Iran International
Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has portrayed the country as stronger after successive wars and pressures and among the world’s foremost powers, a vision that key economic and military indicators and recent regional events put to the test.
Khamenei described Iran as enjoying “progress, dignity and independence” and its highest standing in the Muslim world and beyond in a written message marking the anniversary of the Iran-Iraq War on Monday.
“Today, some consider us the world’s fourth superpower,” Khamenei wrote. He went further, saying that according to “divine calculations,” Iran is the “world’s top power.”
The depiction comes more than six months after Khamenei became supreme leader without making a public appearance.
No new photograph, video or audio recording of Khamenei has been released since his elevation to the post. Islamic Republic officials have said he remains in charge and has stayed out of public view for security reasons.
His absence extended to the days-long funeral and burial ceremonies for his father and predecessor, Ali Khamenei.
That absence creates a contrast at the heart of a message centered on national strength and retreating adversaries. Khamenei invokes “millions” of Iranians taking to the streets and a country growing in power while remaining unseen by the public himself.
The ‘fourth superpower’ by what measure?
Khamenei does not identify those who regard Iran as the world’s fourth superpower or explain what measure produces that ranking.
Military spending offers one measurable comparison.
Iran spent an estimated $7.4 billion on its military in 2025, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The United States spent about $954 billion, China $336 billion and Russia $190 billion.
SIPRI says Iran also finances some military activities outside its regular budget, meaning actual expenditure could be higher. Even allowing for that, the available figures leave a wide gap between Iran and the world’s largest military spenders.
Economic measures offer another comparison. The International Monetary Fund estimates Iran will account for around 0.8% of the global economy on a purchasing-power-parity basis in 2026.
Khamenei moves his larger assertion outside such measurable criteria by invoking “divine calculations” to describe Iran as the world’s top power.
Military expenditure, economic output, trade, industrial capacity and the outcome of military operations can be measured. “Divine calculations” provide no equivalent benchmark for determining what outcome would confirm or contradict the assertion.
‘Progress’ meets inflation and contraction
Khamenei portrays pre-revolutionary Iran as an era of “backwardness, humiliation and disgrace,” contrasting it with a present filled with “progress, dignity and independence.”
Measured through economic conditions and everyday living standards, however, progress presents a more complicated picture.
The IMF projects average inflation of 68.9% in Iran in 2026 and a 5.4% contraction in the economy.
The World Bank has also pointed to pressure from war and sanctions, water and energy shortages, weak investment and rising poverty.
Those indicators raise a basic question about Khamenei’s broad description of progress: what is being measured, and for which part of Iranian society?
The enemy that supposedly stops at the Arabian Sea
One of the most readily testable parts of Khamenei’s message concerns foreign military activity in waters around Iran.
Waters south of the country were once a domain for enemy forces, Khamenei wrote, but “painful blows” by Iranian forces and the “defenders of the Strait of Hormuz” mean those adversaries now advance no further than the Arabian Sea.
Military activity in recent months presents a more complicated geographical picture.
US officials told Axios in August that the American military had established a shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz, with around 15 to 20 tankers entering or leaving each night. The operation allowed roughly 10 million barrels of oil to move through the waterway each day, according to the officials.
The US military presence in waters around Iran continued in September.
The Revolutionary Guards fired ballistic missiles toward a US aircraft carrier and destroyer in early September, according to US military accounts. American forces also struck Iranian oil tankers near Kharg Island and in the Gulf of Oman.
US Central Command said on September 8 that an American warship continued patrolling regional waters after being targeted twice by Iranian missiles over two days. US forces struck five Iranian tankers during the same operation in the Gulf of Oman and near Kharg Island.
The maritime pressure has also become part of negotiations between the two countries. Iran would be prepared to reopen the Strait of Hormuz if Washington reduced military pressure and lifted its blockade of Iranian ports, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on September 22.
US operations in the Strait of Hormuz, Gulf of Oman and waters close to Iran therefore do not fit an absolute geographical reading of Khamenei’s assertion that adversaries no longer advance beyond the Arabian Sea.
‘Millions of supporters’ and the Iranians left out
Khamenei also presents pro-establishment mobilization over the past seven months as evidence of domestic strength and cohesion.
“More than 30 million Iranians have declared themselves ready for self-sacrifice,” he wrote, adding that more than 500,000 people filled the available capacity of one registration drive in just 100 minutes.
Even if those figures are accepted, mobilizing millions of people does not by itself measure support across Iranian society.
Iran during the same period witnessed nationwide protests that began over economic grievances in late December 2025, spread rapidly across the country and developed into direct protests against the political establishment. The demonstrations subsided after a sweeping crackdown.
