Pezeshkian’s UNGA debut urged dialogue; this year war and sanctions dominate

“If the gas imbalance continues at this rate, by the year 2041 we will be facing a 512-million-cubic-meter shortfall. This figure is terrifying,” Ali Rabiei told Tehran media this week.

Such a gap would leave the government unable to meet two-thirds of domestic demand. The warning is stark given that Iran holds 33 trillion cubic meters of proven gas reserves, the world’s second largest after Russia.

Yet a mix of delayed field development, lack of energy diversification, declining reservoir pressure, and systemic inefficiencies has already created an unsustainable deficit.

Parliament’s Research Center estimates a current shortfall of 150 million cubic meters per day, rising above 250 million in peak winter—roughly equal to Turkey’s entire seasonal consumption.

Heavy reliance on gas

Around 70% of Iran’s energy consumption depends on natural gas, according to the Ministry of Petroleum. Clean energy contributes barely 1% of electricity generation, while over 90% comes from thermal power plants, most of them gas-fired.

By comparison, Turkey produces 40 times more electricity from renewables.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) puts Iran’s current daily output at about 750 million cubic meters. After a decade of 5% annual growth, production growth slowed to just 1% last year.

Even with new investments, the IEA projects output could shrink by as much as 40% without substantial investment by the decade’s end.

Decline and waste

Nearly three-quarters of Iran’s gas comes from South Pars, a giant offshore reservoir shared with Qatar.

The field entered the second half of its lifecycle last year, with output expected to fall by 30 million cubic meters annually due to declining pressure.

Qatar has invested heavily to offset this decline, deploying massive 20,000-ton platforms with industrial-scale compressors and signing $29 billion in contracts with global energy majors.

Iran once had a similar plan under a $5 billion deal with TotalEnergies and CNPC in 2015, but both firms withdrew three years later when US president Donald Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal.

The technology remains concentrated in Western companies, leaving Iran reliant on smaller 4,000-5,000-ton platforms that experts say will not halt decline.

Iran also loses huge volumes of gas to waste.

The IEA and World Bank estimate daily losses of 88 million cubic meters through leaks, flaring, and inefficiencies. This makes Iran the world’s second-largest gas flarer after Russia, and the fourth-largest methane emitter after China, the U.S., and Russia.

Iran’s paradox is clear: a country sitting on the world’s second-largest gas reserves is sliding toward a severe energy crunch.

Without major investment, technological access, and diversification, shortages will deepen—leaving households and industries exposed to chronic power cuts and mounting economic strain.

Commentators disagree on labels—uprising, movement, revolution—but most accept that the protests of 2022 and their afterlife have marked a foundational rupture. They drew in multiple strata of society, altered daily life and public discourse and forced the Islamic Republic into retreats that once seemed inconceivable.

The chant “Woman, Life, Freedom,” first voiced at Amini’s burial in the town of Saqqez in Iran's Kurdistan province, condensed demands for autonomy, dignity and equality into three words that spoke across class and region.

A society long fragmented by divide-and-rule tactics has moved toward solidarity. Women and men, Kurds and Persians, Baluch and Azeris, urban and rural citizens stood together in 2022, building a pluralism not seen in recent memory.

The movement challenged not only gender discrimination but the state’s entire normative order, and it did so through radically non-violent means. In compelling the regime to cede ground—above all on the legally-mandated hijab—it achieved changes that would once have been described as revolutionary in themselves.

Inside homes, younger generations have renegotiated relations with parents in ways that blunt the state’s intrusion into private life.

The state’s grip on the streets has been broken; unveiled women now walk freely in Tehran, Mashhad, Shiraz, and countless smaller cities. Equality and bodily autonomy, once dismissed as Western imports, have moved to the center of Iranian discourse.

An even more draconian hijab and chastity law passed by parliament was frozen by Iran's Supreme National Security Council in May out of concern it would spark unrest.

Not easy

But the obstacles remain—and repression is still lethal.

In 2022 at least 552 protesters were killed, thousands more jailed, and executions have mounted since. The ruling elite retain an effective coercive apparatus, even if their confidence has been shaken by war and domestic unrest.

Economically, decades of corruption, sanctions, inflation and environmental degradation have pushed both state and society into survival mode.

Families channel scarce energy into endurance, leaving less room for organized protest. A potential revolution’s strength—its horizontal, decentralized nature—has also limited its ability to produce leadership or coherent organization.

