Saeid Harasani is a researcher on governance, poverty and inequality, writing from Tehran under the fire and bombs for the Anti-imperialist website.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, the renowned Russian novelist, emphasizes in Notes from Underground that war is the most monotonous event in human history. “It suffices to review the official military and state uniforms of people from different eras. This in itself holds value. Is it monotonous? Well, yes, perhaps it is monotonous. War and war; they fight now, they fought before, and they will fight in the future. You admit that it is monotonous to an excessive degree.” Dostoevsky’s central point is that human morals and interests are not formed based on “two plus two equals four” knowledge. Humans act contrary to this to demonstrate their will. They do not wish to be the piano keys of the world! The aggression of the United States and Israel, under the pretext of “preemptive defense” and “supporting the Iranian people,” has directly affected Iranian citizens for over a decade. Since I have been aware of the Iranian nuclear issue, based on the estimates of these two countries, Iran has been between six months and one week away from building a nuclear bomb; even after Donald Trump declared the nuclear threat was eliminated following the 12-day war. This threat perception against Iran has undermined the state capacity of the Islamic Republic for decades, destroying both the socio-political and economic dimensions of citizens’ lives. This process led to the formation of fissures within the country, and subsequently, the factor shaping these fissures—under the claim of supporting the people—dealt them another fatal blow.
Poverty, Economic Conditions, and Public Protest
The absolute poverty rate in Iran in the year 1390 (2011/2012) (before the start of crippling Western sanctions) was 12.5 percent. According to the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, this figure reached over 35 percent in 1404 (2025/2026). These statistics do not represent all the suffering caused by international sanctions for Iranian citizens. Patients who lacked access to necessary medicine, workers who lost their jobs, families forced to spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing, and mothers dependent on state social benefits to prevent child malnutrition constitute only a small fraction of the citizens’ plight.
On the other hand, while the average annual inflation rate for the 10 years leading up to the start of nuclear sanctions was 15.7 percent, this figure stood at 33.2 percent for the 10 years leading up to 1403 (2024/2025). This figure alone does not illustrate the full scope of the issue. Whereas in 1390, one US dollar equaled 18,000 Rials, this figure currently stands at 1,600,000 Rials. This implies an 8,889 percent increase in the value of the dollar against the Rial resulting from sanctions, making the life miserable for all the Iranians relying on a wide array of imported goods, from medicine to laptops.
Civil Life and Social Progress
Apart from all the economic hardships resulting from US sanctions and warfare against the Iranian people, the extensive and persistent interventions of this country have influenced civil life and political and social progress in Iran. The most historical of these manipulations, aimed at seizing imperialist interests, dates back to the coup of 28 Mordad 1332 (1953), but such events have continued to this day. Social manipulation and the co-optation of domestic social movements in Iran by the United States, using them to pressure the ruling political regime, only set back all social progress. Linking sanctions and political threats to social movements inside the country, and ultimately hijacking citizens’ social protests to initiate a foreign invasion, indicates the opposite of the respecting the civil life of Iranian citizens. Multiple experiences of social movements in Iran and their co-optation by the West, particularly the United States, have always kept the political regime in a state of survival. Democracy and the acceptance of social movement demands are directly linked to the state capacity to respond to popular demands. Only governments capable of non-violent engagement with social protests can assimilate these dynamics within themselves. Apart from the fact that sanctions, threats, and repeated aggressions will reduce such capacity, the co-optation of social movements and manipulating them toward regime change will invariably place the political system in confrontation with these movements. The latest instance of these developments was the manipulation of the Dey month protests (January 2026) in Iran. Now, with the aggression of the United States and Israel, the government will perceive any recurrence of protests as directly linked to its foreign enemies, and one can hardly blame them.
Sanctions, Fissures, Aggression, and Social Destruction
US sanctions against Iran were clearly imposed with the aim of weakening state capacity and alienating Iranian citizens from the country’s ruling political system. These policies have affected the social progress and civil life of Iranian citizens in two ways. On the one hand, by deteriorating the economic situation, they have reduced the capacity to focus on progressive goals and movements; on the other hand, by reducing state capacity, they have caused the political system’s inability to assimilate social movements. Such a process has ultimately led to social regressions in various areas.
The most significant of these regressions is the social fissure among citizens, which stems directly from the manipulation and diversion of social movements by the United States and the West. The recent aggression by the United States and Israel against Iran, which is clearly not based on international rules but stems from the regional and international rivalries of these countries, will exacerbate this process in Iran more than ever. The costs of defense against aggression will directly impact the quality of life of Iranian citizens, and the political regime, having recorded the recent experience, will adopt a more threat-oriented view toward social movements. It is painful that all these events are not the desires of the government and citizens of an independent country, but are the result of the imperialist actions of Israel and the United States at the regional and global levels. However, one point in this context is of significant importance. The United States and Israel, both in the 12-day war and in the recent war, sought to utilize years of manipulation in Iran’s social movements. They were clearly seeking the entry of protesting Iranian citizens to change the political regime in Iran; however, one must review Dostoevsky’s lesson: Iranian citizens do not wish to be the piano keys of the United States and Israel, and this is why the “two plus two equals four” calculations of the aggressors prove wrong every time.
