A plan to sell petrol at a much higher “refinery cost” rate in southern Kerman province was halted hours before it was due to begin, the provincial fuel distribution company said on Thursday.
The petrol was scheduled to go on sale from early Thursday at 872,000 rials ($0.47) per liter, Ahmad Salarifar, the manager of the National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company in Kerman, said.
The suspension, he said, followed a conversation between the provincial governor and national officials and was ordered so that a program on fuel consumption management and anti-smuggling measures could be examined further. Petrol will continue to be sold at existing rates until further notice, Salarifar said.
Monthly salaries for many Iranians are commonly put at around 200 million to 250 million rials ($108 to $134). Filling a typical 50-liter tank at the proposed price of 872,000 rials per litre would have cost 43.6 million rials ($23), a sum equivalent to roughly one-fifth of a monthly wage at the upper end of that range and more than 17 times the cost at the current 50,000-rial ($0.027) station-card rate.
Iran introduced a three-tier petrol pricing system in December 2025. Private cars initially received 60 litres at 15,000 rials ($0.008) and 100 litres at 30,000 rials ($0.016) each month, with any extra volume charged at 50,000 rials on a station card. The second subsidised tranche was later cut, leaving a total national quota of 110 litres while the two lower prices remained unchanged.
Plan halted hours before launch
Provincial authorities have not said how long the review will last or whether the higher price will be introduced later.
The suspension came only hours after Ali Asghar Zakeri-Harandi, the deputy governor of Kerman for civil affairs, announced that 204 filling stations in the province were ready to sell petrol at the “full refinery cost” rate.
The plan, he said, would take effect from early Thursday under national decisions by the country’s fuel headquarters. Neither the Oil Ministry nor the government has published details of the decision or how the 872,000-rial figure was calculated.
Higher rate far exceeds current charges
The Kerman announcement came less than a month after government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said the government had no plan to change petrol prices. She repeated on July 28 that no final decision had been taken on the station-card rate and that any change would be announced officially.
A manager of a filling station in Kerman told Iran International that the provincial oil distribution office called stations on Wednesday evening to say the higher-priced petrol would start from early Thursday at selected sites.
A second call later the same night said the plan had been cancelled following talks with the regional oil company. The manager said the reversal was linked to concern over possible public reaction, adding that security forces normally present in the province had been redeployed elsewhere and that the higher price was still expected to be introduced soon.
Sudden fuel price increases have triggered major unrest in the past. In November 2019, an overnight rise of 50 percent on the subsidized quota and up to 300 percent on volumes above it sparked protests across more than 100 cities. Rights groups documented hundreds of deaths in the subsequent crackdown, and a near-total internet shutdown was imposed for several days.
Provincial officials have not clarified whether the Kerman plan was a local pilot or part of a wider national test. Its abrupt suspension before launch has left unanswered questions about the legal basis, the method used to set the price, and the government’s longer-term approach to reducing fuel subsidies.
The work, underway in District 12, Baharestan Square and 30 Tir Street, is presented by municipal officials as a routine measure to ease congestion, carried out at the request of the traffic police.
Critics in architecture and urban sociology argue it cannot be read as a merely technical decision, and belongs instead to a long historical tradition: the use of urban design as an instrument of control.
When the city takes away the barricade
The link between redrawing a city's body and engineering its security is not new. Its most famous case is the great reconstruction of nineteenth-century Paris, carried out by Baron Haussmann on the orders of Napoleon III.
Until the 1850s, Paris was a city of narrow, winding, organic streets that let protesting citizens pry up the paving stones, throw up barricades and take control of their own neighborhoods, the world Victor Hugo drew so vividly in Les Misérables.
By demolishing the old fabric and driving broad, straight, uniform boulevards through it, Haussmann pursued two entwined goals: to strip the public of the ability to barricade the streets, and to ease the rapid movement of troops and heavy artillery for the suppression of unrest.
Later theorists built the insight into the foundations of urban thought. Walter Benjamin in The Arcades Project and David Harvey in his work on the "right to the city" traced how space itself becomes a tool for reproducing ruling power and erasing the protester's presence from it.
