Reformist ex-president says most Iranians focus on life, not politics
Iran’s former president Mohammad Khatami said most people in the country are more concerned with living their lives amid worsening economic conditions than with who governs them.
Iran’s former president Mohammad Khatami said most people in the country are more concerned with living their lives amid worsening economic conditions than with who governs them.
“Eighty percent of the Iranian people are not political in a certain sense, and it does not matter much to them who governs or how; they only want to live and to have security and a clearer outlook for the future,” Khatami said.
He said the country has never experienced a situation as severe as the one it faces now, with challenges and threats unlike anything seen since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Khatami compared Iran’s governing system to “a sturdy tree” that had long endured hardship but now faced mounting dangers.
“This sturdy tree may be able to withstand drought and storms for many years, but today the internal and external threats and problems are so vast and significant that there is a fear this sturdy tree may suddenly wither and collapse, may that day never come,” he said.
Economic hardship
The former reformist president's remarks come as the government struggles to contain and widening poverty.
According to Iran's Parliament’s Research Center, over a third of Iranians live in poverty.
Rising inflation and a weakening currency have helped drive up costs of living in Iran and economic pain has deepened as Western and European-triggered international sanctions compound the country's international isolation.
Earlier this month, a senior economist at Iran's Ahvaz University, Morteza Afghah, warned that annual inflation could exceed 60% by the end of the Iranian calendar year (March 2026).
Surveys say otherwise
Last week, a survey by Tehran-based news site Rouydad24 found that 92% of Iranians are unhappy with the country’s direction.
“What is clear is that total public satisfaction with all governments since the revolution is now overshadowed by a 92 percent dissatisfaction with the country’s current situation,” Rouydad24 said.
According to the outlet, the level of satisfaction with Khatami's successor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s administration was highest overall, while those of Hassan Rouhani and Masoud Pezeshkian ranked lowest.
Another survey conducted by a Netherlands-based polling institute last year found that the majority of Iranians would vote for either a regime change or a structural transition away from the Islamic Republic.
The Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran (GAMAAN), which conducted the survey in June 2024, said it polled more than 77,000 respondents inside Iran, weighting the results to represent the literate adult population.
“A majority of the population opposes the Islamic Republic and supports changing or transforming the political system,” the report’s author Ammar Maleki said.
Only around 20 percent of respondents want the Islamic Republic to remain in power, according to the survey.
The survey found no single consensus on what system should replace the current order. A secular republic was backed by 26 percent of respondents, while 21 percent supported a monarchy.
Another 22 percent said they lacked enough information to decide, and 11 percent said that the form of an alternative system was not important so long as change occurred.
Tehran’s unveiling of a towering statue depicting the Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling before pre-Islamic Persian King Shapur I has renewed criticism of the Islamic Republic’s appeal to nationalist sentiment following the June war with Israel.
For over forty years, the theocracy purged ancient Persian history from schoolbooks, replacing it with post-Islamic narratives. But after the 12-day conflict with Israel, officials have turned to the distant pre-Islamic past to rally a divided society.
From murals of ancient kings and soldiers to patriotic songs added to Shi’ite mourning ceremonies performed before Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Tehran now embraces imagery once deemed heretical by its own revolutionary ethos.
'Kneel before Iran' campaign
Tehran’s Revolution (Enghelab) Square was the scene of an unusual spectacle on Friday as officials unveiled a massive bronze statue depicting Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling in submission before Sassanid King Shapur I, commemorating Iran’s victory at the Battle of Edessa (260 AD).
The event was held under the slogan “Kneel before Iran,” part of what authorities describe as a campaign to project “national unity and historical pride” following the June war with Israel.
Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, a staunch ultraconservative, said on X: “Enmity with Great Iran can only end in kneeling before this historic nation.”
Municipal official Davood Goodarzi said the installation would be accompanied by visual displays depicting “other victories of Iranians over foreign aggressors,” including the defeat of British forces by local commander Rais-Ali Delvari, Mirza Kuchak Khan’s resistance against Russian troops, and Surena’s triumph over Rome at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE.
The goal, Goodarzi said, is “strengthening concepts such as national dignity, social unity, and Iranian identity.”
The statue, he said, would remain temporarily at Revolution Square before being moved to a city gateway “where it will stand as the first emblem of Iran before diplomats and foreign visitors.”
Unveiled women were allowed to attend the unveiling ceremony—an uncommon scene at events organized by Tehran’s ultra-hardline municipality.
The turn to the pre-Islamic past
The sharp reversal also recalls remarks once made by Khamenei. In a 2011 speech, he asserted that “all the great military victories of this nation came after Islam,” dismissing pre-Islamic accounts as “things that are not documented.”
In 1987, he had said that prophets triumphed over kings such as Cyrus and that “nothing remains of these monarchs in history but names remembered with derision.”
Nevertheless, pro-government social media accounts have now gone so far as to circulate posters equating Khamenei himself with Shapur, showing him standing with a staff as Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump kneel before him. The caption reads: “You will kneel before Iran.”
'Hypocrisy'
Pro-government figures have hailed the move as a patriotic success. Conservative political reporter Hossein Saremi posted: “Today’s grand Iranian gathering showed that people and the state share one essence: Iran itself. Nothing can take our homeland away.”
Others, however, called the spectacle “hypocrisy.” Journalist Gholamhossein Pashaei wrote on X: “Every year you close Pasargadae to stop people from celebrating Cyrus Day, yet you unveil Shapur’s statue in Enghelab Square with drums and fireworks during Fatimiyya (mourning period)!”
Dissident commentator Hamid Asafi called the ceremony “a perfect snapshot of the Islamic Republic’s contradictions.”
On Telegram he wrote: “A week ago they closed Cyrus’s tomb out of fear of the crowds, and now they glorify Shapur in the same breath. The Islamic Republic fears living history but poses for selfies with its corpse.”
He added: “They know people no longer respond to rosaries and sermons. That’s why they’ve brought history back to the stage—in a controlled costume. If they can’t erase the past, they’ll try to own it.”
The irony deepened as UNESCO formally recognized Cyrus’s Charter as one of the earliest human-rights documents.
President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X: “Iran, the cradle of dialogue, justice, and coexistence, can still inspire peace today.”
Users swiftly replied, questioning how such pride could coexist with a government that blocks access to Cyrus’s tomb each year to those wishing to visit it on his birthday.