Iran protest anthem crooner takes heat for official license on debut album

Internal contestation is harsher than at any time in recent memory, with competing factions trying to preserve or redefine their place in a system that has lost the capacity for reform or institutional expansion.

Yet Iran's nearly 50-year-old theocracy persists, compensating for poor governance with stiff security control and the careful redistribution of shrinking resources.

Just as authorities have slackened enforcement of Islamic social rules, allowing unveiled women and open-air concerts in public, it has stepped up a crackdown on political dissent and alleged spies.

Opposing this order are three forces whose interaction with the securitized state produces neither fundamental change nor imminent collapse, but something closer to endurance through erosion.

Those are: people inside Iran fighting localized economic and professional battles without organized networks, an exiled opposition adept at narrative and symbolism but detached from lived realities inside Iran and foreign actors committed to curbing Tehran’s nuclear and regional strength but not to toppling it.

One system, many channels

The Islamic Republic is structured around the Supreme Leader, whose authority ultimately resolves all major decisions. Around this axis sits an intricate constellation of parallel institutions, security councils, loyalty networks and overlapping hierarchies.

Policymaking is multi-layered. But decision-making is ultimately his sole prerogative.

President Masoud Pezeshkian recently issued a telling statement that unmanageable infighting would ensure should Ali Khamenei somehow exit the scene. It underscores a basic fear: without the Leader’s centrality, the power networks would drift apart.

Nothing illustrates this better than the way “system” is used interchangeably for both the political order and the leader himself.

Khamenei functions less as the manager of a unified apparatus than as the referee of internal conflicts. The state bureaucracy is not the engine of governance but one node among political, security and economic bodies each pursuing their own interests.

The 12-day war intensified these fissures. The removal of influential IRGC figures disrupted long-standing balances and sharpened factional sensitivities.

The Babak Zanjani affair illuminates the power politics at play.

Sprung with little explanation from a death sentence for corruption, the disgraced tycoon now not only walks free but weighs in regularly on politics, even appearing to threaten former President Hassan Rouhani with death in a tweet this week.

Such a rapid rehabilitation could not occur without powerful establishment backing.

Unorganized discontent

The war’s economic toll—passed on to society through inflationary policies—has deepened hardship and widened discontent. Iran’s society today is in ferment but unorganized: protests erupt across workplaces and cities, but without intermediary institutions they remain local and short-lived.

A recent nurses’ strike in Mashhad, much like the truck drivers’ strike before it this spring, showed the pattern clearly: strong anger, weak connective tissue.

The labor market’s collapse into unstable, platform-based work illustrates a society living in permanent emergency. Eight million rideshare drivers do not prove total collapse, but they reveal a mass shift toward insecure livelihoods.

Economic stress drains the psychological capacity for sustained organization; survival overrides solidarity.

Provincial centers skew toward economic protests, while peripheral regions experience conflict mainly through security confrontation.

The recurring demolition of homes in Baluchistan in southeastern Iran is one example of a strategy that provokes local resistance but rarely ratchets up because no networks link periphery grievances to central demands.

Inside Iran, opposition forces function like isolated islands. Outside, the opposition produces abundant media output but struggles to translate daily grievances into a shared political language.

The gap between “voice” abroad and “life” inside has produced an opposition that amplifies frustrations but does not alter the balance of power.

Survival on the edge

The Islamic Republic continues not as an effective state but as a mechanism that defers crises day by day. Security has replaced policy; the cost of maintaining power rises constantly as the quality of governance decays.

The system persists because no countervailing power with organizational depth has yet emerged.

European-triggered international sanctions and intermittent threats from the United States and Israel show that containment—not internal transformation—may be the ultimate priority from outside powers.

External pressure accelerates economic and infrastructural decay but cannot substitute for domestic political change.

For the West, Iran remains a security file, not a political project.

Foreign actors may accelerate or intensify pressure, but the indispensable condition for change is alignment between internal and external forces around a shared language and objective.

Until such convergence forms, the Islamic Republic will remain in a state of endurance through erosion—able to enforce the status quo even as it becomes less capable of maintaining stability or basic services.

Mohammadreza Mahdizadeh, head of Tehran Province Blood Transfusion, said the capital needs about 1,500 units a day but donations have slipped to roughly 1,100–1,200, creating a daily gap that erodes inventories.

He said mobile teams that previously collected at government offices cannot operate effectively because many staff are working from home, and even where teams can visit, “only one-third of employees are on site,” limiting volunteers.

