Iran International
A prominent academic’s assertion that many of Iran’s problems stem from “the dominance of the economically weak class” in governance has stoked outrage in a country whose theocracy bills itself as a champion of the downtrodden.
In a recent interview, Mahmood Sariolghalam, a US-educated professor of international relations at Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University, argued that senior positions should not be held by individuals from the country’s lower economic strata.
“No one from the lower economic strata should be allowed to become foreign minister or finance minister,” he said, adding that such posts require the “expertise and rational capacity of the mind.”
Sariolghalam, who held senior roles at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies under presidents Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani, framed the remarks as an analysis of development patterns rather than a social judgment.
Critics from across the spectrum accused him of class discrimination, delegitimizing the political agency of Iran’s poor and promoting an elitist technocratic worldview.
But others were more sympathetic as many observers have questioned Tehran's management of deepening diplomatic, economic and resource challenges.
For decades since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, positions of authority from local officials to the presidency have often been filled by loyal cadres often drawn from poorer demographics.
Under pressure, Sariolghalam told the reformist Ensaf News his remarks had been distorted, insisting he had highlighted the developmental role of the middle class, not the poor.
“The middle class matters not only in financial terms but also for its intellectual, educational, and investment-oriented capacities,” he said, citing Japan as an example of middle-class resilience.
‘Oligarchy’
Experts have cited the dangers of sanctions and economic mismanagement to Iran's middle class, which economists and political scientists often view as a key source of dynamism in society.
International academics Mohammad Reza Farzanegan and Nader Habibi published research in the European Journal of Political Economy in which they said sanctions on Iran had decimated the middle class and the political benefits it could bring.
"The sanctions regime on Iran was far from being a surgical strike; instead, it was a sledgehammer that smashed the very group that represents the best hope for a more moderate and stable future," they wrote in an editorial on Al-Jazeera.
In a front-page editorial titled “The Savior Class,” the centrist daily Sazandegi defended Sariolghalam's tack.
“The emphasis on the ‘middle class’ … is not meant to suggest economic superiority,” it wrote, but to underline the need for “security, mental order and relief from livelihood pressures” for sound decision-making.
The paper argued he was criticizing systems that allow “individuals who lack intellectual, managerial, or mental qualifications” into key posts.
A group of academics echoed that defense, arguing governance failures stem from the rise of opportunistic figures who wield power to “compensate for their own life shortcomings.”
Hardline outlets reacted fiercely. Several accused Sariolghalam of equating poverty with “mental deficiency” and advocating a “technocratic oligarchy” at odds with the Islamic Republic’s valorization of the mostaz’afin — often translated as “the dispossessed.”
“The downtrodden and the barefooted are expected to endure a bleak fate… while the aristocrats and the affluent… sit upon their backs and rule over them,” the IRGC-linked Javan proclaimed.
State to blame
Conservative daily Khorasan accused Sariolghalam of shifting blame for failed engagement with the West onto the “lower classes.”
Conservative media also tied the remarks to former president Hassan Rouhani, casting them as part of broader ideological failings among Iran’s technocratic current.
“The mind behind Rouhani’s thinking,” as Mehr News branded Sariolghalam, had exposed “one of the deepest intellectual flaws” of Iran’s centrists: that only they know how to run a country.
Some moderate voices pointed out that the ferocity of the debate revealed deeper structural problems.
Journalist Ahmad Zeidabadi argued in Ham-Mihan that Tehran’s decades-long, excessive rhetorical defense of the poor had created conditions in which “Sariolghalam’s repulsive statement has somehow gained acceptance.”
Speaking at a ceremony marking Student Day, Pezeshkian addressed the controversy surrounding the preferential access system, which drew widespread criticism after a November update to X revealed that numerous journalists, officials and pro-government figures were using unfiltered connections.
“We have instructed that these white internet lines be turned black as well, to show what will happen to people if this blackness continues,” he said.
Pezeshkian has repeatedly promised to lift filtering, a key pledge of his 2024 presidential campaign. On Sunday, he again suggested that political constraints lie beyond his control. “It is not enough for me to simply order the lifting of filtering. If it could be solved by instruction, we would have done it on the first day,” he said.
The comments came as government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said that the administration seeks “free internet for all,” despite saying last year that no such promise had been made. Instagram, X, Telegram, and some other platforms remain blocked more than a year into Pezeshkian’s term.
A stalled pledge
Filtering reform was central to Pezeshkian’s campaign, when he said he would “risk his neck” to fix it. Yet in his first meeting of the Supreme Cyberspace Council he emphasized implementing the Supreme Leader’s directives on internet governance rather than easing restrictions and ordered action against the flourishing trade in VPNs.
Since then, senior officials have offered varying timelines. In December, Majid Farahani from the presidential office said filtering would be removed in three phases by the end of the year. The newspaper Farhikhtegan later reported consensus among Iran’s three branches of government to move from blocking toward “smart restrictions,” indicating the system is being recalibrated rather than dismantled.
Public anger intensified after revelations of the white SIM scheme, which critics said exposed a tiered access system contradicting the government’s rhetoric about digital equality.
