Iran's costly farewell for supreme leader draws backlash

The report shows a sharp slowdown in the growth of electricity generation and natural gas production at a time when Iran faces widening shortages of both.

Iran’s energy demand has continued to rise, driven by population growth, industrial consumption and heavily subsidized domestic prices. Analysts estimate the country needs annual increases of around 7% in electricity generation and 5% in natural gas production simply to keep pace with demand.

Years of underinvestment, delayed infrastructure projects and international sanctions, however, have left supply lagging behind consumption, creating electricity and gas shortages exceeding 20% during peak periods.

According to the Energy Institute, Iran generated nearly 399 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity last year, an increase of only 1% from the previous year. Natural gas production rose by just 1.3%, reaching approximately 265 billion cubic meters (bcm).

The figures represent a sharp break from the previous decade, when Iran’s natural gas production expanded by more than 5% annually and electricity generation grew by roughly 4% a year.

But recent growth of only 1–2% has widened the country’s structural energy deficit and accelerated a remarkable reversal in its regional energy position.

From exporter to importer

As electricity demand reaches its summer peak, Iranian authorities estimate the country faces a power deficit of 15–20%, despite lower industrial consumption following recent military strikes on several petrochemical and steel facilities.

The shortage has become so severe that Iran’s deputy energy minister traveled to Turkey on June 2 to discuss electricity imports.

According to Iran’s Energy Ministry, the country recorded net electricity imports of 1.1 TWh last year—the first time imports exceeded exports. A decade earlier, Iran exported roughly 8 TWh of electricity annually on a net basis and viewed itself as a regional power supplier.

Natural gas exports reveal a similar contradiction. Despite domestic shortages that repeatedly force power plants and industries to reduce consumption during winter, Iran exported 15.4 bcm of natural gas last year.

The future of those exports is increasingly uncertain. Iran’s 25-year gas export agreement with Turkey expires this month, and unless renewed, Iraq will remain Tehran’s only major gas customer.

Even Iraq has faced repeated disruptions in Iranian gas and electricity supplies and is pursuing alternative sources through regional energy connections.

Renewable targets out of reach

The Energy Institute’s report also highlights Iran’s struggle to diversify its electricity sector.

The government planned to add between 5,000 and 7,000 megawatts of new solar and wind capacity during the past year. Only around 1,000 MW entered operation.

As a result, renewable energy has been left with a marginal role in Iran’s power mix despite the country’s significant potential. Iran’s only nuclear power plant, Bushehr, generated 5.4 TWh of electricity last year, accounting for just 1.3% of total generation.

Hydropower has declined even more sharply.

For a second consecutive year, severe drought reduced hydroelectric output, which fell 36% to just 12 TWh. The scale of the decline is striking: Iran generated around 34 TWh of hydropower in 2019 and 23 TWh in 2023.

With reservoir levels continuing to fall and water shortages expected to worsen, hydropower is likely to remain under pressure, increasing reliance on fossil-fuel power plants.

Greenhouse gas emissions rise

Another major finding of the report is the rapid rise in Iran’s greenhouse gas emissions.

For the first time, Iran overtook Japan to become the world’s fifth-largest greenhouse gas emitter, behind only China, the United States, India and Russia.

The comparison is striking. Germany and Turkey—countries with populations similar to Iran’s and economies roughly 18 times and 4.5 times larger, respectively—each emit only about half as much greenhouse gas as Iran.

Iran’s emissions exceeded one billion tonnes for the first time last year.

Chronic natural gas shortages have forced wider use of heavy fuel oil (mazut) in power plants and industrial facilities, while slow renewable deployment, falling hydropower output and limited nuclear capacity have kept Iran heavily dependent on carbon-intensive fuels.

The result is a deepening contradiction: even as Iran faces worsening energy shortages, its greenhouse gas emissions have risen by 31% since 2015, reflecting an increasingly inefficient and carbon-intensive energy system.

The rapid elevation of his son Mojtaba within ten days was intended to close that chapter. Instead, with the new Supreme Leader still absent from public view, it appears to have opened a new one.

Roughly twenty messages attributed to Mojtaba Khamenei since his succession have failed to convince many Iranians that he is truly exercising power.

Efforts by officials and supporters to prove his presence have often been contradictory, deepening rather than resolving the uncertainty.

