Iran internal stability

Assessment

The regime is absorbing a deepening cost-of-living shock under war conditions after the Sept 8 introduction of a third gasoline tier that doubled the above-quota rate to 100,000 rials a litre for drivers using more than 110 litres a month. Police, special units and Basij were deployed around filling stations in Tehran, Mashhad, Shiraz, Karaj, Isfahan and Tabriz from Sept 7 and taxi, truck and ride-hailing drivers struck in several cities, but no national uprising on the scale of November 2019 had materialised by Sept 15. State media cited by the opposition NCRI on Sept 15 put the poverty line above 70 million tomans a month against a minimum worker income below 25 million tomans, while the rial trades near 2.2 million to the dollar with inflation above 80 percent. Executions and political detentions continue, with a death sentence reported against Marziyeh Ebrahimi for photographing a missile strike site in Bandar Abbas, and Mojtaba Khamenei has ruled by written order without a public appearance since Feb 28.