Iran International
A cleric tied by marriage to Iran's ruling family has declared the Islamic Republic obsolete, telling followers that a shadow government already exists and urging them to build a 250,000-strong network to replace the system with an "Islamic government."
The roughly five-minute video of Mohammad-Bagher Kharrazi, released Wednesday, shows the head of the Hezbollah of Iran organization addressing a religious gathering, the kind of mosque pulpit from which much of Iran's clerical politics is conducted. What he delivered from it was not a sermon but an organizational plan.
"Before Mr. Saeed Jalili ever said 'I make the shadow government,' we had formed the shadow government, and we still have it... We have 60 thick volumes of plans covering the smallest details of every organ and institution," Kharrazi said, brushing aside the hardline politician who popularized the term.
"We have prepared plans for implementing the guardianship system, even for how to convert the Islamic Republic into an Islamic government. We have the organization and the planning. But because this transition has not happened, they are taking the Islamic Republic from us”
The Islamic Republic, he told the crowd, "has reached a stage where, in this form, it simply doesn't work anymore."
What separates the video from ordinary hardline grievance is that Kharrazi laid out numbers, methods and targets.
Each follower, he said, should recruit 17 people, and each of those another 17. "If we do this and organize at least 250 people in every city, with a thousand cities that makes 250,000 people," he said.
He offered to bankroll the first gathering himself, "at Hezbollah's own expense," promised a meeting of one hundred thousand, and told the audience the network would "surround all the ministries." The crowd answered with a salavat, the blessing on the Prophet that in such gatherings signals assent.
At another point he set the threshold at 530 organizers per city, a figure drawn not from arithmetic but from devotion: in the abjad letter-numerology cherished in his circles, he ties the number to the name of Fatemeh, the Prophet's daughter. The two figures do not reconcile, and may not be meant to.
He then described the endgame: "With one announcement, everyone comes to Tehran, and that single announcement will finish the work. Mr. Khamenei and the government must understand that a 250,000-strong organization stands ready to move."
The government of President Masoud Pezeshkian, he assured his listeners, "will not reach its end. Have no doubt."
Kharrazi's case against the republic half of the Islamic Republic was delivered as a roll call. "Why should Mr. Hashemi win a vote in this country? Why should Mr. Ahmadinejad win a vote in this country? Why should Mr. Rouhani win a vote? Why should Mr. Pezeshkian win a vote?" The list, spanning nearly every president of the past four decades, implied that the office itself, not its occupants, is the error.
For the current occupant he reserved open abuse, calling Pezeshkian "this buffoon" who "understands nothing," and cursing the physician he blamed for promoting him: "God damn the accursed Marandi, Khamenei's doctor, who foisted Pezeshkian on the nation."
He damned the Guardian Council for approving such candidates, a complaint carrying its own footnote: the same council disqualified Kharrazi himself when he tried to run for president in 2013.
The faithful, he complained, have been reduced to carrying other men's loads. "Hezbollahi forces in this country have become pack mules," he said.
"What business do we have being pack mules for Ghalibaf, who understands nothing of the religion of Islam?"
The video's most consequential claims concern the man Kharrazi presents as his patron. Describing "forty years of friendship, not mere acquaintance, and numerous private meetings," he told the crowd that the new supreme leader wants what he wants: "Mojtaba's thinking is far more radical than his father's."
He offered what he framed as an insider's history: that Mojtaba Khamenei was cast out of his father's office for three years by its late deputy chief of staff, confined to his home and reduced to ferrying intelligence letters, with even some of his circle pushed away.
Kharrazi claimed credit for protecting the movement through that period: "They wanted to tear out Hezbollah by the roots. I did not let them."
None of these accounts can be independently verified, and they describe a man who has not been seen or heard in public since his selection five months ago.
The claims also come with a fresh credibility problem attached. Only days earlier, the leader's office publicly branded Kharrazi's previous quotations of Mojtaba Khamenei, that Pezeshkian's next resignation after 28 attempts would be accepted, as unauthenticated and false, warning that such material "serves the objectives of the ill-wishers and sworn enemies of the Iranian nation." Pezeshkian denied the resignation as well.
Kharrazi's response to that rebuke may be the most revealing sentence he has produced.
In a statement styled like a senior cleric's communique, he said he accepts the denial "out of respect" for the late and current leaders, "but we hope that after the important coming changes in those offices, this denial will still stand."
The changes he has in mind are not abstract. In the same week, Kharrazi announced that the new leader intends to remove Mohammad-Bagher Zolghadr as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and hand the post to Mohsen Rezaei, his military aide.
"They are going to replace Mr. Zolghadr, and Mr. Mohsen Rezaei will take his place," he said, adding that Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has been told he has no right to intervene in the negotiations. A man rebuked for speaking in the leader's name answered by announcing the leader's next appointments.
