For decades, the Islamic Republic owned the narrative inside its own borders. The state media controlled television channels, newspapers, news agencies, and even religious broadcasters. This is all to say that the Islamic Republic had full control over what information Iranians were getting and how they were getting it.
This was a massive asset for the regime because it’s hard to have a revolution when people don’t exactly have free flow of information. But you see, this ceasefire that’s going on right now is changing all that. Now, after this war, there’s a vacuum at the top of the Iranian leadership, and different factions of the government are fighting each other to fill that top spot.
And because of this, state television channels, state newspapers, and even state media anchors, so news anchors are now picking aside and attacking each other. This is something we have never seen before. This is happening at a time when US is getting ready to restart the war. The central command has just requested Pentagon to give it access to this brand new hypersonic missile that has never been used in combat ever before.
This is something no one else in the world has ever seen and Iran may not be ready for what hit it. So, let’s get into all this. Starting with the state media and why they are turning on the regime. This all started with Iranian inflation. Now, I’m sure most of you guys already know this, but the Iranian economy and more specifically inflation inside of Iran was already bad to begin with.
But over the past 2 days, the situation has gotten worse. A lot worse. Iran’s national currency, the rial just hit the record low. You can now get 1.8 million rials for just $1. Meaning, if you have a single dollar right now, you’re a millionaire inside of Iran. Now, this is a huge, huge problem for everyone because around 50 to 70% of Iranian food is actually imported from overseas.
Now, I don’t have exact numbers, but those are expert estimates. But let’s just assume that the true number is somewhere between there or somewhere around there. Okay, that means even if the United States blockade is lifted tomorrow, Iranians are going to be paying higher prices for food and cost of living. The reason currency crashed in the last 2 days, not before that, was because there really wasn’t much trading or imports happening inside of Iran because of the war.
The economy is just starting to open back up again a little bit and now people are able to trade. They’re able to figure out the true value of the currency and that’s exactly why in the last 2 days it has crashed more than 10%. Now it’s sad to say but for many Iranians economic collapses is something they’ve been living with for decades. But this time something unique is happening.
Something is happening because of this economic collapse that even the regime did not anticipate. State media is turning against the regime itself and people who are in power. Take a look at this report. Iran’s worsening economic crisis is drawing unusually blunt warnings from state media and establishment voices. TV anchors are now publicly going after and criticizing the leadership because they see truly how bad this situation has gotten.
Let me give you some numbers so you understand because when I tell you guys that $1 is 1.8 million rials. That doesn’t really tell us much because Iranians don’t really think in terms of dollars. They think in terms of how much they earn and how much they have to spend just to survive. Now, before I share all these numbers, just a quick disclaimer again that Iranian government is not really known for their transparency.
And on top of that, as you guys know, for more than 2 months now, there’s an internet blackout going on inside of Iran. So, we can’t really confirm much. We can only just share what the information that we have coming out of Iran. So based on all that the median income in Iran as of this year is around 200 million rials per month. Now important to clarify for people who may get confused because I have seen people make this mistake online.
Median means exactly the 50 percentile. So there are half the people inside of Iran making less than this and half the people making more than this. This is not an average because averages have some problems with it where let’s say a billionaire can drop a average even though it’s just one person earning a lot.
Median is a little bit of a better metric to look at. So a median person earns around 200 million rial a month. But let’s look at what the cost they have to deal with. A single egg in Tehran cost around a million rial. A single egg. A burger is around 5 million rial. We’re not even talking about let’s say transportation cost or you know living cost for apartment or house that people live in.
This is just talking about food. And the situation has gotten so bad that many Iranians, vast majority of Iranians may not have enough every single month to feed themselves and their family. This is where I want to remind everyone the protest that we covered so heavily in January. Well, those protest initially started as an economic protest.
People were pissed about the devaluation that the government carried out against the rial. The devaluation happened in December around late December and the protest started around 28th of December. So just few days after people got the news. Now the reason everyone was so pissed is because people who benefit from the devaluation are people who are in the oil industry.
So basically IRGC members and more specifically IRGC leaders. But all the other Iranians suffer because of the devaluation. As we talked about, a lot of Iran’s food comes from overseas. And when the government devalues the rial, that means everyone is going to be paying more for the food they eat. But on top of that, a good portion of the Iranian society are bazaaris, basically merchants.
They buy items, electronics, anything you can think of from overseas, and they then sell it in Iran as traders, and they make their living that way. When devaluation happens, that means they have to pay more for whatever they are buying overseas. And that means their profit margins are less or lesser inside of Iran.
And that’s why a big portion of the Iranian society. Millions of people took to the street to protest against the corruption and the devaluation that the government was carrying out. And these protest quickly spiraled into something where people were chanting for regime change. And this is exactly why the government killed roughly 10,000 to 40,000 Iranian protesters just to maintain its grip on power.
