Iran International
A reformist call to suspend uranium enrichment, release political prisoners, and curb the Revolutionary Guards’ power has intensified debate over Iran’s future at a moment of heightened pressure.
The Reformist Front’s 11-point statement, released just weeks after the 12-day war with Israel, demanded sweeping shifts in both foreign and domestic policy, including reconciliation with the West and curbs on the IRGC’s role in politics and the economy.
The appeal was the boldest in years from a faction once central to Iranian politics but now largely marginalized.
Hardline outlets responded with fury.
Kayhan daily branded the proposals “capitulation,” while IRGC-linked Tasnim News Agency warned of a “Gorbachev moment” that could unravel the state. The backlash underscored how sensitive the demands were, cutting at the very pillars of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s power structure.
Alex Vatanka of the Middle East Institute says that reformists are testing the waters precisely because they sense the Islamic Republic is battered by sanctions and the war with Israel.
“The Islamic Republic is under strain like never before,” he told Iran International, “but reformists don’t have the street behind them.”
The moderates are laying the groundwork for further challenges if ignored, Vatanka said, insisting the letter should not be read as mere symbolism but as a signal of intent.
“This is just the beginning,” he added, cautioning that without broad public support, their leverage remains limited.
Others place the statement in the context of succession politics.
Historian and author Arash Azizi described it as part of a “post-Khamenei world,” with rival factions already maneuvering for influence after the 85-year-old leader.
By openly calling for suspending enrichment and curbing the Revolutionary Guards, he argued, reformists are staking out ground in anticipation of change at the top.
They are not naïve,” Azizi said. “They know these demands won’t be met tomorrow. But they want to shape what comes next.”
But the gulf between elite politics and public sentiment remains wide.
Behnam Ben Taleblu of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) cautioned that while such statements attract attention in Washington, they resonate little inside Iran.
“This is politically significant in the sense of who said it, but it won’t have impact,” he said.
For many Iranians, he added, the reformist project has lost credibility after years of unmet promises.
A vision beyond hardline rule
The Reformist Front’s roadmap also included calls to end the house arrests of Green Movement leaders Mir-Hossein Mousavi and his wife Zahra Rahnavard.
Whether such demands gain traction will depend on whether they can move beyond closed-door debates and find resonance in a weary society.
Meanwhile, pressure on Tehran is mounting.
European governments have threatened to trigger the UN’s snapback sanctions if nuclear talks stall, a move that could plunge Iran deeper into recession.
Inflation and power and water shortages are already hitting daily life, while the war with Israel exposed vulnerabilities in Iran’s defenses and weakened its standing abroad.
Despite the boldness of their demands, few expect Iran’s ruling elite to bend.
The Supreme Leader has shown little tolerance for compromise, and the Revolutionary Guards remain entrenched across politics and the economy.
Yet Azizi argues the statement with its sweeping demands should not be dismissed as irrelevant.
“It is a mini earthquake,” Azizi told Iran International. “Even if it doesn’t lead to immediate change, it tells us how reformists are imagining a post-Khamenei Iran.”
Whether the letter proves to be a turning point or just another forgotten appeal may depend less on reformist leaders than on whether ordinary Iranians are willing to rally behind them.
Tehran’s state-linked media, particularly Tasnim News—linked with the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC)—have seized on Israeli reports of espionage cases to magnify them into signs of Iranian strength.
Tasnim published multiple reports and podcasts this week highlighting Israeli arrests and investigations, as well as protests against Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of hostage negotiations with Hamas in Gaza.
The upbeat coverage portrayed these developments as evidence of Israeli weakness and Iranian intelligence triumphs, even as Tehran continues to grapple with the fallout of its own counter-intelligence debacle during the 12-day war, which saw the deaths of dozens of IRGC commanders and nuclear scientists.
'Eye-catching'
Tasnim on Monday cited a report on Israel’s Kan 11 channel about espionage-related charges to suggest Israeli intelligence is “seriously concerned” about “the eye-catching” number of Israelis caught allegedly spying for Iran.