Kharrazi, 65, is as embedded in the Islamic Republic's aristocracy as a cleric can be. His father, Ayatollah Mohsen Kharrazi, sits in the Assembly of Experts; his uncle, Kamal Kharrazi, ran Iran's diplomacy for years and headed its Strategic Council on Foreign Relations until died from injuries sustained in recent Israeli airstrikes in April; his brother Sadegh is a veteran diplomat; his sister is married to Masoud Khamenei, another of Ali Khamenei's sons.
Reuters has reported that the Nobitex cryptocurrency exchange, sanctioned by Washington for helping the Revolutionary Guards evade sanctions, belongs to the Kharrazi family.
His own record is a catalogue of the spectacular. In his 2013 presidential bid he promised to lift sanctions within months, to recover "the territories separated from Iran," from Tajikistan to Azerbaijan, without a drop of blood, and to triple the value of Iran's crashed currency, vowing to bring the dollar from above 3,000 tomans back down to 1,000.
The Guardian Council struck him from the ballot, and even before it did, the Hezbollah coordination council of East Azarbaijan province publicly disowned his group, accusing him of misusing the movement's name and the leader's, and reminding him that by the leader's own explicit guidance, any private quotation attributed to him is to be considered untrue. Thirteen years later, the leader's office is issuing him the same reminder about a different Khamenei.
In clips that went viral this year, he proposed building a nuclear bomb and detonating it in the Atlantic to send a tsunami toward the American coast, and mused about igniting a race war inside the United States.
He studied under Mohammad-Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, the late theorist whose school long argued that the republic's elections were a concession to be outgrown, which is to say the manifesto is not his invention, only its loudest current recital.
The puzzle is not what Kharrazi said but what it means that he can keep saying it. In a state that imprisons filmmakers and poets for far less, a man has now twice in one week put words in the supreme leader's mouth, insulted the president on camera and announced a plan to encircle the ministries, without a knock on his door.
However it is read, the collision at the heart of the video is documented on both sides. The government's own leaked polling shows a society that has drifted decisively from clerical rule, with barely nine percent wanting things to stay as they are. The loudest organizing energy inside the system, on this week's evidence, wants to move the opposite way.
One reading is that the leader's office will now be forced to do more than issue denials, and that Kharrazi's next video will be his last.
A second is bleaker for the system: that there is no functioning leader capable of silencing anyone, and the in-law is filling a vacuum with his own voice.
A third, voiced in exile commentary, is that Kharrazi is not speaking for the present leadership at all but building a following for the day the question of who leads is reopened, including a future in which his own brother-in-law's household sits closer to the throne.
Under any of the three, the fact stands: five months into the new reign, the most detailed public plan for ending the Islamic Republic has come not from its opponents but from inside its founding family's circle, and it points toward more theocracy, not less.
Pezeshkian described the protests as a "riot" and accused people abroad of falsely inflating the death toll.
"Those sitting abroad who present themselves as intellectuals and scholars, yet say 30,000 or 40,000 people were killed, are dishonorable and traitors," he said in the video interview.
His remarks prompted a wave of criticism from citizens who sent messages to Iran International, with many accusing the president himself of bearing responsibility for the killings.
"Mr. Pezeshkian, this is disgraceful. Stop lying and have some shame," one said. "Your hands are stained with the blood of tens of thousands of Iranian protesters. Curse all of you killers and the remaining figures of the Islamic Republic."
Others argued that even the official death toll acknowledged by his administration warranted accountability.
"Sitting there and saying 3,000 people were killed – first of all, this is not about the number," one citizen from Arak said. "Even if it were those 3,000 people you admit were killed, you should answer for every single one of them."
Another viewer wrote that if Iran had "a normal government," Pezeshkian should face punishment simply for acknowledging that thousands had been killed.
"So if, by your own account, 3,000 people were killed, that's acceptable?" another message read.
Government figures disputed
In mid-February, Pezeshkian's office published a list containing the names of 2,986 people it said were killed during the January protests, saying it had been compiled using data from the Legal Medicine Organization and cross-checked with the National Organization for Civil Registration.
The figure is far below Iran International's editorial board estimate of at least 36,500 people killed during the crackdown. Several international media outlets have also cited similar estimates.
Pezeshkian has repeatedly accused protesters of carrying out armed attacks and sabotage.
In his latest interview, he again described protesters as having been armed by US President Donald Trump, referred to the crackdown as an "incident" and said demonstrations had turned into a "riot" in which "difficult events" occurred.
One person responded by invoking a Quranic verse.
"If your memory serves you, the Quran you probably believe in says killing one innocent person is like killing all humanity," the message read. "Yet you speak about 3,000 deaths as though nothing important happened."
Another accused the president of contradicting earlier official accounts.
