US lawmaker urges strikes on IRGC, economic pressure on Iran

The poll was conducted by Esmail Saghab-Esfahani, Iran’s vice president and head of the Organization for Optimization and Strategic Management of Energy, who launched it on X on Monday and closed it two days later.

Under Iran’s current system, subsidized gasoline quotas are allocated to vehicles through fuel cards, with motorists able to buy a limited monthly amount at a lower price and additional fuel at a higher rate.

Saghab-Esfahani’s survey offered three alternatives: keeping the existing system while giving each citizen an additional tradable 30-liter quota; selling gasoline above current quotas at 870,000 rials per liter; or limiting supply to domestically produced gasoline without additional imports.

About 50% favored a model that would maintain existing quotas while allocating an additional 30 liters of gasoline per person based on national ID numbers. The additional quota could be transferred or sold to others at a mutually agreed market price.

Another 34% supported supplying gasoline beyond existing quotas at about 870,000 rials per liter, while 15% favored supplying gasoline in line with domestic production without additional imports.

Slightly more than 14,000 people took part. Critics, however, questioned whether the results could be considered representative of public opinion, citing the relatively low use of X in Iran, particularly in rural areas.

Iran’s gasoline imbalance is estimated at about 10% of consumption, according to the Khorasan newspaper, which has argued that the problem needs to be addressed but warned against using a policy that could create a much larger economic and social shock.

The economic newspaper Donya-e-Eqtesad argued that the results should not be interpreted as a definitive expression of public support for gasoline reform.

“People have shown greater preference for the option that, compared with queues at gas stations and 870,000-rial gasoline, imposes less direct harm on them,” the newspaper wrote. “This difference is important, because the policymaker should not conclude from the higher vote that society has accepted all aspects of the plan.”

The newspaper also questioned why the survey did not include a fourth option combining non-price and structural measures, such as reducing the use of fuel-intensive vehicles, expanding imports of hybrid and electric cars, improving fuel-efficiency standards, developing public transportation, combating smuggling and gradually reforming the auto industry.

It also argued that shifting gasoline quotas from vehicles to individuals would not necessarily reduce consumption if fuel remained cheap and vehicles continued to be inefficient. At best, it said, the measure could make the distribution of subsidies fairer and reduce smuggling or misuse of some fuel cards.

The methodology also drew criticism from users who participated in the discussion. Mohammad Reza Felfalani, a civil-society activist working on water, energy and environmental issues, wrote: “It is unfair to ask people to make a decision or assessment with this amount of data. If you yourselves are designing a plan with this amount of data, give us the right to worry about Iran’s future.”

Financial markets analyst Mohammad Shahrestani warned that none of the proposed options would be cost-free under current economic conditions.

“None of these ideas will be without cost under the current economic and livelihood conditions; a cost that may be irreparable,” he wrote, challenging those who oppose negotiations to offer a solution to the fuel problem that they can implement.

Another commenter warned that any gasoline reform would risk failure unless the government first explained how it intended to control the prices of goods and services that could rise as higher transportation costs feed through the economy. The user warned that such a plan could become vulnerable to unrest on the scale of the January protests.

Hardliner roots of the proposal

Saghab-Esfahani says he does not belong to any political faction, but his positions have often been close to those of conservative hardliners such as former presidential candidate Saeed Jalili. His appointment by President Masoud Pezeshkian in November 2025 drew criticism from reformists.

He has personally shown greater support for a model linking gasoline rations to individual citizens rather than vehicles. The model is among the policies previously promoted by Jalili and featured prominently in his campaign during the last presidential election.

That connection has led some critics to accuse Saghab-Esfahani of framing the survey’s choices in a way that would produce a result favorable to his preferred model and to political groups aligned with him.

One commenter accused the government of trying to impose a proposal developed by supporters of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Jalili over the past eight years.

“You ignored the criticism of every expert and now want to topple the Pezeshkian government by forcing this plan through, and then you stage a survey?” the user wrote.

Another argued that the wording of the choices was designed to steer respondents toward the government’s preferred option, warning that giving every citizen a tradable gasoline credit could become the Pezeshkian administration’s “Achilles’ heel” during wartime.

A further commenter said none of the proposed options could solve the problem and accused the government of using the poll to seek legitimacy for a predetermined policy.