The arrests and charges indicate there is a systemic attempt by Tehran to gain a foothold inside Israel.
A New York Times article on Monday described how Israelis recruited via Telegram were “cajoled into acts of sabotage and even assassination plots.”
In 2018, former Israeli energy minister Gonen Segev was convicted of spying for Tehran after passing sensitive information to Iranian handlers.
More recently, an Israeli woman named Anna Bernstein was indicted for allegedly working with Iranian intelligence through online contacts
The efforts, however, pales when compared to the apparent depth of Israeli infiltration of Iran’s own intelligence and security structures—underscored best perhaps by former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who asserted that the Iran desk chiefs of both main intelligence agencies were once exposed as Israeli agents.
Parallels: fabricated real
Tasnim has also leaned on familiar propaganda tactics to amplify Israel’s troubles.
It reported that “serial fires continue in Israel,” even publishing a video purportedly showing a blaze in a shopping center. The reports mirrored a wave of at least 50 unexplained fires and explosions inside Iran since the ceasefire.
Social media users often blame Israel, while officials routinely attribute them to gas leaks. It has become a running joke for Iranians as incidents multiply.
This tactic of manufactured symmetry has a long pedigree in Iran’s messaging.
During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, state media routinely published claims of Iraqi losses or unrest that mirrored Iran’s own vulnerabilities.
Then-propaganda chief Kamal Kharrazi, later foreign minister and now a senior adviser to supreme leader Ali Khamenei, oversaw some of the most striking fabrications, including tank destruction claims that exceeded the Iraqi army’s total arsenal.
‘Grand infiltrator’
Tasnim’s recent reports on alleged “serious rifts among Israeli political officials,” podcasts about Netanyahu’s critics, and coverage of protests demanding hostage negotiations continue this tradition of projection.
Unsurprisingly, none of Tasnim’s reports acknowledge Iran’s intelligence failures during the war.
For all the noise about alleged victories abroad, the real picture at home remains marked by secrecy and unanswered questions.
Iran’s former state broadcaster chief Mohammad Sarafraz put it bluntly this week.
“We have a Grand Infiltrator in our country,” he said in an interview with moderate outlet Entekhab. “Those who misled by blaming information leaks on WhatsApp to deflect from real infiltration must be held accountable.”
For decades, Afghans have formed the backbone of Iran’s low-wage workforce, filling jobs few Iranians were willing to take.
Their sudden absence now threatens both growth and jobs.
Conservative economist Mohammad-Hossein Mesbah called the push to send Afghans home “economic suicide.”
“Abbasabad industrial town [south of Tehran] was almost entirely closed today,” he posted on X. “Why? Shortage of labor. Job ads everywhere … Not a single worker to be found.”
From open borders to expulsions
Before the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, the Afghan population in Iran rarely exceeded two million, including about 780,000 with official refugee status. Under former President Ebrahim Raisi’s “open borders” policy, that number surged to more than seven million.
President Masoud Pezeshkian has since reversed course under public pressure.
Following Iran’s recent 12-day conflict with Israel, the government accelerated the deportation of undocumented Afghans, linking some expulsions to national security.
Officials say more than one million migrants have left in the past 100 days, though an estimated six million remain—four million without legal status.
The government has vowed to enforce labor laws, including fines of around $20 per day for undocumented workers, doubling for repeat offenses. Yet enforcement remains patchy in sectors long dependent on informal labor.
Afghans’ role in the Iranian workforce
According to the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare, 433,000 registered Afghan workers were active as of June 2025—roughly 2 percent of the total labor force.
More than half worked in construction, while others were employed in industry (19 percent), agriculture (11 percent), and mining (less than 1 percent).
A Chamber of Commerce study noted that Afghans, once concentrated in unskilled jobs, had increasingly moved into skilled and technical roles.
