Iran International
International sanctions renewed on Tehran over the weekend are already making life harder for ordinary Iranians and may signal an impasse that could lead to renewed war, experts told Iran International’s podcast Eye for Iran.
The renewed restrictions are biting deep into society, yet they are ultimately the result of Tehran’s own policies, economist Mahdi Ghodsi told Eye for Iran.
“In the past 10 years, the real income of Iranians has been halved. The middle class has become poor and the poor cannot live under these conditions,” he said.
“I consider sanctions as the effect of bad management, bad policy and bad governance. If you think about the benefits of your own people, you don’t impose policies that attract sanctions,” he added.
Iranians themselves are pointing the finger at their leaders, analyst Holly Dagres said.
“You’re hearing chants from retirees, you’re hearing labor unions saying enough — stop blaming sanctions and inflation. This is all on you. The West is not the problem here. You’re the problem,” said Dagres, a fellow at the The Washington Institute think tank.
Currency tank
The rial has collapsed to 1,170,000 to the US dollar — or 117,000 tomans on the free market — the weakest in Iran's history.
Iran’s Central Bank Governor blamed the plunge on an “enemy’s psychological war,” but for families, it has meant soaring costs for food, rent, and medicine. The broad scope of the new sanctions, covering oil, banking and dual-use goods, is already eroding purchasing power across the country.
The volatility is also taking a psychological toll.
“People are constantly checking the exchange rate, they’re constantly checking the gold rate,” Dagres said. “It’s like a stock market for them, because they know that tomorrow their bread or their rent or their medicine could cost more.”
The so-called snapback of United Nations sanctions was welcomed on October 1 by the foreign ministers of the G7 countries, joined by the EU’s High Representative.
Tehran was accused of failing to meet its nuclear obligations, and urged to return to direct talks with Washington. The measures restore sweeping restrictions first imposed between 2006 and 2010, which had been lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal.
The United States, European Union, and allies including Canada and Japan have also moved to reimpose their own measures.
Research highlights how devastating such measures have been. Sanctions between 2012 and 2019 shrank Iran’s middle class by up to 28 percentage points compared with a no-sanctions scenario, according to a study by Mohammad Reza Farzanegan of Philipps-Universität Marburg and Nader Habibi of Brandeis University, published in the European Journal of Political Economy.
Sanctions “laid waste” to the very group that once drove reform and moderation in Iran, the authors wrote in an op-ed published by Al Jazeera.
War fears
The sanctions appear to deepen an impasse that may culminate in more war.
"The specter of war is still on Iran. Iranian airspace is still under control of Israel and the United States, Ghodsi said. "Either the Iranian government will try to resolve all these issues or the tensions will escalate soon."
Dagres said average Iranians are fearful of another war and its attendant death and displacement, but Tehran's hard line hard line may augur another conflict.
"To me, it seems like things are not changing in the view of the Islamic Republic. And the way that things are going, it does look like a path to confrontation."
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Prosecutors said that the man, identified as 27-year-old Maor Kringel, was arrested in August after more than a year of carrying out espionage missions for Iranian agents.
According to the indictment, Kringel had been in contact with individuals acting on behalf of Tehran from mid-2024 until his arrest.
Prosecutors allege he knowingly worked under the direction of Iranian agents, receiving payments in cryptocurrency in exchange for carrying out tasks.
Court documents allege he documented dozens of sensitive sites across Israel — including ports, shopping centers, private homes, municipal buildings and government institutions.
The Iranian handler also offered him $30,000 to assassinate his own commander but he did not carry out the assignment.
However, prosecutors say the reservist used his military position to provide Iranian handlers with the locations of army bases and also photographed the Shin Bet headquarters to pass on to them.
Kringel is officially charged with aiding an enemy during wartime, 26 counts of sharing intelligence that could assist the enemy and 12 counts of sharing intelligence with the enemy with the intent to harm national security, according to Israeli media.
Israeli security forces have also arrested Kringel's associate Tal Amram, 26. He was recruited by Kringel and connected with Iranian agents. Prosecutors say the two Holon residents even burned IDF uniforms together in a grove in the city.
Another Israeli citizen charged with spying for Iran
In a separate case, Israel’s Shin Bet security agency and police said on Friday an Israeli citizen was arrested on suspicion of gathering intelligence for Iran while working at a hotel near the Dead Sea.
The 23-year-old allegedly photographed the hotel and surrounding areas, the agencies said. Police said the investigation was ongoing.
The arrests and indictments highlight a growing concern among Israeli authorities over purported Iranian espionage activity.
In the past two years, dozens of suspects have been arrested.
Officials say Kringel’s case is treated as part of a wider campaign by Iran to recruit Israeli citizens and residents for intelligence gathering and sabotage.
Tehran suffered significant intelligence setbacks during the surprise US-Israeli military campaign over the summer, with Israeli-directed drone attacks and air strikes killing nuclear commanders and senior commanders along with hundreds of other military personnel and civilians.
Iran’s intelligence ministry aired a segment on national TV last week displaying information and documents that it says it obtained from Israel’s intelligence apparatus on the Jewish state's nuclear program.
The broadcast featured a series of video files that reportedly contain material from inside Israeli nuclear and other sensitive facilities, including the Dimona site. It also presented alleged details about personnel working on Israel’s nuclear program.
However, the documentary was later criticized and even mocked by both Islamic Republic loyalists and dissidents who said many of the pictures shown in the documentary as original materials were already publicly available.
