarantors who would accept responsibility for any future “criminal activity.”
The detail about timing is small, but it carries the whole design. The aim is not merely loyalty. It is loyalty made to look organic.
This is where the street and the screen meet. Organized rallies produce images of public unity. Selective internet access and coerced posting can carry the same choreography into comment sections, reply chains and social platforms.
The state does not need every supportive post to be fake. It needs a system in which supportive voices are easier to see, dissenting voices are harder to hear, and some frightened users learn that getting back online may require a public performance of loyalty.
Iran’s internet is no longer simply available or unavailable. It has been sorted.
At the top are so-called white SIM cards, widely understood as privileged lines that allow largely unrestricted access for trusted insiders and state-aligned users. Below them are paid and limited services such as “Internet Pro,” presented by officials as a business necessity but described by many Iranians as a class-based system of digital inequality.
Reporting on material circulating among users described a four-level structure: white SIM cards, paid Internet Pro, costly VPN access and, for the majority, a restricted domestic network.
The economic filter is severe. Average monthly income in Iran is at around $100 to $200, while the minimum wage is typically below $100. Even official Internet Pro packages and VPN routes can be unaffordable, and black-market access has reportedly pushed prices far higher.
Access also carries political exposure. For those who can afford a connection, the risk is not only cost but traceability. A user may be able to post, but with the knowledge that the same system can block a SIM card, summon a guarantor, demand a pledge or turn an online comment into a legal file.
Iranian state-linked online influence operations long predate the current blackout. Microsoft has reported that Iranian cyber-enabled influence activity has been a consistent feature of at least the last three US election cycles.
In January, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies identified what it described as a likely regime-linked influence operation on X during protests, using coordinated accounts to delegitimize dissent, intimidate protesters and reinforce official narratives.
The report said the network included at least 289 accounts posting identical Persian-language content, with behavior suggesting a hybrid of automation and human operation.
But the current phase adds a more intimate layer. Foreign influence operations impersonate a public from a distance. Domestic coercion can pressure the public itself.
The old shorthand of “bots” misses the range of actors now shaping the visible online picture: automated accounts, organized cyber operators, loyalists with privileged access, state-linked media networks, paid voices, and users pushed to perform approval to recover ordinary tools of daily life.
The missing side of Iran’s online debate is not abstract.
It is the online seller without customers, the student without class materials, the programmer without contracts, the family unable to make a routine call abroad, and the person with disabilities cut off from services or communities that made daily life more manageable.
Against that background, pro-government comment floods do not prove a national mood. They show that some people still have access, some have protection, some have instructions, and many others have been priced out, cut off or made cautious by fear.
There are genuine supporters of the Islamic Republic. But a system that restricts millions, grants selective access, monitors users, blocks SIM cards and tells some people to space out loyalty posts cannot produce a clean reading of public opinion.
When a government cuts off the people and leaves the microphone to loyalists, the comment section stops being a public square.
It becomes part of the stage.
The real story is not only in the roar under the post. It is in the conditions that made so many others unable to answer back – and in the citizens told that to return to the internet, they must first praise the power that cut them off.