Warnings over a price shock

Many Iranian experts and media outlets acknowledge the need to address the gasoline imbalance while warning against a sudden price shock. The central disagreement is whether consumption should be controlled through sharp price increases or through a combination of quotas, gradual price adjustments, demand management, public transportation and supply-side reforms.

The Khorasan newspaper, in an editorial titled “Do Not Perform Surgery for a 10% Deficit,” argued that if the core problem is an imbalance of roughly 10% between gasoline production and consumption, the government should not resort to a policy capable of creating a much larger economic and social shock.

“The dimensions of the potential consequences may be much greater than the original problem,” the paper argued.

The warning carries particular weight in Iran, where previous fuel-price increases have triggered unrest. A gasoline price increase in 2019 led to widespread protests that were violently suppressed, while an earlier increase in 2007 sparked riots in several parts of the country, including Tehran.

For the Pezeshkian administration, the challenge therefore goes beyond how gasoline quotas are allocated. It must address a persistent fuel imbalance without allowing a reform intended to ease pressure on the energy system to become a new source of economic hardship, political conflict and social unrest.

Espad died on Aug. 17 after a two-year battle with cancer. Born on March 11, 1989, she had worked with Iran International for eight years before stepping away from media work two years ago because of her illness.

“Farahnaz, beautiful daughter of Iran, we thank you for all the moments when your voice was a refuge and hope for the people,” one person wrote in a message sent to Iran International, adding that her name and kindness would remain alive in people’s hearts.

Iran’s domestic media is tightly controlled by the state, while independent journalists face censorship, arrests and restrictions. Many journalists have left the country, and Persian-language media based abroad have continued to serve audiences inside Iran despite efforts by authorities to block access to their broadcasts and websites.

The messages and videos sent after Espad’s death reflected not only grief over a familiar journalist, but also wider feelings of separation, exile and repeated loss among Iranians.

One person described Espad as a “kind and capable presenter” whose death felt like losing a member of their own family, “like a sister.”

Another said the news had left them “shaken” after years of watching the work of an “honorable and professional” journalist.

For others, her death evoked the experience of separation from Iran.

One person wished Espad’s family patience and wrote: “Hoping for a day when no one is forced to live in exile, far from their loved ones.”

Another wrote: “Hoping that nothing bad ever happens again to any of my compatriots. Hoping for good days. Long live Iran.”

A message from Firuzkuh, east of Tehran, connected Espad’s death with hopes for political change.

“Once again, another person has left us without seeing the freedom of Iran and the Iranian people,” it said.

Others called Espad a “daughter of Iran” and remembered her as compassionate toward the Iranian people, courageous and sincere, saying her work would not be forgotten.

A person from the northeastern city of Mashhad offered condolences to Espad’s family and colleagues and wrote: “Her honorable voice will remain in our memories.”

Another, from the northern city of Amol, described her as “a fighting, kind and selfless woman” and wished her eternal peace.

One message placed Espad’s death in the context of executions, killings and repeated loss in Iran, saying that losing her in exile felt no less painful to them than losing those killed during anti-government protests.

For many of those who wrote in, Espad’s death became intertwined with a wider sense of loss among Iranians at home and abroad, shaped by exile, repression and years of political upheaval.

The tributes were ultimately as much about what Espad represented to those who watched her as they were about her years on air: a connection to a country from which many Iranians have been separated, and hopes for changes that some fear they may never live to see.

The UAE Foreign Ministry said this week that all trade, commercial exchanges and financial transactions with Iran had been halted until further notice.

Afra Al Hameli, director of the Strategic Communications Department at the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the decision came “in light of regional escalations that undermine regional and international peace and security.”

The UAE halted trade with Tehran a day after Donald Trump spoke by phone with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, though it is unclear whether the decision was connected to Trump’s “Economic D-Day” campaign against Iran, announced later on Wednesday.

Trade between the two countries had already been severely disrupted after the war began in late February, when Iran launched attacks on the UAE and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz was curtailed.

In late June, however, Mohammad-Sadegh Ghannadzadeh, a deputy at Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization, said commercial exchanges with the UAE were gradually resuming through Jebel Ali Port. He said goods and containers stranded during the war were again being cleared and moved toward Iran.

The latest UAE announcement now casts doubt on the continuation of that channel.

Al Hameli also stressed that the UAE remains committed to protecting the integrity of the international financial system, complying with international law and applying the highest global standards.

