By Arya Kia

Iran would appear, at first glance, an unlikely place to discuss energy deprivation. It possesses some of the world’s largest oil and natural-gas reserves and has spent decades expanding electricity and gas infrastructure across the country.

That expansion is a genuine development achievement. According to the World Bank’s electricity-access d…

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By Matthew MacGeoch

“We have concluded contracts for around 80 gigawatts of solar,” said Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, in December 2025 when asked about his proudest achievement in his first year in office. The figure demands a moment’s attention. Iran’s entire electricity system has about 101 GW of nominal generating capacity. In 2026, the UK has …

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By Hossein Hamdieh

The Trump administration’s war against Iran may well be intended to lead the country down the path to dilapidation and economic ruin. Now that Washington’s project of toppling Iran’s political system has proven far messier than anticipated, it looks as though the country is being dragged into a war of attrition, with military attacks p…

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By Ezana Tedla

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) companies have experienced rapid growth. Around the world, consumers are scaling-up their purchases by tapping this new form of credit, which is typically provided with less oversight than traditional credit cards. The customer pays installments to the BNPL provider who takes a commiss…

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By Arya Kia

Iran’s electricity shortage is often presented as a problem of insufficient generation: demand rises faster than the amount of electricity the system can reliably supply, so the apparent solution is to build more power plants. However, as explained in the first article of this series, Iran’s frequent blackouts are owed to a paradox, whereby t…

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By Esfandyar Batmanghelidj and Josefine Petrick

On September 8, 2026, the Trump administration issued new sanctions targeting Iran’s aviation industry. In its announcement of the new sanctions, the Treasury Department claimed the action would target Iran’s commercial airlines which have “long supported the Iranian regime’s destabilizing activities, with …

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By Arya Kia

Iran’s electricity crisis presents an unusual paradox. The country possesses some of the world’s largest natural gas reserves and has spent decades expanding its generating fleet. Yet electricity shortages have become a recurring feature of daily and economic life. Households face outages, factories are ordered to cut production, government o…

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By Nader Habibi

Iranian government officials have openly admitted that U.S. and Israeli war has caused severe damage to the Iranian economy. In addition to the destruction of many industrial and manufacturing units by airstrikes, an intrusive naval blockade has also caused major disruptions to Iranian supply chains. While Iranian economy was already suff…

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By Arya Kia

On 22 July, Iran connected its first geothermal power plant to the national grid. Located near Meshginshahr on the slopes of Mount Sabalan in Ardabil Province, the facility has an installed capacity of 5.4 MW. Against an electricity system generating hundreds of terawatt-hours annually and facing shortages measured in gigawatts, its immediate…

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By Hadi Kahalzadeh

Two weeks ago, amid fragile negotiations with the U.S. and mounting domestic tensions, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council set a nationwide 25% ceiling on rent increases. More than a housing measure, it was a dramatic signal that the cost-of-living crisis had crossed into the realm of national security.

The crisis is also visible a…

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By D.A. Leusder

The Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the U.S. and Iran was officially signed on June 17 at Versailles. The 14-point framework commits the U.S. to “develop a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least $300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran” in concert with “region…

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By Esfandyar Batmanghelidj

Editor’s Note: Several hours after this analysis was published, further versions of the MOU were made public. U.S. sources provided a “final” version of the MOU to Axios and Iranian sources provided a final version to Amwaj. There are no substantive differences between the two versions and the analysis of the clauses presented …

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By Esfandyar Batmanghelidj

For eight years, Iran has been subjected to the most comprehensive sanctions program ever devised, targeting nearly every sector of the Iranian economy. For forty days, Iran was targeted with one of the largest air campaigns in history, with nearly 100 airstrikes per day targeting military sites, government buildings, industria…

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By Henna Moussavi

From more than 4,000 kilometers away, Tehran arrives as a man’s voice heard through a pair of headphones. The speaker, referred to here as Nima, is a civil servant working extended shifts in the middle of an unprecedented aerial bombardment, observing how a city of millions absorbs active conflict and is altered by it.