"It is interesting that you say terrorists killed the victims, yet you become angry at those who say the real figure is 40,000 and call them traitors," he wrote. "That amounts to admitting that the terrorists you blamed were actually yourselves."
Activists challenge official narrative
Human rights activist and former political prisoner Mehdi Mahmoudian also criticized Pezeshkian's remarks.
"Please explain who killed the several thousand people whose deaths you yourself do not deny, and what those responsible for this crime should be called," Mahmoudian wrote.
Separately, critics resurfaced comments by Mojtaba Lotfi, a cleric and former aide to the late Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who argued that the government's casualty list had been censored.
Referring to his hometown of Najafabad, Lotfi wrote that local records indicated at least 30 victims from the city had been omitted from the official list, suggesting the government's figures were incomplete.
Average annual inflation has climbed to a record 62%, while year-on-year inflation has surged to 82%, rapidly eroding household purchasing power.
Food prices remain the principal driver of overall inflation, with annual food inflation staying in triple digits for a sixth consecutive month. In July, food inflation reached 134% nationwide and 140% in rural areas. More than two-thirds of the food items monitored by the statistical agency now exceed what economists describe as crisis-level inflation.
Prices have risen sharply across other sectors as well. Household appliances are estimated to cost 114% more than a year ago, while transportation costs have climbed 103%. Economists warn that a possible gasoline price increase could push food inflation even higher by raising distribution and delivery costs.
War or government policy?
Critics of President Masoud Pezeshkian’s government, many of whom also oppose an agreement with the United States, argue that the inflation surge is rooted entirely in domestic economic policy rather than the recent conflict.
Hojjat Abdolmaleki, labor minister under former president Ebrahim Raisi, dismissed any connection between the war and rising prices.
“The war has had no effect whatsoever on inflation. Inflation has risen steadily throughout the Pezeshkian Administration, and the war’s contribution to these price increases is zero,” he said.
“Virtually all of this inflation is the direct result of misguided policies and government incompetence. Even without the war, the situation would have been the same, perhaps even worse.”
Other economists reject that assessment, arguing that both domestic policy and the conflict have driven prices higher.
Mohammad Sadegh-Alhosseini told the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) that domestic policies could account for inflation of between 30% and 50%, but that the increase beyond that range was linked to international tensions and the war.
Mojtaba Yousefi, a member of parliament, also said it was inaccurate to claim that the war had no effect on prices. “But it is equally wrong to attribute all inflation to the war,” he said.
Economists also caution that even an agreement between Tehran and Washington, potentially unlocking frozen assets, easing sanctions, increasing oil revenue and reducing inflation expectations, would be unlikely to bring prices down quickly.
They say chronic budget deficits, entrenched corruption and structural inefficiencies are so deeply embedded that reversing them could take years.
Even if the fighting ends, the cost of rebuilding damaged infrastructure and industry would continue to strain public finances. Conservative politician Mohammad-Reza Bahonar recently estimated reconstruction costs at $200 billion.
Purchasing power continues to collapse
The inflation surge has increasingly affected ordinary Iranians. According to a report by the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA), during recent months even basic staples such as chicken, eggs and bread have become unaffordable for many working-class households. Bread prices alone have risen by between 100% and 140% on average.
Official data show that prices of at least eight food items have more than doubled over the past year. Cooking oil has risen 261%, while meat prices have increased 145%.
By comparison, ILNA wrote, the minimum wage has increased by only 60%, while salaries for civil servants, pensioners, nurses and teachers have risen by between 20% and 43%, averaging roughly 30%. As a result, many of these households no longer fit the conventional definition of the middle class, the report argued.
Government food vouchers introduced in January have also lost much of their purchasing power, as authorities have left their value unchanged despite soaring food prices.
Ahmad, a retired civil servant in Tehran, said the vouchers initially allowed him to buy around ten food items. "Now I can only afford three or four."
Social media has also reflected the growing financial strain. Users report increasing numbers of people selling, or even renting out, personal belongings such as electronic devices to cover daily expenses.
Journalist Azadeh Mokhtari wrote: "When advertisements for selling hair, or even renting laptops for online classes, become more common, it means the middle class is being worn away, and the lower-income class is being pushed out of the economy."
Misery index reaches new peak
The deteriorating economic environment is also reflected in Iran's misery index, the combined rate of annual inflation and unemployment.
With annual inflation at 62% and unemployment at 9.1% in the quarter ending in June, the misery index climbed to a record 71.1%, up from 64.2% in the previous quarter. The index stood at 56.6% during the same period in 2021.
The economic burden is not evenly distributed across the country. Several provinces have recorded misery index readings above 100%, with Lorestan registering the highest level at 121.5%.
Economists say the figures reflect not only declining purchasing power and weaker job security but also rising uncertainty that makes long-term financial planning increasingly difficult for households.