That position is significant because even if political tensions eventually ease, Iranian businesses would still face serious restrictions stemming from US sanctions and Iran’s continued status as a high-risk jurisdiction subject to a Financial Action Task Force call for countermeasures.

One of Iran’s most important trading partners

The importance of the UAE to Iran can be seen in the latest official partner-by-partner trade figures available from Iranian customs.

During the first 10 months of the Iranian fiscal year that began in March 2025, Iran exported around $6.5 billion worth of non-oil goods to the UAE, equivalent to 14.3% of its non-oil exports.

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  War tests Iran’s Dubai trade lifeline

Iran imported approximately $14.8 billion worth of goods from the UAE during the same period, accounting for 30.2% of its total imports.

Before the war, the UAE was therefore Iran’s largest supplier of goods and its third-largest destination for non-oil exports, behind China and Iraq.

Its importance extended well beyond ordinary merchandise trade. The UAE was also the largest destination for Iranian fuel oil, or mazut, and a market for other petroleum products.

A blow to mazut exports and fuel supply

Data from commodity intelligence firm Kpler, reviewed by Iran International, show that Iran exported an average of around 256,000 barrels per day of fuel oil in 2025.

Nearly 70% went to the UAE, making it by far Iran’s largest market for the product.

A prolonged halt in trade therefore threatens not only Iran’s non-oil exports but one of its most important outlets for petroleum products.

The UAE had also been among the destinations for Iranian liquefied petroleum gas, or LPG, although China accounts for the large majority of Iranian LPG exports. Iran’s total LPG exports generate more than $10 billion in annual revenue.

The UAE relationship is also important from the opposite direction.

An internal Iranian Oil Ministry report previously reviewed by Iran International showed that Tehran had increasingly relied on barter arrangements to meet domestic fuel shortages, exchanging part of its mazut exports for gasoline and diesel, particularly through traders operating in the UAE.

Iran is already struggling with a gasoline supply deficit, while officials have discussed measures ranging from tighter rationing to higher fuel prices.

Restricting access to the UAE could therefore affect not only export revenue but Iran’s ability to obtain products and refined fuels needed by the domestic market.

The end of Dubai’s role as Iran’s gateway to global trade?

The UAE’s importance to Iran has never been limited to direct bilateral trade.

For decades, Dubai has served as one of the principal re-export hubs for goods entering Iran, allowing Iranian companies to obtain products manufactured in countries with which direct trade is difficult, costly or restricted.

US sanctions and Iran’s exclusion from much of the international banking system have made this intermediary role particularly important.

Goods manufactured in Europe and Asia have routinely entered Iran through UAE-based traders and logistics networks, while Iranian companies have also used Dubai as a route to reach other markets.

The financial dimension is equally important. Dubai has long been a center for Iranian exchange houses, trading companies and intermediaries that help move money across borders despite Iran’s restricted access to the global financial system.

US sanctions packages targeting Iranian oil, petrochemical and procurement networks have repeatedly designated companies and individuals based in the UAE for alleged roles in facilitating transactions on Tehran’s behalf.

A broad and sustained UAE crackdown would therefore affect more than the physical movement of goods. It could also constrain financial, logistical and commercial networks that Iran has spent years using to mitigate its international isolation.

A major new gap for Iran’s economy

The latest available Iranian customs breakdown shows that merchandise trade between Iran and the UAE totaled about $21.3 billion in just the first 10 months of the previous Iranian fiscal year.

But even that figure understates the UAE’s economic importance because it does not capture Dubai’s wider role as a re-export, logistics and financial center for Iranian businesses.

Iran is now confronting the UAE halt while already under pressure from sanctions, foreign-currency constraints, weaker foreign trade and disruptions to energy exports.

Alternative routes through Oman, Iraq, Turkey and other neighboring countries can keep some trade moving, but they lack the combination of proximity, port infrastructure, financial connectivity and established commercial networks that Dubai offered.

The UAE has given no timetable for lifting its suspension.

For Iran, the risk is therefore not simply the loss of billions of dollars in bilateral trade. A prolonged halt could close one of its most important gateways to the global economy.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced what he called the “most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country,” threatening unprecedented economic isolation and consequences for countries whose financial institutions, businesses or government entities continue providing Tehran with an economic lifeline.