Internet access in…

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By Hadi Kahalzadeh

After forty days of war, Iran’s families are returning home under a fragile ceasefire. But the pause in the conflict may not prevent the coming shock to Iran’s economy. As ordinary Iranians confront the destruction of roads, ports, and industrial infrastructure, they are discovering that the war has taken away their jobs, their wages, …

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By Sahand Sehatpour

Iran’s capital markets play a far larger role in the economy than is often appreciated from the outside. The Tehran Stock Exchange and the broader capital market today include more than 700 listed companies across more than 50 industries, while more than 50 million Iranians are tied to the market as shareholders or stakeholders throug…

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By Esfandyar Batmanghelidj

Few aspects of the ongoing war have rankled the international community more than the fact that Iran is charging vessels a fee for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Now, Iran has insisted that it will retain “control” of the strait even after the end of the war.

Understanding this demand requires precision about what is…

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By Zeynab Malakouti and Mohammad Eslami

It appears we are on the verge of a new phase in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran—one that could include ground troops deployed to Iranian islands or nuclear sites. Yet, with the war entering its second month, voices inside the U.S. administration, as well as regional and international leaders, are calling for neg…

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By Mehran Haghirian

“Death to the dictator,” “This is the final battle,” and “Long live the king,” are the slogans Iranians have been shouting in the streets since December. They have returned to the streets in force, with the protests on January 8 involving enormous crowds around the country. While the latest wave of demonstrations began in the bazaars in response to the sharp devaluation of the national currency, these are not merely economic protests. Iranians are exhausted by a deepening impasse across political, social, environmental, and economic spheres, with crises compounding by the day. Under the status quo, the regime, the government, and society as a whole have proven incapable of resolving any of these challenges, leaving lives interrrupted and livelihoods diminished.

The Islamic Republic’s veneer of invincibility was repeatedly shattered during 2025 and continues to break in 2026. For the first time since the end of the Iran–Iraq War in 1988, missiles struck Tehran and cities across Iran during the twelve-day war between Israel and Iran in June. Ever since, the U.S. president has repeatedly threatened action against the country. One of the core bargains the Islamic Republic offered in exchange authoritarian rule after the end of the Iran-Iraq War—that it could shield Iran from further conflict—has collapsed. Its strategies, investments, slogans, and its so-called Axis of Resistance have unraveled alongside its nuclear ambitions. From Syria to Lebanon, Palestine to Yemen, and as far as Venezuela, the regime’s purported allies are either dead, exiled, or imprisoned. The Islamic Republic has reached an impasse. It now waits only for the departure of one man: Ali Khamenei.

Locked and Loaded

In the early days of these protests, Donald Trump declared that the United States was “locked and loaded” and would come to the “rescue” of protesters should the regime violently suppress them. Trump’s intervention reflects the priority Iran has assumed in his foreign policy agenda and the opportunity he sees in making history as the president who could end Iran’s impasse after more than four decades. His messages followed a year of contradictory signaling: a preference for negotiations in the spring, calls for “unconditional surrender” during the June war, and renewed openness to talks in December. Strategic or not, these inconsistencies intensified pressure on the decision-making calculus of regime officials, further destabilizing an already brittle system.

For Trump, the Iran file is unresolved. The fate of enriched uranium and the future of the nuclear program remain pressing concerns. The Iranian nuclear issue—one of the most consequential global challenges of the past two decades—still requires a comprehensive agreement, with or without the Islamic Republic. Trump appears unwilling to allow the issue to linger for much longer.

Despite mounting losses, Khamenei has remained defiant, vowing never to negotiate with the United States. In doing so, he has chosen to sacrifice any last shreds of legitimacy. But Khamenei’s decision to hide in a bunker as Israeli missiles struck the country above him in June was more than symbolic. His political isolation—cornered by arch enemies in Washington and Tel Aviv—is equally consequential. What is unfolding is not merely the humiliation of a man who ruled through repression and archaic fantasies, but the embarrassment of a system that claimed to defend Iran’s independence and dignity while crushing the hopes, aspirations, and futures of its people. Those who justified decades of brutality in the name of sovereignty and deterrence now have nothing left to offer. The events of the past year have pierced the foundational myths of the Islamic Republic.

