Iran International
Some of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s supporters are now openly warning that Iran is headed toward crisis that could threaten the political system itself, with a growing number arguing that the president should resign.
Aside from lifting censorship of WhatsApp and resisting enforcement of compulsory hijab laws, most of Pezeshkian’s campaign pledges remain unrealized.
Even on the sensitive issue of the hijab, his refusal to formally implement a hardline law has not halted pressure from radical factions, which have been pushing to regain the lost ground in recent weeks.
At the same time, the deepening impact of sanctions—which Pezeshkian had hoped to remove through direct dialogue with the West—and the almost daily decline in the value of the national currency have pushed conditions to a point where many say society could erupt at any moment.
Disillusionment is no longer confined to critics outside Pezeshkian’s original support base. Some of his former backers are now openly questioning whether he can continue in office at all.
Prominent sociologist Taghi Azad-Armaki, speaking to the website Khabar Online, stated bluntly that he hopes Pezeshkian will remain a one-term president.
“Mr. Pezeshkian is in unity with the heads of the three branches of government, all are aligned with the Supreme Leader, and power has effectively been consolidated to govern the country. However, this alignment has not resulted in broader national, social or regional cohesion,” he said.
“It would actually be a positive development for the ruling establishment … to finally put an end to the elections altogether—to abolish elections, and for the Leader and the ruling establishment to choose a president themselves, that there is a coup so that people could be freed from the current situation,” Azad-Armaki said.
Pezeshkian has one backer who's power is beyond match, however: Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The 86-year old theocrat who has ultimate power over all Iranian decisions foreign and domestic has praised him repeatedly in recent speeches.
The office of the presidency has historically provided Khamenei a heat shield from criticism and allows the supreme leader to avoid messy arguments over governance even as officials are constrained by his policies.
Among the most influential voices sounding the alarm on Pezeshkian is Abbas Abdi, a prominent reformist commentator.
Referring to persistent attacks on the government, along with fragmentation and passivity within it, Abdi said in an interview with Eco Iran earlier this month that only if the deadlock is acknowledged and “a decision is made somewhere (above) to change course” could the crisis be overcome.
Without such a shift, he suggested, the next year could be deeply destabilizing for the system. He reiterated similar concerns on the online program Strategic Dialogue, warning that the continuation of a suspended posture toward Israel, combined with the absence of meaningful internal reforms, could trigger a renewed wave of domestic protests.
Abdi’s remarks prompted a sharp response from the Revolutionary Guards-linked newspaper Javan, which accused him of implicitly shifting blame for the government’s failure to implement reforms onto the “system” itself, meaning the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Undeterred, Abdi doubled down last week in an op-ed published in Etemad, defending his prediction that “events outside the will of the system” would occur if the current trajectory continued.
Calls for resignation
Public frustration has increasingly spilled onto social media, particularly after the recent sharp fall in the value of the rial. Hardliners accuse Pezeshkian of incompetence, while disillusioned supporters argue that if structural constraints prevent him from acting, he should step aside.
A user named Saeed wrote on X: “Either you have been allowed to work, in which case you must be accountable for these crushing price increases, or you have not been allowed to work, in which case you must have the courage to tell the people and resign!”
“It’s best to resign before public anger reaches its peak and the people’s patience runs out. We have had enough; we are at our breaking point,” another user, Shirkoohi, posted on X.
“You may not understand the meaning of poverty, misery, and livelihood, but surely by now you should have understood the meaning of the 1979 revolution and the sound of an approaching revolution,” he added.
“I wish all officials would resign collectively and make the Iranian people happy… An entirely corrupt and flawed system needs fundamental change, not the replacement of one individual,” another user posting as Ali Shomali wrote.
So why have millions of Iranians chosen to endure the hardship of life far from home rather than remain under the Islamic Republic?
This report draws on official United Nations figures for Iranian refugees and asylum seekers, which begin in 1980 – about a year into the Islamic Revolution.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) published no figures for Iranian refugees or asylum seekers before 1980, although UNHCR has been collecting refugee statistics since 1951.
Before the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, there were no recorded asylum cases, aside from scholarship students and legal Iranian migrants.
There are, however, personal accounts involving a small number of members of the Tudeh Party – a pro-Soviet Iranian communist party – who fled to the former Soviet Union. One such account concerns Ataollah Safavi, a former Tudeh Party member who, after fleeing to the Soviet Union, was sent to Siberian forced labor camps.
First decade: War years under Khomeini’s leadership
The first wave of Iranian asylum began in 1980. Shortly after the Islamic Republic was established, Iranians could still migrate relatively easily using passports issued under the previous government.
In this period, a large number of Iranians traveled legally to the United States.