“Oil smuggling, swap lines, cash transfers, exchange houses, ship registries, front companies — it all needs to stop NOW,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, calling on US allies to join the campaign.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi dismissed the announcement on Thursday as “doubling down on failed policies,” while Iran’s Foreign Ministry called the campaign “economic terrorism” and a “crime against humanity,” saying Tehran would continue resisting US military, economic and political pressure.

The Trump administration, however, is signaling that the campaign could go considerably further than existing sanctions.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Thursday that Washington would impose the “toughest sanctions in history” on Iran and said the administration would outline its measures on Monday.

“It is going to work in Iran and we are going to collapse this regime,” Bessent said.

He said countries continuing to do business with Tehran would face US enforcement actions. Asked whether that could include China, which buys the overwhelming majority of Iran’s shipped oil, Bessent said some conversations were better held privately.

Bessent also suggested that “maximum economic pressure” could reduce the likelihood of another major military phase, describing the economic campaign and the US naval blockade as a “one-two punch.”

Already under strain

Even before the new US economic campaign was announced, Iranian economic reporting was documenting the price the confrontation was already imposing at home: higher shipping costs, pressure on medicine supplies and further strain on household budgets.

Emergency Central Bank allocations have enabled round-the-clock clearance of wheat and pharmaceutical imports at Shahid Rajaee Port in Bandar Abbas, yet reports by ILNA and Donya-ye Eghtesad said container freight rates remained 35 to 40 percent above baseline because of persistent war-risk surcharges.

The pressure is also reaching medicine supplies. On Monday, a major pharmaceutical company in Tehran said the government could no longer provide the foreign currency it required at subsidized rates, warning that some medicines could disappear from shelves or be sold at two to three times current prices.

Donya-ye Eghtesad has linked elevated shipping costs to domestic production bottlenecks, arguing that more expensive freight raises the cost of imported intermediate goods and adds to broader inflationary pressure.

The paper said temporary customs measures were treating symptoms rather than causes, with high insurance premiums and port congestion continuing to increase raw-material costs.

“So long as transit protocols remain uncodified,” the daily wrote, “industrial input costs will remain elevated, eroding domestic purchasing power daily.”

Those pressures are hitting an economy already struggling with steep inflation. Iran’s 12-month inflation rate reached 66 percent in July, while food prices were 128 percent higher than a year earlier. War, sanctions and disruptions to trade and imports have further squeezed household purchasing power.

Cooking oil, meat and dairy products have moved beyond the reach of many working- and middle-class families. Iranian reports describe households cutting back on staples and non-essential spending, while a kilogram of lamb can consume up to 10 percent of a minimum-wage worker’s monthly income.

Housing costs have also intensified the squeeze. Rents have risen sharply in major cities including Tehran, Mashhad and Isfahan despite nominal government caps, increasing housing insecurity and pushing some families toward cheaper districts or shared accommodation.

Iranian reports increasingly describe teachers, civil servants and office workers struggling to maintain their living standards despite holding multiple jobs. Peripheral provinces including Ilam, Sistan-Baluchestan and Kurdistan face even greater economic pressure.

Less leverage at Hormuz

Compounding that vulnerability, Iran may also be losing some of the strategic leverage it hoped to gain from disrupting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

CNN reported Wednesday that more than 80 percent of recent liquid cargo transits through Hormuz had either used the Omani route or traveled with transponders switched off and likely followed it.

Axios separately reported that the US military was operating a shipping corridor along the Omani side of the Strait, helping 15 to 20 tankers enter or leave the Persian Gulf each night.

The reports suggest Iran could be left absorbing many of the economic consequences of disruption at Hormuz while gaining less bargaining power from it.

That also changes the context of Iran’s negotiations with Oman over navigation through the Strait. Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Iranian and Omani technical teams had agreed on geographic coordinates and navigation lanes for a proposed shipping scheme.

Iranian economic commentary had portrayed formalization of such an arrangement as important to lowering insurance and shipping costs. But if Washington can increasingly move vessels through an Oman-side corridor without an agreement that gives Tehran a central role, Iran may have less ability to use the Strait to extract political or economic concessions.

Iran has endured decades of US sanctions and built extensive networks to circumvent them, giving Tehran reason to doubt whether another pressure campaign can force a change in course.

But the starting point this time is different: an economy already weakened by inflation, disrupted trade and the costs of war, while one of Tehran’s most important sources of leverage appears to be eroding.