The government put the death toll at 3,117. Iran International’s Editorial Board estimated that more than 36,500 people were killed, based on classified security documents, field reports and information from medical workers, with most deaths occurring on January 8 and 9.
In Khamenei’s account, government supporters filling streets provide evidence of national unity and strength. Opponents occupying those same public spaces are not given comparable weight in assessing the state of Iranian society.
Khamenei’s own absence again becomes relevant. He invokes millions of Iranians gathering in streets and squares, but more than six months after becoming supreme leader has yet to appear among them or release a public video or audio message.
‘Victory’ and Hezbollah’s losses
Khamenei applies a similar conception of power to Iran’s regional allies.
He describes “victory and triumph” as the constant companions of late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and presents his successor, Naim Qassem, as continuing the same path.
Hezbollah’s present position complicates a narrative of uninterrupted victory.
Nasrallah was killed and Hezbollah lost a significant number of senior commanders. Israel’s operation against the group’s communications network also exposed the extent of Israeli intelligence penetration into its structures.
Inside Lebanon, Hezbollah’s weapons have become central to one of the country’s major political disputes. The Lebanese government has pursued a process aimed at bringing the group’s weapons under state control, which Hezbollah opposes.
The death of a leader and senior commanders, combined with political pressure to transfer control of a group’s weapons to the state, sits uneasily alongside a historical description centered on permanent “victory and triumph.”
A definition of power with little room for defeat
The central issue in Khamenei’s message may be less any single assertion than the way power itself is defined.
In his account, the Islamic Republic emerged stronger from the eight-year Iran-Iraq War. Subsequent pressure, he said, made it stronger. More recent wars have made the Islamic Republic’s “phoenix” larger, while its future will be “far more glorious.”
Such a framework can absorb sharply different outcomes without altering its conclusion.
If an adversary retreats, that demonstrates strength. If fighting continues, that demonstrates resistance. Economic pressure becomes the cost of independence. If a regional ally loses leaders and commanders, the continuation of its cause takes precedence. Government supporters in the streets demonstrate popular backing, while opponents filling those streets are given no equivalent role in measuring political strength.
Within such a definition, defeat becomes increasingly difficult to identify.
National power can also be examined through observable outcomes: a country’s capacity to protect its territory and infrastructure, influence an adversary’s behavior, maintain economic stability, achieve foreign policy objectives, preserve regional influence and retain domestic support.
Measured against such indicators, Iran’s ability to impose costs on its adversaries does not by itself establish the status invoked by Khamenei when he describes the country as the “fourth superpower” or, according to “divine calculations,” the world’s top power.
That leaves the central question running through his message: if decades of war, pressure and confrontation have elevated Iran to such a position, which military, economic, social or regional measures demonstrate it?
The question takes on additional weight when this portrait of national power comes not from a leader addressing the public, but through a written message from a supreme leader who, more than six months after taking Iran’s highest office, has yet to be seen or heard by Iranians in a public appearance.
Four people appeared on IRIB’s Be Vaght-e-Iran (Iran Time) program, with three speaking during an exchange on how Abu Dhabi has adapted its oil shipments to Iran’s approach to the strategic waterway.
One participant suggested Iran could target the smaller shuttle vessels moving through the strait or strike their point of origin. Another rejected that approach as insufficient.
“It makes no sense to just hit these vessels. That is not an adequate response to this change in logic,” he said.
A third participant laid out the central argument: Abu Dhabi has sought to change the economics behind Iran’s maritime leverage rather than directly challenge its military capabilities.
“The UAE has attacked the logic of closing the Strait of Hormuz,” he said.
Cheap ships change the calculation
Iran’s strategy, according to the panel, had relied partly on the vulnerability of very large crude carriers, or VLCCs, whose high value meant the prospect of an Iranian strike could make voyages commercially prohibitive as insurers withdrew coverage.
The UAE has sought to remove that pressure by creating a state-backed logistics chain and using smaller, cheaper vessels that can be readily replaced.
“It is defining a battlefield that has been designed to its advantage,” the commentator said. “It says: fight me here. You hit these small ones, and I keep replacing them.”
Abu Dhabi is also using ageing VLCCs that would otherwise be destined for scrapping because they no longer meet environmental or safety standards required at many ports, according to the discussion.
The ships can be worth considerably less than the oil they carry, reducing the economic loss if Iran damages them.
The broadcast also described a pattern in Iranian operations that the UAE could anticipate. Iranian forces radio vessels, fire warning shots if they continue and then target the bridge rather than immediately sinking the ship, giving crews around 30 to 40 minutes to evacuate.
Abu Dhabi has responded by positioning tugboats to recover damaged vessels and tow them to Sohar in Oman, where their cargo can still be unloaded, the main contributor said.