Now, one thing many people forget is that even though the protest went away because of the brutality that the Islamic Republic carried out, the economic problems never went away. They were always there and people were dealing with it. And now those problems have become even worse. And this is exactly why even the Iranian state media is now calling out the government.
And this is where things get even more interesting because the state media isn’t just criticizing the regime. They’re also criticizing each other. There’s a fight going on that has spilled out into the public where one state agency is attacking another one and then they are attacking back and this has turned into like physical fights.
There are people who are going to news stations and attacking employees, attacking buildings and basically causing havoc. Now, before we get to that, I do want to remind everyone that there are Iranian sleeper cells that operate inside of countries in Europe and here in the United States that use social media to recruit unsuspecting individuals to carry out criminal and terrorist activities on behalf of the Iranian regime.
These sleeper cells have extensive operations all across different social media platforms. Even here on YouTube, they regularly downvote anything that criticizes the regime, and of course promote anything that is pro-Islamic regime.
Now let’s talk about Iranian state media fighting with each other. You see, as we have covered before, there are different factions that are forming inside of the Iranian government. Well, similarly there are different state media companies that support different factions and these media companies are now attacking each other and this fight has come on to Twitter.
These companies are now using Twitter to attack the other company that operates inside of Iran. So here are the two companies that we’re talking about. One is Tasnim News and the other one is Raja News. Both controlled by the Iranian state but Tasnim News supports the negotiators. So basically people who are pro negotiations with the United States like the foreign minister and then we have Raja News which is supported by hardcore hardliners people who don’t want negotiations at all and they want to do everything in their power to make sure negotiations don’t restart. They are more aligned with like the hardcore members of the IRGC.
The most recent spat started when news recently published an article mocking certain hardliners and their demands. Basically saying that these people don’t know what they’re talking about. This is when Raja News head back basically because they weren’t happy.
They realized that Tasnim was attacking the ideology that they believed in and they started attacking Tasnim news back. This is when situation got a bit out of hand because a lot of Raja News supporters or readers went to the Tasnim headquarters, the building where the staff is located at and they started attacking the building and dealing damage to it.
Now, this back and forth is still ongoing. Tasnim News is writing op-eds, attacking Raja News, and Raja News is writing op-eds, attacking Tasnim News. They’re not even attacking each other’s position anymore. They’re literally just attacking each other. They’re calling each other out, going after the founders, going after the writers, and everything like that.
But unfortunately for Iran, everyone can see this. So, this is breaking the narrative that some in the West believe that there was a unified Iranian regime that had unified because of this war, when in reality that’s not true. There are cracks all over the place. There are cracks in the regime. There are cracks in the leadership.
And of course, now we can see there are cracks in the people in the media infrastructure that the state has built. Now, this is something President Trump himself talked about when he had a press conference yesterday meeting with astronauts who just went to moon. So, take a listen to his statement.
“Their economy is crashing. Their uh as you know their money, their they go with their money. They don’t have a name for it. Their money is worthless. Uh they’ve got inflation that nobody’s ever seen before. Other than that, I think they’re doing quite well. If you read the New York Times, you would say you’d say they’re doing wonderfully because it’s fake news. Or if you watch CNN, I mean, you cover it all the time. You think they’re doing well. Do you think they’re doing well where they have no navy, no air force, no anti-aircraft apparatus other than what they may have put there? They may have brought in some light stuff during the ceasefire and we know exactly where it is. So, it’ll be knocked out within the first 15 minutes.”
Then he also mentioned something about negotiations. How Iran has offered a lot of concessions, but they’re still not enough. They’re not what exactly the United States wants. There are still some concessions that Iranians are unwilling to offer. Take a listen to the statement.
“Depends. We have talks. We’re having talks with them now. And we’re not flying anymore with 18-hour flights. Every time we want to see a piece of paper, we’re doing it telephonically. And it’s very nice. I make a call or I have my people make a call and you know the answer in I always like face to face. I you know I consider it better. But when you have to fly 18 hours every time you want to have a meeting and you know what the meeting is all about and you know they’re going to give you a piece of paper that you don’t like before you even leave. It’s ridiculous. They’ve come a long way. The question is whether or not they’re going to go far enough. So, at this moment, there will never be a deal unless they agree that there will be no nuclear weapons.”
Now, to understand why Iran is behaving the way it’s behaving right now, we have to go back and look at how Iran got to where it is today. That doesn’t just mean going back to 1979 when the Islamic Revolution took place.
In fact, we have to go further back to when the Qajar dynasty was ruling Iran in the 19th century and look at how the decisions the ruling class made back then still affects Iran to this very day. Well, guess what? That’s exactly what we’re doing in our multi-part podcast that just came out today. So, if you’re someone who’s interested in the history of Iran and how we got to where we are today, definitely go check it out.