Their disappearance is now raising alarms about productivity and output across the economy.
Industry and construction hit hardest
The owner of an industrial workshop in Boumehen, near Tehran, told Shargh newspaper that even legally employed Afghans have left in fear. “We still haven’t found replacements, and nobody responds to our job ads,” he said.
Construction has been hit hardest.
In 2024, estimates suggested that Afghans made up three-quarters of Iran’s 1.5 million construction workers, and nearly half of those in Tehran.
With deportations underway, projects have stalled, and labor costs have jumped by 30–50 percent. The spike is expected to push housing costs even further out of reach.
Rising costs for food and services
Agriculture has also been disrupted. Farmers report delays in harvesting summer fruits and other perishable produce, including pistachios and saffron—two of Iran’s top non-oil exports.
Higher labor costs threaten to drive up food prices at a time when inflation is already high.
Urban services are showing strain as well.
In Tehran, the deportation of hundreds of Afghan street cleaners employed by municipal contractors has left piles of garbage and recyclables in some neighborhoods. Overflowing trash has become a visible sign of how deeply the deportations are reshaping daily life.
Some contractors have lost up to 80 percent of their workforce, according to city official Naser Amani.
In a lengthy analysis, Tasnim News Agency said proposals by reformists amounted to “a Gorbachev moment” in which politicians, under the influence of foreign narratives, accept solutions that weaken their own national interests.
“The ‘Gorbachev moment’ refers to a situation in which a leader, fearing crisis, adopts the enemy’s prescription for survival. Out of fear of death, he commits political suicide,” wrote Jafar Hassankhani, from Tasnim’s Strategic Studies Center.
Tasnim said recent reformist statements – including open letters, an essay by former foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Foreign Policy, and demands by the Reform Front coalition to suspend uranium enrichment and free political prisoners – reflected a “coordinated program” that risked undermining Iran’s resilience.
“Trusting the enemy’s smiles and imagining that the solution to all of the nation’s problems lies in the hands of foreign powers is precisely what led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union,” the agency argued.
“The Supreme Leader of Iran has repeatedly stressed that diplomatic engagement and negotiations must never be interpreted as trust in the enemy. The historical experience of Gorbachev showed that trusting the enemy’s smile is nothing but an illusion, and even gestures such as the West’s open arms and friendly smiles can be part of a deception project. One of Gorbachev’s weaknesses in this regard was his tendency to seek approval,” read the article.
A separate Tasnim article on Monday accused reformist groups of “passing the ball to the enemy” by issuing a statement that, it said, paralleled Western criticism of Iran.
That piece, titled "Reformist old children helping Israel,” argued that a new Reform Front declaration calling for reconciliation and sanctions relief was reminiscent of the Freedom Movement’s 1980s calls to halt the war with Iraq after Iran recaptured Khorramshahr.
"At critical moments, both groups have tended to resort to internal blame-casting and one-sided proposals instead of supporting national interests and territorial integrity — effectively handing the other side the ammunition to justify aggression against Iran,” read the article.
Moderate and reformist figures, including Zarif, former president Hassan Rouhani and Green Movement leaders Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, have in recent weeks pressed for what they call a “paradigm shift” in Iran’s governance.
The Reform Front on Sunday called for a voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief, broader engagement with the West, and domestic reforms including the release of political prisoners. “Iran’s social fabric was deeply wounded, with public life overshadowed by despair and anxiety,” the group said.
Rouhani argued last week that “there is no way to save the country except for all of us to become servants of the people — to recognize that sovereignty belongs to the people.”
Conservative outlets close to Khamenei have condemned the proposals as dangerous and aligned with Western agendas.
Kayhan newspaper called them “capitulation” to foreign powers, while the IRGC-linked Fars News Agency described the reformist roadmap as a “charter of submission.”
“The unfinished plan of Israel and the United States to eliminate the Islamic system continues with the assistance of those claiming to be reformists,” Kayhan wrote last week.