Opposition forces remain fragmented, particularly in the diaspora, and coordination inside Iran has faltered as street protests ebbed.

Even so, the balance of change is striking.

In just three years, the movement has embedded demands that no future order can ignore. Its art, slogans, and public faces have entered common life.

No credible opponent of the regime positions themselves against it; all align with or inherit from it.

Hopes for future

Looking forward, much will depend on four interlinked tasks.

Daily civil resistance appears to be institutionalized, above all the unveiled presence of women in public life.

Economic grievances and livelihood protests have yet to be joined to clear political demands. If and when they are, a broader front against misrule would come to life.

Fragmented opposition forces need to converge on a clearer vision for post–Islamic Republic Iran. And international sympathy must be translated into targeted support that strengthens civil society without dragging it into destructive conflict.

The Islamic Republic’s institutions still stand, but their legitimacy has been stripped to the bone. Voter participation has sunk to historic lows, public trust has collapsed, and governance has narrowed to the sheer mechanics of survival.

Those in power are now fixated on endurance rather than service. In this vacuum, civil society advances on a different track.

Three years on, “Woman, Life, Freedom” remains the principal engine of transformation. Street protests may have wound down, but the changes in culture and imagination look irreversible.

The revolution is unfinished, but it endures in daily defiance, in a pluralist solidarity that defies the state’s order, and in a vision of citizenship rooted in universal rights.

That, already, is an achievement historic in scale—one whose ultimate destination may yet be a secular, democratic Iran.

For decades, oversight of Iran’s human rights record was limited to a Special Rapporteur whose reports carried weight but lacked teeth.

The new mission, however, was built not only to observe but to investigate, document and preserve evidence for criminal prosecutions—evidence that could one day bring Iranian officials before international or national courts abroad.

In just two years, it has produced thousands of pages—legal findings, testimonies and analyses on women’s and minority rights.

Together, the effort paints a grim picture of systematic human rights violations in Iran, some amounting to crimes against humanity.

Limited mandate

That phrase matters. It elevates abuses from the realm of “domestic affairs” to international crimes the world cannot ignore. It also affirms what Iranian civil society has long argued: repression is not episodic but systemic.

Yet the mission has faced constraints by design.

Its initial mandate was limited to the protests and crackdowns after death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in morality police custody in September 2022.

That scope left little room to probe earlier waves of dissent such as the December 2017 protests or the bloody crackdown of November 2019, despite clear evidence of the same patterns of violence and impunity.

Only in March did the Human Rights Council expand the mandate, acknowledging that accountability cannot be sliced into timeframes convenient for perpetrators.

The United Nations itself is under financial strain and political pressure from states wary of setting precedents for scrutiny. Iran continues to deny all allegations, dismissing international scrutiny as “Western interference.”

Against erasure

The mission is vital for two reasons. First, it amplifies the voices of victims and families silenced inside Iran. Second, it builds a legal infrastructure for future prosecutions, whether under universal jurisdiction abroad or in tribunals yet to be created.

These records matter: they are the antidote to impunity, preserving memory when a government seeks erasure.

On the third anniversary of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, the question is whether the international community will provide the political and financial backing to keep this mechanism alive.

Civil society has done its part—collecting testimonies, documenting abuses, and risking lives for the truth. Governments must now ensure this work does not wither under budget cuts or diplomatic fatigue.

In an era of deep cynicism about international institutions, this mission is a rare instrument that offers both hope and a pathway toward justice.

The likely impact of the attack against a meeting of Hamas political leaders will be at least as consequential as the September 2019 Iranian missile and drone strike on Saudi oil facilities.

That attack on Abqaiq and al-Khurais, during the first Trump presidency, caused shockwaves in Riyadh and other Gulf capitals after President Trump publicly drew a distinction between US and Saudi interests in remarks he made two days later.

Leaders in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates reached out to Iranian counterparts to engage in a process of regional de-escalation that culminated, in the Saudi case, in a March 2023 China-brokered agreement to restore diplomatic relations with Iran that had been cut in January 2016.

Now, during Trump’s second administration, the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states find themselves at a similar inflection point.

Qatar has come under attack from Israel a little more than two months after it took ballistic missile fire from Iran on June 23. Yet, whereas the Iranian attack was aimed at the Al Udeid US airbase away from urban areas, the Israeli attack struck at the heart of Doha in the middle of the afternoon.