Scenarios for Change

Iran has reached a moment that generations imagined but never believed would arrive. For decades, Iranians were divided into competing camps—monarchists, reformists, abolitionists, loyalists—yet largely united by a shared sense of patriotic nationalism. Inside the country and across the diaspora, demands often contradicted one another. Some pushed for democracy from the early post-revolutionary years and more forcefully after the 2009 Green Movement. Some called for sanctions, others fought to lift them. Some opposed the 2015 nuclear agreement, others defended it. Some marched against war, others called for targeted strikes. Even the national flag—and the notion of rallying around it—became contested, with some rejecting the regime’s symbols and others embracing ancient ones.

These divisions often drowned out a shared longing for a free Iran because regime collapse seemed impossible. That assumption no longer holds. Given the pace of developments inside Iran and globally, the country has entered the realm of the previously unimaginable. For the first time, Iranians at home and abroad are moving beyond articulating what they reject toward debating what must come next.

To avoid a historic betrayal of the Iranian people, Trump and Netanyahu now carry the burden of their own promises: that they seek to support and rescue the people of Iran, not to destroy the country but to see it flourish.

A political transition is now inevitable, though its form remains uncertain. The central questions of the transitional period are unavoidable: who will lead it, how the military will be unified, when a referendum will take place, and who will contest elections. These are monumental challenges, inseparable from any credible path toward a free, secular, and independent Iran.

Some view a renewed agreement between Trump and the regime as possible, however small the probability; such a deal would nonetheless trigger significant internal change. Another possibility is the regime’s survival beyond Khamenei and the elevation of figures such as Hassan Khomeini or Hassan Rouhani. Yet this outcome, too, would mark irreversible transformation. Incremental reform within a theological system fundamentally disconnected from society has reached its limits.

A third—and more likely—scenario is a takeover by the Revolutionary Guards, a path that could lead to war with the United States and Israel, or result in a political bargain for their survival that would dramatically change Iran’s foreign policy and security doctrine. Over decades, segments of society repeatedly engaged the system—through elections, reformist platforms, and tactical participation—in the hope of averting hardline consolidation. Those efforts failed. The regime was never structurally accountable and grew more distant from ordinary Iranians’ aspirations. Supporting the protesters today therefore requires acknowledging their central demand: the end of the Islamic Republic and its theocratic rule. While Khamenei’s death appears a prerequisite for any scenario to advance, all actors are already positioning themselves for that moment, including the Revolutionary Guard.

A fourth scenario has therefore gained momentum—one that moves beyond the regime altogether. Rather than emerging from negotiations, succession, or military takeover, this path centers on a transition initiated outside the Islamic Republic’s institutional framework. Since December, this possibility has shifted from abstraction to political reality. Leadership of the transition has become central, not as a matter of preference, but of necessity. Many capable figures remain unknown to the public, denied any platform to speak to their compatriots. Numerous political prisoners, exiled activists, and professionals have long prepared to serve their country. Among those widely recognized, Reza Pahlavi remains polarizing yet singular. For some, he represents an autocratic past; for many, he has come to symbolize a rupture with the present system. In an environment where institutional opposition is banned and leadership absent, legitimacy has shifted to the streets—and no alternative figure commands comparable recognition. State-controlled media failed to persuade post-revolutionary generations, while satellite networks and online platforms revived memories of pre-1979 Iran, reshaping public perception. Millions have consumed cable-quality programming highlighting the successes, progress, and modernity of the Pahlavi period on a daily basis for the past decade, if not longer.