“The tugboat comes and attaches itself right there to the ship that has been hit,” he said. “They tow it to Sohar and unload it there on the Omani coast.”
The result, he argued, is that Iran can damage a vessel without preventing its oil from reaching port.
Iran’s military logic questioned
Simply striking greater numbers of replaceable vessels would not restore Iran’s leverage, the discussion suggested.
“They have attacked our military logic,” the main contributor said. “You have to hit this logic.”
The participant who opened the exchange said Iran’s problem was not a lack of political will, but its continued reliance on an approach that was no longer producing the intended outcome.
“There really is the political will to confront them. But because we are confronting them within the previous framework, we are not getting the result we want,” he said.
The main contributor described the problem as a “cognitive error.”
Another researcher and Middle East commentator Mustafa Najafi separately accused the UAE on X of spending weeks trying to reduce Iran’s leverage over the Strait of Hormuz and seeking to move oil belonging to other countries through the waterway.
Najafi also accused Abu Dhabi of obstructing an Iran-Oman agreement on managing the strait and lobbying in the United States and Israel for attacks on Iran.
“After Israel, no actor dreams of weakening and disintegrating Iran as much as the UAE does,” Najafi wrote, arguing that Tehran should move beyond a solely political and diplomatic response.
The remarks reflect concern among Iranian pro-system experts that the UAE is seeking not to overcome Iran’s military power in the Strait of Hormuz, but to diminish the strategic leverage that power is intended to provide.
Pezeshkian accused protesters of being incited by the United States and Israel and receiving weapons to disrupt Iran’s security. He also defended system supporters who took to the streets during the unrest.
The sisters of Sina Kazemi, Emad Mavedatipour and Babak Sadeghi Mohseni responded on X, saying their brothers were unarmed when they were killed on January 8 or 9 and were not acting on behalf of any foreign government.
“I testify that my brother was unarmed when he was killed by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s forces on January 8, 2026,” Kazemi’s sister wrote. “He was not acting on behalf of any foreign government. I seek truth, justice, and accountability.”
Mavedatipour’s sister posted the same account of her brother, saying he was unarmed when he was killed on January 9 and denying that he acted for a foreign government.
Sadeghi Mohseni’s sister said her brother was unarmed when he was killed on January 8 and also called for “truth, justice, and accountability.”
The sister of Ahmad Khosravani, a 21-year-old professional basketball player, said her brother was completely unarmed when Iranian forces killed him on January 9.
“He was not acting on behalf of any foreign government,” she wrote. “They shot him directly in the heart.”
Fathers challenge Pezeshkian
Two other bereaved fathers challenged the government's account in separate video messages sent to Iran International.
The father of Erfan Abdipour, an architecture student who also worked at his brother’s restaurant, called on Pezeshkian to publish evidence if authorities had any showing that his son had received military training or carried a weapon.
“My request is that if you have evidence showing that he received military training, was instructed or had a weapon, or anything else that night, publish it,” Abdipour’s father said.
Abdipour had gone to protest on the night he was killed, his father said, questioning what his son could have been trying to seize in an area he described as having no military barracks or security facility.
The father of Pouria Bagheri separately rejected the government's explanation for the scale of the killings.
“I categorically reject the overall argument that such widespread killing was foreign actors work.”
Bagheri’s father questioned why authorities shut down the internet and electricity and said that security agents removed surveillance cameras from shops. He also asked why officials brought government supporters onto the streets two days later if foreign-backed armed groups posed the extensive threat described by authorities.
“Why did you bring your own supporters into the streets two days later? With what guarantee?” he said. “Was it not because you were in control?”
January crackdown
The protests began on December 28, 2025, following a sharp fall in the rial and rising prices before spreading across all 31 provinces and developing into a broader challenge to the Islamic Republic.
The deadliest violence came on January 8 and 9. Amnesty International said verified videos and eyewitness testimony showed security forces using rifles and shotguns against protesters, frequently firing at heads and torsos.
Iran International’s Editorial Board concluded in January that more than 36,500 people were killed by security forces on January 8 and 9 after reviewing classified government documents, field reports and accounts from medical workers, witnesses and victims’ families.
The UN Fact-Finding Mission on Iran later said security forces used lethal force against protesters and bystanders, including children, who posed no imminent threat of death or serious injury.
Iranian authorities initially put the death toll at 3,117. The government subsequently published 3,038 names, according to the UN mission, which said it believes the actual number may be significantly higher.
US President Donald Trump cited increasingly higher death tolls from Iran’s January protest crackdown in successive remarks, putting the number at 32,000 on February 20, 42,000 in later comments and subsequently 45,000.