Physical disarmament of public space
The replacement of segmented paving blocks with continuous asphalt functions, in effect, as the physical disarmament of the urban environment. Unlike uniform asphalt, cobblestones can be pried loose in a street confrontation, handing demonstrators ready material for barricades or for holding back advancing security forces.
Beyond removing potential projectiles, the smooth surface answers the operational needs of motorized units. Pedestrian infrastructure, with its uneven paving, varying widths, benches and street furniture, slows vehicles down. Coating these zones in asphalt creates uninterrupted corridors for special forces, water cannons and high-speed motorcycle patrols.
Eradicating gathering points
The repaving projects coincide with heightened enforcement against public gathering spaces in central districts, including the sealing of outdoor cafes and the removal of street furniture.
Pedestrian-friendly designs naturally create pause points where citizens congregate, engage in conversation, and form initial nodes of public assembly.
Converting pedestrian hubs into vehicular thoroughfares prioritizes rapid transit over civic presence, reshaping central public areas into channels designed for continuous traffic flow.
The removal of seating and outdoor dining areas reinforces this operational shift by eliminating physical spaces that encourage citizens to linger.
Reclaiming the street
Public thoroughfares have consistently served as primary arenas for civil expression during periods of political tension in Iran.
Highlighting the symbolic and practical weight of public space, prominent Iranian actress Hedieh Tehrani addressed security forces in a public message during the 2022 nationwide protests, writing, "My only way of communicating with the people is the street."
Similarly, exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi emphasized the importance of public thoroughfares during his calls for widespread demonstrations in January 2026, framing the reclamation of street spaces as a central objective for people.
Replacing historical pedestrian infrastructure with asphalt prioritizes security deterrence and vehicular velocity over civic life and urban heritage. By converting public gathering hubs back into high-speed transit corridors, municipal authorities reduce public space from a venue for civic engagement into an infrastructure designed to prevent assembly.
A shortage of credit is the main reason for the long queue and responsibility for allocating the necessary resources rests with the Plan and Budget Organization, Fatemeh Abbasi told the ISNA news agency.
Payments to those who qualify will begin as soon as possible once the funds are assigned, Abbasi said.
The nursing allowance is available only to those classified as having severe or very severe disabilities under Article 7 of the 2018 Law on the Protection of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Government support still falls far short of the real costs faced by people with disabilities, a report published on Tuesday by the newspaper Payam-e Ma said. Treatment, rehabilitation, equipment, transport and ongoing care consume a large share of household income, the paper added.
The actual cost of hiring a carer is several times higher than the state payment and families are forced to cover most of the expense themselves, Behrouz Morovati, director of the Campaign for the Rights of People with Disabilities, told the newspaper.
Payments lag real care costs
The organization must operate within the framework of the annual budget approved by the Cabinet, Abbasi said. Payments stop in a limited number of cases when a person’s disability classification is revised from severe or very severe to moderate, she noted.
Delays have also affected livelihood assistance, with payments for many recipients halted since June on the grounds of a lack of funds, the ILNA news agency reported in July.
Of roughly 600,000 people eligible for livelihood assistance, only about 245,000 currently receive it, leaving more than 300,000 still waiting, Morovati told Payam-e Ma.
Some of those who do receive the payment also get a monthly stipend of around 21 million rials ($11).
Combined, the two forms of support amount to roughly 100 million to 110 million rials ($53–$59), a sum that bears little relation to the actual cost of living and the extra needs of people with disabilities, Morovati said.
Support levels trail global peers
By comparison, France’s adult disability allowance stands at about €1,042 a month for people with limited other income. Australia’s Disability Support Pension for a single adult reaches roughly A$1,201 per fortnight, or about A$2,600 a month, and can be paired with individualised packages under the National Disability Insurance Scheme that cover personal care.
Germany’s long-term care insurance pays cash benefits ranging from €347 a month at the lower care grade to €990 at the highest, with higher amounts available for formal services.
Nordic systems such as Norway’s typically replace 66 percent of prior earnings, subject to minimums and caps.
Even in those countries extra disability-related expenses frequently exceed benefits, yet the absolute gap between official payments and real care costs remains markedly wider where baseline amounts stay at the levels recorded in Iran and eligibility for nursing support is restricted to the most severe categories.
The distance between available payments and the actual expenses of care continues to leave large numbers of disabled people and their families carrying the main financial burden themselves.