Trump has yet to spell out the full measures behind his “Economic D-Day.” Bessent says those details will come Monday. The question is whether Washington can close enough of Iran’s remaining economic lifelines to impose pressure Tehran cannot absorb — or whether the Islamic Republic can once again adapt while passing much of the cost on to ordinary Iranians.

The account comes from Mohammad-Ali Mousavi Jazayeri, the former Friday prayer leader of Ahvaz and a former member of the Assembly of Experts, in a video that spread across Persian social media this week.

Jazayeri says he heard the story from Abbas Hazbavi, an Arabic-language poet from Khuzestan. By that account, intermediaries told Hazbavi after meeting Khamenei that the leader had urgent business with him, and a call from the office followed.

Hazbavi says he went on the first day of Ramadan, around ten days before Khamenei was killed on February 28, and that the supreme leader handed him a poem and asked him to render it into Arabic. The Khuzestan news site Sobh-e Khouzestan published the interview along with the full Persian text.

Hazbavi was a plausible choice. An established religious poet, he has translated Khomeini's ghazals into Arabic and has publicly recited his own Arabic rendering of Khamenei's verse. The office would have had his number.

The poem reads, on the surface, exactly as its promoters wanted. "Alas, I came late to my purpose," one line runs, "and heard the meaning of martyrdom from the beloved's lips." Another appears to name the month: "If the tyrant has marked my body as his target, in Esfand my soul will set out after the lovers." Khamenei was killed on the ninth day of Esfand (February 28).

The trouble is in the margin. Taking the first letter of each of the poem's 22 hemistiches in order produces a sentence: man Ali Khamenei zadeh-ye Sheytanam. "I am Ali Khamenei, born of Satan."

The device is a classical one. Persian poets have used the acrostic, known in traditional prosody as movashshah, for centuries to conceal a name or a dedication in the opening letters of successive lines. Twenty-two letters forming a grammatical sentence is not coincidence; someone built it deliberately.

Who that was is the question the story leaves open. Iran International cannot verify Jazayeri's account, Hazbavi's, or the poem's authorship, and there is no evidence that Khamenei wrote the poem.

What the establishment's own account supplies is the route the poem travelled: through the supreme leader's office, into a translator's hands, and out into print under Khamenei's name. Every step of that journey is described by his admirers, not his enemies.

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It landed among outlets primed to want it. The verses ran on ILNA, Hamshahri and Khabar Online, among others, at a time when Iranian media were combing Khamenei's life for signs he had foreseen his own end.

ILNA's version, headlined "The leader who counted the moments to martyrdom," has since been taken down.

Too late to delete

On Persian social media, where the poem returned to circulation this week with the first letters marked in red, the mood has been close to disbelief.

"Apparently Khamenei ordered a poem he could pass off as his own," one widely shared post said. "The poet delivered, all right. Now the state sites have finally noticed and they're deleting it."

"At first I thought it was a joke," another user wrote. "They've pulled it from a lot of sites, but it's still up on the eulogists' channels."

Others turned to the question of where the poem came from. "So someone inside the leader's own house did this," one post said, speculating about who in Khamenei's circle might have arranged it.

One user drew out the reversal at the heart of the affair: "They wanted to show a miracle, that he foresaw his own martyrdom. The very poem they are using as proof says the opposite: that he was born of Satan."

The appetite the poem fed is well documented. In the weeks after Khamenei's killing, Iranian media ran a steady stream of material presenting him as having anticipated it, including a genuine ghazal of his that Hamshahri Online published under the headline "The ghazal the martyred leader wrote for his own martyrdom."

The flood has been large enough that Khamenei's own Office for the Preservation and Publication of Works has had to issue a denial over a different poem attributed to him after a cleric recited it publicly, saying the attribution and the story around it "are entirely untrue."

Jazayeri's own history gives the episode a final turn. In 1989, when the Assembly of Experts chose Khamenei to succeed Khomeini, it was Jazayeri who proposed that the new leader be addressed as an ayatollah rather than by his actual, lesser clerical rank.

Thirty-seven years later, the same cleric put his name to a poem whose hidden line calls him the son of the devil.

The phrase itself has been used against Khamenei before. In January, the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, called him "a true son of Satan" in a post on X.

What is new is where Iranians found it this week: inside a poem his own admirers were circulating as scripture.