CENTCOM in focus

While the Iranian strike was a response to US airstrikes the previous day against three nuclear facilities in Iran and was thus the act of an adversary - from the US if not necessarily the Gulf perspective - Israel is not only the closest US ally in the region but has also been, since 2021, included in the Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility.

Leaders in Qatar and the other Arab states around the Persian Gulf will likely be reaching out with urgency to the White House to assess who in the administration knew what and when in the run-up to the attack, as well as to determine the impact both for CENTCOM and the US security umbrella.

One CENTCOM member has undertaken a strike that violated the sovereignty of another and, moreover, within the near vicinity of the very airbase in Qatar that houses the forward headquarters of CENTCOM and is the largest and most important US base in the region.

Questions may be asked as to what information was picked up by the Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) at Al Udeid and whether the strike used US-manufactured jets that showed up as friendly aircraft.

Reports that the US military spotted Israeli jets flying toward the Gulf and sought clarification from Israel may also generate additional questions as to why a facility designed to detect and deter aerial threats failed to prevent the strike.

While it remains improbable that GCC leaders will move away from the deep network of security and defense relationships with the US, the fallout from the attack is likely to trigger tense conversations within CENTCOM and between the US and Persian Gulf partners.

Invective shift from Iran to Israel

Although President Trump assured Emir Tamim of Qatar that such an attack would not recur, there is a risk that the president has backed himself into a corner should Israel indeed act again.

Set against this backdrop, leaders and senior defense and security officials across the GCC are likely to reassess the security landscape and regional threat perception and may declare that an attack on one GCC state is an attack on all, paving the way for a collective response.

Should this be the case, pressure may mount on the UAE and Bahrain to downgrade their ties with Israel that were established in 2020 when the countries signed the Abraham Accords in a White House ceremony presided over by President Trump.

Statements from officials and public figures in GCC states have in recent months described Israeli actions in the Middle East in language formerly used about Iran, as a spoiler and a major threat to regional stability.

While Iran is unlikely to be a beneficiary of the estrangement between GCC states and Israel, the fact that further normalization is, for the moment at least, very much off the table is an indication of how far the regional landscape has shifted in the 23 months since October 7.

Just days after returning from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit—where he met senior Russian and Chinese officials—Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian told Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that Moscow and Beijing had agreed to invest in Iran.

Despite such assurances, the record suggests that neither has been willing or able to channel significant capital into Iran’s struggling economy.

Iran also faces a persistent flight of domestic wealth, likely to accelerate if United Nations sanctions are reimposed in the coming weeks.

Between 2014 and 2024, the country’s capital account balance was negative $123 billion, or an average of $12 billion leaving each year, according to Central Bank data.

Pezeshkian, fresh from his high-profile trip to China, may hope to offset that outflow with allies’ money. But the numbers are not on his side.

China: reluctant partner

The last major Chinese commitment came in 2016, when state-owned CNPC signed a $600 million contract to develop Phase 11 of the South Pars gas field.

When US president Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal in 2018, CNPC walked away without investing a cent.

In 2021, Tehran signed a 25-year cooperation agreement with Beijing, supposedly worth $400 billion—an average of $16 billion in annual Chinese investment.

Yet official Chinese data show that between 2021 and 2023, Chinese companies invested about one percent of that figure.

Looking further back, China’s cumulative direct investment in Iran between 2003 and 2023 totaled just $1.1 billion—around $110 million annually.

UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) data put Iran’s net foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows during the same period at nearly $23 billion, meaning China’s share was under 5 percent.

Russia: troubled source

Iran’s hopes for Russian capital look equally shaky.

Over the past decade, Tehran has signed dozens of agreements with Russian companies such as Gazprom, but none have materialized.

Gazprom alone posted more than $21 billion in net losses between January 2023 and June 2025 amid Western sanctions over Russia's war in Ukraine and has canceled many of its foreign projects.

Russia itself is bleeding investment. According to UNCTAD, the stock of foreign direct investment in Russia fell from $522 billion in 2021 to $216 billion last year.

For the first time, China made no new investments in Russia in the first half of 2025.

Russian Central Bank data confirm this massive flight of foreign capital, alongside a parallel outflow of Russian private wealth abroad.

Taken together, these figures explain why Pezeshkian’s assurances to Khamenei likely ring hollow.

Neither Russia nor China appear to be in a position to bankroll Iran. For now, Tehran’s hopes of outside investment remain more a matter of political rhetoric than economic reality.