He added that expected rain later this week typically depresses visits further.

Nationwide stocks stand at about 33,000 units – equal to 4.8 days of supply – but Tehran’s cover has fallen to 3.4 days, according to Babak Yektaperast, acting social affairs deputy at the national blood service.

He said advances in surgery and routine organ transplants have raised structural demand for blood products, widening the impact when donor turnout dips.

Yektaperast said air pollution is not, by itself, a barrier to giving blood, adding that high-risk groups such as children, the elderly, pregnant women and people with underlying diseases are already exempt from donating under blood service protocols.

“Some people may experience throat or eye irritation or chest pain from pollution, and we advise them not to donate,” he said, adding that most healthy adults remain eligible.

He said smog still depresses visits because residents prefer to stay home, while polluted days also bring more hospital admissions for conditions such as cardiac problems, upsetting the balance between donations and demand.

Daily, about 7,500 units are donated nationwide and 7,000 distributed, he said.

Mahdizadeh urged residents – “especially women and young people” – to treat donation as an essential errand during smog alerts and to check the provincial website for collection site hours.

Other provinces report pressure too. In Mazandaran, influenza and seasonal colds have sharply reduced donor turnout across all blood groups, the provincial blood service chief said on Wednesday.

Structural needs also weigh in the southeast. Sistan-Baluchestan has around 3,400 thalassemia patients who together require roughly 8,000 units a month, Yektaperast said, adding that accidents and other emergencies further strain local stocks.

Iran International asked ordinary shoppers in Iran to share their experiences of price hikes, the falling value of money, and the daily affordability challenges they face. A series of videos, audio clips, and text messages show mounting hardships.

Relentless price increases and runaway inflation have pushed families to the brink, forcing many to fight to survive rather than live any kind of normal life.

Their messages describe thinning shelves, collapsing purchasing power, and a growing sense that while ordinary people sink deeper into hardship, only profiteers and those connected to power continue to thrive.

“Everything is expensive and people are exhausted from all this inflation. There are no sales, businesses are dead. Only a miracle can save us from this situation,” one message said.

“In Iran, the government doesn’t care about these problems. Right now there is no business. Even if you work 24 hours a day, you’ll still come up short at the end of the month – unless you earn 3 million tomans (about $25) a day, which almost no one does, perhaps only 10% of the population,” another message said. Average Iranian income is about 100 to $150 per month.

Purchasing power

Local media tracking shows that in the past year, food prices in Iran have risen by an average of more than 66%.

Bread and grains are up 100%, fruits and nuts 108%, vegetables 69%, beverages 68%, fish and seafood 52%, and dairy products like milk, cheese and eggs 48%.

“Small retailers are either shut down or semi-closed because prices rise daily and the purchasing power of the middle class and the poor has completely collapsed. Only profiteers and those connected to the corrupt government benefit,” one message said.

“Prices for food, clothing, medicine, doctor visits, car parts – everything – are extremely high. Ninety percent of people fight just to survive, not to live.”

Daily rise

Other messages said conditions worsened after the 12-day war with Israel in June and the subsequent return of UN sanctions.

“I swear I haven’t bought red meat for a year. Same with chicken. After the 12-day war, I lost my job and my wife and children left me,” one message said.

Based on the accounts, some families have eliminated dairy except for cheese, stopped buying seasonal clothing, and cut out snacks entirely.

Dining out, visiting coffee shops, and even holding family gatherings have all but disappeared. For many, buying birthday gifts for children is no longer possible.

“This is our situation as a semi-affluent family above the poverty line. I can’t even imagine what life is like for those below it,” another message said.

The paper said interruptions in care have intensified feelings of helplessness, despair and the recurrence of mental health symptoms among those unable to continue.

While the official psychotherapy tariff for the current Iranian year, which began in late March, is set at 5,000,000 to 6,200,000 rials ($4–$5) per session, actual prices in Tehran range from 10,000,000 to 50,000,000 rials ($8–$42), the report said.

It added that the minimum monthly wage for a married worker with two children is about 163,000,000 rials (around $137), while the average monthly income nationwide is 240,000,000 to 250,000,000 rials ($202–$210).

At these income levels, each therapy session costs the equivalent of one-third to one-fifth of a monthly salary for middle- and lower-income households.