A growing number of Iran analysts argue that, regardless of Mojtaba’s invisibility, Ali Khamenei has effectively been replaced by a constellation of elite networks built around family ties, wartime relationships dating back to the Iran–Iraq War, and geographic power bases in provinces such as Tehran, Isfahan, Khuzestan and Khorasan.

These networks, spanning civilian officials, senior IRGC commanders, clerics and younger ideological politicians, existed for decades but were ultimately contained by Ali Khamenei’s authority.

One example was the IRGC high command, which repeatedly shifted between officers from Khuzestan and Isfahan during Khamenei’s 38 years in power, before he appointed Hossein Salami from the Golpayegan region in April 2019 in what many saw as an attempt to contain an increasingly damaging rivalry.

The old reformist–conservative divide has largely faded. Following former President Ebrahim Raisi’s “purification” project, Iran’s political landscape is increasingly shaped by competition between what parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has described as “revolutionaries” and “super-revolutionaries.”

The shift has been so dramatic that even Hossein Shariatmadari, the outspoken editor of the hardline daily Kayhan and long seen as a symbol of uncompromising conservatism, is now warning against threats to national cohesion and criticizing hardliners opposing the agreement with the United States.

The struggle in Tehran is no longer over whether engagement with Washington is acceptable. Instead, competing factions are trying to claim ownership of the decision to negotiate.

Even some hardliners who until late June accused pragmatists such as Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi of seeking talks with “the killer of Khamenei” now argue that Iran must secure its financial interests through an understanding with Washington, even if that requires delaying decisions on parts of its nuclear program.

The most uncompromising factions inside and around the IRGC have argued that Iran’s priority should now be preserving its missile program as its remaining strategic asset.

Yet figures including MP Esmail Kowsary and Supreme National Security Council secretary Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr continue to insist Iran must also seek revenge for Khamenei’s killing.

In Mojtaba Khamenei’s continued absence, networks that once operated beneath Ali Khamenei’s centralized and uncompromising decision-making appear to be competing to define the future direction of the Islamic Republic — and to claim ownership of the very diplomatic opening many of them opposed only days earlier.

The video from the landfill in Talesh shows cattle roaming through piles of refuse, including hospital waste, highlighting the apparent lack of effective segregation, containment and disposal measures for hazardous materials.

Hazardous waste enters food chain

Hospital waste ranks among the most dangerous categories of refuse because it can contain infectious materials, contaminated equipment, sharp objects and hazardous chemicals. Allowing livestock to graze in direct contact with such waste, according to the report, raises concerns that contaminants could spread through meat, milk and other agricultural products consumed by people.

The footage also points to broader shortcomings in landfill management beyond the presence of medical waste. Open dumping without effective isolation, daily cover or barriers preventing animal access leaves waste exposed to livestock, wildlife and the surrounding environment.

Such conditions, Rokna wrote, can contaminate soil, generate polluted leachate that may seep into groundwater, attract disease-carrying insects and animals, and release foul odors and harmful gases. When cattle graze freely in these areas, the potential for biological and chemical contaminants to enter the food chain increases.

The risks, based on the report, are particularly acute in Talesh, where mountains, forests, farmland, residential areas and the Caspian Sea lie in close proximity, allowing pollution to spread more rapidly through interconnected ecosystems.

Environmental and public health concerns

Environmental degradation extends beyond the immediate health risks. Large volumes of uncovered waste can damage natural habitats, reduce land quality and increase the likelihood of contaminants spreading into surrounding soil and water resources, added the report.

The conditions documented by Rokna also suggest failures in basic waste management practices, including separating hazardous medical waste from ordinary refuse, safely treating infectious materials and preventing livestock from entering disposal sites.

Without urgent measures to improve waste segregation, strengthen landfill controls and restrict animal access, the Talesh landfill risks becoming a continuing source of contamination affecting livestock, the environment and public health, the report added.

In the days since the fighting subsided, Iran's political establishment has offered an unusually public glimpse into divisions that have long remained largely behind closed doors.

State television abruptly cut short a pre-recorded interview with Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf as he discussed the use of blocked Iranian funds abroad, prompting accusations that politically sensitive remarks had been censored. State broadcaster IRIB insisted the interview had always been scheduled to air in two parts.