Opposition to Reza Pahlavi largely reflects resistance to the idea of monarchy itself rather than to him personally, though some cite contested actions, including his meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu. While a core group of his supporters seek coronation, Pahlavi has repeatedly rejected that role. He has stated that he seeks to lead a transitional process, not return as monarch, arguing that ceremonial kingship would silence him politically. What is instead proposed is a transitional period of twenty-four to thirty-six months, during which a decision council is established, a constitutional committee formed, political parties legalized, civil society revived, independent national media emerge, and urgent economic and environmental challenges addressed. Pahlavi remains the most widely recognized Iranian figure who has openly expressed interest in leading such a process. Other imprisoned figures, such as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi and former parliamentarian Mostafa Tajzadeh, also have significant support and will be active players in any political transition.

Iran’s capacity for a smooth transition rests on institutional foundations, many of which predate the Islamic Republic. Core institutions remain largely apolitical and resilient, preventing the collapse of public services. Iran is not lacking in human capital. Millions of professionals inside the country can and will rebuild it.

Iran is not Iraq, Libya, or Syria, but it faces comparable risks. Secessionist movements on its periphery—from Kurdish and Azeri groups to the Ahwazi movement and Jaish al-Adl—pose serious challenges. These threats are compounded by instability beyond Iran’s borders, including by the Taliban and the Islamic State, as well as the influence of major powers such as Russia, China, Israel, and the United States. The violation of Iran’s sovereignty by Israeli and U.S. strikes must not be obscured. Framing those attacks as targeting the regime and its officials was crucial in minimizing their impact on Iran as a state. Nonetheless, innocent lives were lost and civilian infrastructure was targeted. Any further escalation would endanger Iran’s territorial integrity and undermine the legitimacy of any future government.

To avoid a historic betrayal of the Iranian people, Trump and Netanyahu now carry the burden of their own promises: that they seek to support and rescue the people of Iran, not to destroy the country but to see it flourish. U.S. efforts must therefore include protecting Iran’s sovereignty and territorial integrity during a fragile transition. Territory—the map of Iran—is sacred to Iranians. No Iranian, regardless of political orientation, would accept the loss of a single inch of land. A future government will be responsible for safeguarding sovereignty while reintegrating Iran into the international community with dignity.

The Islamic Republic is over, at least as a political force. The greatest danger now is not collapse itself, but the failure to protect the transition from forces—internal and external—that would prefer chaos to a sovereign, democratic Iran.

Dr. Mehran Haghirian is the Director of Research and Programmes at the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation. His work centers on conflict resolution and diplomacy, with a particular focus on the Persian Gulf region. Haghirian holds a PhD in Gulf Studies from Qatar University and a master’s degree in International Affairs from American University’s School of International Service in Washington, D.C.

Section: (vision-iran-initiative) Photo: IRNA

By Esfandyar Batmanghelidj

Economic inequality is the single most important issue in Iran. All of the country’s political and social ills pour forth from the crucible of inequality. A successful political transition in Iran requires more than just identifying problems, it requires a positive vision for Iran and solutions to the country’s problems. But no opposition leader, whether inside or outside of the country, has managed to explain how they will deliver economic justice in Iran. Until such a positive vision emerges, there is nothing for protestors to rally around but slogans and a shared expression of anger.

To their credit, Reza Pahlavi and his boosters have done some work to set out their vision for Iran’s transition. There is a lot to say about their vision, including the striking level of institutional continuity even they are willing to accept were they to inherit the state structures of the Islamic Republic. But the critical flaw of their plan is a stunning failure to address the issue of inequality.

In the six papers on “Economic and Social Stabilization” published by NUFDI and endorsed by Pahlavi, there is barely any examination of inequality. In fact, across the reports, which total 164 pages, the word “inequality” appears only once. This is an extraordinary blind spot and it points to a failure to see the political conditions in Iran for what they really are.

Most critics of the Islamic Republic falsely believe that the reason the country has struggled economically is because of the role of state ownership in the economy and the creation of a bloated welfare system that represents a kind of Islamic socialism. They believe that economic reforms in Iran require cutting red tape, respect for private property, reliance on market mechanisms, and fiscal discipline. In other words, they are calling for classic neoliberal interventions. But these are precisely the reforms that have been attempted by the economic policymakers of the Islamic Republic for nearly three decades, spearheaded by economists who were trained in the United States and United Kingdom to worship the likes of Friedman and Mankiw.