Ham-Mihan’s report said that to respond to rising demand, the government has expanded a network of community mental-health centres known as Seraj, with about 100 centres now operating nationwide offering basic support.

However, it added that these centers do not offer psychotherapy and that coverage remains uneven and capacity limited, particularly outside major cities, forcing many patients toward the more expensive private sector.

The report cited a national study published this summer by Iran’s National Institute of Health Research found that 62.5% of people with psychiatric disorders felt they needed treatment in 2021–22, but only 35.7% received services — a rate unchanged from a decade earlier.

Cost was one of the main barriers, alongside stigma and the belief that symptoms would resolve without professional help.

Last December, Iran’s Health Ministry said one in four people in the country suffers from a psychiatric disorder, almost double the global estimate of one in eight according to World Health Organization (WHO) mental-health data.

Global data show Iran carries a heavier mental-health burden than the world average, with mental disorders accounting for 10.3% of total disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) in 2019 compared with roughly 8% globally, according to the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD), published by the UK-based medical journal The Lancet.

Meanwhile, last November, Iranian authorities announced plans to open a treatment clinic for women who defy the country's compulsory hijab rules.

The initiative, announced by Mehri Talebi Darestani, head of the Women and Family Department at the Tehran Headquarters for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, would offer what she described as “scientific and psychological treatment for hijab removal,” signaling the government’s focus on behavioral enforcement even as access to mental-health care remains limited.

The controversy erupted after a recent update on social media platform X rendered the location from which users operated visible.

Those whose location was listed as Iran and not a third country, scrambled by a VPN, appeared to have unfettered access.

In Iran, the new feature exposed that thousands of officials, lawmakers, political activists, journalist and even some pro-government artists, had uncensored internet—even during full national shutdowns.

Critics describe internet in Iran as “tiered," with a hierarchy of favored voices given greater freedom via so-called “white SIMs”, or government issued phone cards with carte blanche to navigate the internet.

'Distrust, discrimination'

Communication researcher Saeed Arkanzadeh-Yazdi told the Shafaqna news outlet that the revelations have generated “an unprecedented wave of collective anger,” clearly visible in the online backlash.

“The distrust toward politicians and activists, and the resentment over the discrimination ... is far greater than what we see on social media,” he said, singling out journalists, whose standing in the public eye, he said, was deeply harmed by the affair.

Some journalists defended the use of the privileged SIM cards while condemning limitations imposed on the public.

Reformist columnist Abbas Abdi—a long-time opponent of internet filtering—said he had openly acknowledged his access years ago. But in an article in Etemad daily, he argued that the benefit itself had been misunderstood.

“In fact, this was not a privilege for journalists," Abdi wrote. "They exempted journalists from a punishment from which everyone should have been exempt … If the exemption required some kind of commitment, then the act should be condemned.”

'Soft-war fighters'

Some with White SIMs were even more direct in defending their privilege.

“Unfiltered internet is not a personal privilege," hardline commentator Abdollah Ganji posted on X. "It is a decision by past and present governments to equip the fighters of the soft war.”

Just as the government is obliged to strengthen the armed forces, he wrote, “for example by helping to develop the Revolutionary Guard's missile program," it must also equip “the frontline warriors of the soft, cognitive and hybrid war."

More backlash

Reformist media figure Isa Saharkhiz rebuked Abdi’s defense in a post on Telegram, asking whether journalists should have chosen solidarity with the public.

“Could the correct, principled and law-abiding behavior not have been to self-sanction until the majority of society was freed from these restrictions?” he wrote.

Political activist Zeinab Zaman wrote on X: “Friends with white SIM cards: if X hadn’t introduced this feature, you would have continued silently. Any explanation now only worsens your image. You accepted this discrimination in silence.”

Journalist Mohammad Raei-Fard called the privileged SIM cards “an insult to the people,” in a post on X, arguing the government had turned internet access into yet another class privilege.

Apologies under pressure

Public backlash has pushed some journalists to apologize.

Reporter Somaye Baghi expressed remorse and promised to request that her access be revoked. She revealed that her SIM was unfiltered “a few weeks after the 12-Day War,” but said she now sees the ethical dimension more clearly.

“I benefited from an unequal privilege. I viewed it as a tool for journalism, but now I know it is also a moral issue,” she posted on X.

Baghi stressed that although she neither requested nor gained access through political connections, she had accepted it. “In Iran’s non-transparent system, any special access becomes questionable — and such criticism is legitimate.”