Iranian Economy Now in Free Fall

The Trump administration’s screw-turning on Iran’s economy is having a devastating effect. How long will the people of Iran, 85% of whom say in polls that they want the regime to fall, endure this state of affairs before they come out in protest again, as they did last January? More on the economic collapse in Iran can be found here: “Iran’s Rial in Free Fall: How US Sanctions Are Reshaping Daily Life, Public Opinion for the Iranian People,” by Maddie Ali, Algemeiner, September 3, 2026:

As the Trump administration continues to tighten the economic noose around Iran with US sanctions and a naval blockade, ordinary Iranians are bearing the most immediate cost — but largely blaming their own government for the country’s current financial crisis.

Many Iranian officials publicly insist that Washington’s latest pressure campaign to strangle the economy is ineffective and will fail. Yet in bazaars, pharmacies, and household budgets, the economic damage is no longer concealable.

The officials putting a brave face on the situation, denying that the American pressure on the economy is having a major effect, surely know that they cannot keep up this denial. Ordinary people can’t buy food, can’t pay for prescriptions, can’t pay for school and university tuition. Nor can the young find employment. Only 37% of the adult population actually have jobs.

The Iranian public is sinking into deep poverty. Ordinary Iranians — not the members of the ruling class and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — can’t pay for food, can’t pay for medicines, can’t pay their utilities bills, can’t find work, and they know that this is all the fault of their fanatical rulers, who insist on continuing to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed, which means that American sanctions will not be removed, nor the American blockade of Iranian ports be lifted. They know that their government has spent more than one hundred billion dollars on its nuclear program, with much of that program going up in smoke after the U.S. and Israeli bombing. They know, too, that the Iranian government has transferred billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Hamas, to Hezbollah, to the Houthis, in addition to billions in cash, and that support continues as the regime chooses to prioritize support for its proxies over a decent life for its people. The Iranian public sees all this as a tremendous misallocation of resources.

There will soon come a point when millions of Iranians, at the end of their tether, will again take to the streets to demand an end to this wretched regime, and this time one hopes that, as happened with the shah’s military in 1978, there will be a revolt in the ranks of the Basiji and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and those sent out to crush the protesters will instead mutiny, and either put down their weapons, or aim them at those, their numbers fast diminishing, who still support the regime.

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