From 1980, the registration of Iranian asylum seekers began with 44 cases, marking the start of a trend that would accelerate through the decade.
The first ten years, from 1980 to 1989, coincided with the eight-year Iran–Iraq war, the presidency of Ali Khamenei, and the premiership of Mirhossein Mousavi, while Ruhollah Khomeini served as Supreme Leader.
Over that decade, more than 312,000 Iranians were registered as refugees, according to United Nations data.
The peak came in 1985, when more than 88,000 refugees were recorded in a single year – the highest annual total of the decade.
Second decade: Khamenei takes charge
In 1989, Ali Khamenei began his tenure as Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani took office as president – ushering in what Iran’s official political language calls the “reconstruction” era, a term used for the post–Iran-Iraq war drive to rebuild state capacity and the economy.
By the end of Rafsanjani’s presidency, inflation compared to his first year was up 478%, and the record for Iran’s annual inflation is still attributed to his government at more than 49%.
Against that economic backdrop, the trend in Iranian asylum intensified.
Over the 1990–1999 period, nearly 1.06 million Iranians were registered as refugees, with the peak in 1991, when 130,000 refugees were recorded.
After 1997 – often described in Iran as the start of the “reform era” – the pace of refugee registrations eased for a time, falling to below 100,000 a year.
Third decade: Reform and Ahmadinejad
In 1997, the election of Mohammad Khatami ushered in a period often described as Iran’s “reform” era, bringing a measure of optimism to parts of Iranian society.
During the first three years of Khatami’s presidency, the number of Iranians registered as refugees and asylum seekers declined modestly, before reversing course and rising again.
From 2000 to 2009, nearly 1.1 million Iranians were registered as refugees or asylum seekers, although some cases initially recorded as asylum claims may have been reclassified as refugee status in subsequent years.
A similar pattern emerged under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose early presidency also saw a year-on-year decline in asylum registrations. That trend, however, reversed after his first two years in office.
In 2009, as protests known as the Green Movement erupted following Iran’s disputed presidential election, refugee and asylum registrations reached their highest level of the decade.
Fourth decade: Nuclear tensions and the JCPOA
In the decade spanning 2010 to 2019, Iran’s migration pressures unfolded alongside an increasingly fraught nuclear dispute and repeated economic shocks.
Unlike earlier periods, the trend in Iranian asylum did not ease after Hassan Rouhani took office in 2013, remaining on an upward path even after the JCPOA – the 2015 nuclear accord formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – was signed between Tehran and world powers.
After Donald Trump became US president in 2017, asylum registrations by Iranians rose sharply, reflecting the renewed strain that followed his administration’s tougher posture toward Tehran.
The same period also coincided with the rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, adding another layer of regional instability.
Over the decade as a whole, around 1.5 million Iranians were registered as refugees or asylum seekers.
From Bloody November 2019 to today
“Bloody Aban” is the term commonly used by Iranians to refer to the November 2019 crackdown on nationwide protests, an episode that marked a turning point in the country’s recent political and economic trajectory.
From 2020, Iran’s economic conditions deteriorated further, adding to pressures already created by sanctions and domestic mismanagement.
In the years following 2019, the overall trend in Iranian asylum and refugee registrations moved upward, with the exception of 2022, when the numbers temporarily eased.
This period was also shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic, which compounded existing strains.
In Iran, pandemic-related restrictions were imposed in 2019 and were fully lifted in 2022.
Across the six years that followed, 1,266,000 people were registered as asylum seekers or refugees.
One in every 15 Iranians lives outside Iran
United Nations data show that trends in Iranian asylum do not closely track changes of administrations in Tehran, suggesting that leaving the country has been driven more by long-term structural pressures than by shifts between governments.
There is no single, definitive figure for the total number of Iranians living abroad.
Domestic sources such as Iran’s Migration Observatory estimate the number of Iranian migrants at around two million.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry places the figure at about four million, a total that includes people born in Iran as well as a second generation born abroad.
Even so, UN data show that from 1980, when registrations of Iranian asylum seekers began, until today, 5,183,000 Iranians have been registered as asylum seekers or refugees, reflecting the scale of forced or protection-based departures over more than four decades. Of that total, nearly 4,142,000 are recorded as refugees.
Taken together with estimates that nearly two million Iranians have also left the country through legal migration, the combined figures point to a stark conclusion: roughly one in every 15 Iranians now lives outside the country.
From the outside, Iran’s migration story can appear singular. In reality, it spans legal migration and forced displacement, driven by a combination of economic pressure and political anxiety.
Many Iranians describe the same trade-off: accepting language barriers, unfamiliar cultures, and separation from family in exchange for the belief that staying offers little stability or future.