The reason these reforms have failed is not because the Islamic Republic did not understand neoliberalism, the reason is that the Islamic Republic applied neoliberal ideas in an environment where they were prone to abuse. Iran’s current leaders basically undertook their own version of shock therapy, which raised living standards from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s but did so in a manner that concentrated purchasing power among a small elite (see the chart below from Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, which uses data from Iran’s Household Expenditures and Income Survey).

At the same time, across multiple administrations, the economic program eroded the authority of the administrative state in ways that allowed economic elites to put their interests above those of the rest of society. There was no effort to rein in rampant financialization and speculation, no organized industrial policy, no protection of welfare spending. The state relied on economic growth to forestall social tensions. But the rich wanted a bigger piece of the pie and the state did not stop them from grabbing it, even when the pie ceased growing under sanctions. Social provision in Iran remains intact, but its structures are groaning under the weight of these economic contradictions.

In the 2023 wave of the Arzesha-ha va Negaresh-ha Iranian (“Values and Attitudes of Iranians”) survey, a robust nationally representative poll fielded by Iran’s Ministry of Culture, respondents were asked “Do you think the gap between the rich and the poor has widened or narrowed compared to five years ago?” A significant 88 percent of respondents reported that the gap had widened. Moreover, 78 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that “In our society, the rich get richer every day, and the poor get poorer.”

In light of these sentiments, why don’t people like Pahlavi address the issue of inequality? A few reasons come to mind. First, a political opposition rooted in the deeply unequal United States, boosted by prominent Republicans, and supported by a wealthy diaspora who like low taxes, small government, and want to “Make Iran Great Again,” is probably ideologically incapable of addressing the issue of inequality in Iran.

Second, even if there is some ambient awareness of the problem of inequality, there may tactical considerations. In the immediate future, the Pahlavi camp’s best hope for “revolution” relies on elite defections, given the repeated failure of protests to reach a critical mass. Understandably, if you want economic elites to get on board with your political program, you are not going to talk about real class politics.

Finally, any true reckoning with the issue of inequality would reveal uncomfortable truths, including the fact that exacerbating inequality was an intentional aim of U.S. sanctions policies, which were callously endorsed by the diaspora. Iranians were made poorer so they would become angrier. With one hand tied behind their backs by the Islamic Republic, and another hand tied by the United States, they were pit against the rich, who have remained out of reach in their proliferating office towers and hilltop villas. This has been its own injustice.

One reason I do not believe we have arrived at a decisive moment in Iran’s political transition, let alone a moment of revolution, is that we are not even talking about the stakes in Iran using the right language and we have yet to envision a transition that deals with the main grievances in the country. We are still in the process of clarifying the stakes and identifying solutions.

As we make progress towards some kind of fundamental political change in Iran—I strongly believe progress is being made—it is important to recognize that Iranians are not seeking a political revolution, they are seeking a social revolution. Alongside their political rights, Iranians are demanding economic opportunity and social dignity. In this context, a democratic transition without economic redistribution will achieve nothing—it will not be able to consolidate.

The reason the political project of the Islamic Republic has failed is because of the failure to redistribute wealth successfully and sustainably, especially as sanctions stymied growth. Most economies around the world are breaking with the neoliberal consensus. Iran should do the same and pursue state-led investment to drive productivity growth, renew the commitment to social welfare to reduce economic precarity, and ensure purchasing power is spread across the income distribution more equitably.

The uncomfortable reality is that the drivers of today’s protests today are the same as those behind the protests in 1978-1979. The political economy of the Pahlavi Monarchy and Islamic Republic are strikingly similar—two systems that accumulate wealth for the rich through forms of renterism and economic repression. We all know a democratic system will be better for Iran, but what economic system will break this cycle that pits the weakened poor against the strengthened rich? Until we answer that question, there will be no successful political transition, even if the Islamic Republic is pushed over the edge.

Section: (vision-iran-initiative) Photo: IRNA