Elsewhere, hardliners heckled Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi during a visit to Karbala, chanting "death to the appeaser" and "we don't want pretense" as Tehran pursues negotiations with Washington. Establishment commentators have also begun openly discussing ideas that, until recently, would have been politically difficult to imagine entering the public conversation.

Individually, each episode could be dismissed as another example of factional politics inside the Islamic Republic.

Taken together, however, they point to something more significant.

They suggest the post-war debate inside Tehran is no longer simply about diplomacy, sanctions or military strategy.

It is increasingly about how the Islamic Republic must adapt if it is to preserve power in the wake of one of the greatest shocks in its 47-year history.

"The question isn't whether they're engaging in soul-searching," Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, told Eye for Iran. "They have to."

For Vatanka, the significance of this moment is not that the Islamic Republic has suddenly embraced reform.

It is that the war appears to have stripped away old assumptions.

"I think there is a lot more clarity today than there was before the war," he said. "The regime knows the old model failed. The question now is what comes next."

He believes survival—not reform—is driving the conversation.

"If you're in the business of surviving, you don't want this to happen to you again," he said. "Maybe this is the moment you change course."

That should not be mistaken for moderation.

"You don't do it because you love the people of Iran," Vatanka said. "You do it because you want to survive."

The debate itself could prove destabilizing.

"When the knives are out within the regime, they go after each other in vicious ways," Vatanka warned, arguing that competition between rival factions could intensify as different camps attempt to shape the Islamic Republic's post-war future.

Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, argues that understanding those debates first requires understanding the nature of the political system itself.

"It is not straight-up Islamic theocracy," he said.

Instead, he described the Islamic Republic as a political project drawing on multiple ideological traditions.

"A traditional Shia marja has basically taken Karl Marx, the Quran and Plato and put it together and created a political system on top of that."

That, Taleblu argues, is why outsiders should be careful not to confuse adaptation with transformation.

"I think it is a real battle within this regime of how best to preserve the prerogatives and the privileges of power while also sacrificing as little as possible on the ideology."

Even if institutions evolve, he says, the guiding principles may not.

"Real transformation comes with behavior. It comes with substance—not style."

Historian Shahram Kholdi remains skeptical that the current debate represents a genuine break with the past.

"Any difference that has existed between any of these people, in my opinion, has always been one of degree rather than in kind," he said. "Tactics are different. Worldviews, strategies, expectations and demands are all the same."

Rather than seeing reform, Kholdi sees a political elite trying to preserve the system after one of its most serious crises.

But he also believes the post-war period could intensify competition among rival centers of power.

"If Ghalibaf and his ilk manage to get the upper hand... the rest of the gang would feel completely insecure, and that intra-conflict then would materialize into a hot conflict within them," he said.

"And that may very well spell their final doom once and for all."

Whether that prediction proves correct remains to be seen.

What is already clear is that the conversation unfolding inside Tehran has moved beyond the immediate consequences of the war.

It has become a debate about the future of the Islamic Republic itself.

In July 2006, Henry Kissinger argued that Iran's leaders would eventually have to decide whether they were governing "a cause or a nation."

Today, that question is no longer being asked only by foreign observers. Increasingly, it appears to be one the Islamic Republic is asking itself.

No formal appointment decree has been published for Azmaei, whose predecessor was killed in an attack on Bandar Abbas on March 26.

Top IRGC appointments are normally announced through decrees issued by the supreme leader, but no such decree has been published by Mojtaba Khamenei who has not been seen in public since he reportedly suffered injuries in the early hours of the war.

In a message issued Saturday for the funeral of Iran’s slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Azmaei said IRGC naval forces and “guardians of the strategic Strait of Hormuz” would continue Khamenei’s path, adding that “divine revenge” against what he called US and Israeli terrorists was not far off.

Azmaei had commanded the IRGC Navy’s Fifth Naval Region since its formation in 2012 and previously served as deputy commander of the IRGC Navy’s First Naval Region.

He was promoted to brigadier general by Ali Khamenei in April 2022 and has been under US sanctions since 2019. The US has sanctioned him as Ali Ozma’i.

The announcement comes as several senior military posts in the Islamic Republic have changed hands without the publication of formal decrees since Khamenei’s death.