Iran’s theocracy exits 2025 battered yet still standing, with analysts telling Eye for Iran that Tehran is interpreting survival after a punishing war with Israel, regional losses and domestic strain as grounds for taking greater risks in 2026.
A series of rare viral videos by Iranian police officers describing severe financial hardship has triggered widespread reaction, with retractions by officers involved fueling allegations of pressure.
Cafés—and the social life that has grown around them—have become the latest battleground for Iran’s hardliners, who increasingly see their control over everyday behavior slipping out of reach.
A cluster of former officials and pundits in Tehran has sought to downplay the likelihood of a US-backed Israeli strike on Iran, arguing that Washington has little appetite for such military action.
A rare on-air admission of economic collapse by a senior Iranian official this week briefly pierced the state’s carefully managed narrative—only to be reinforced hours later by leaked budget talks revealing how little financial room the government actually has.
President Massoud Pezeshkian’s call for “unity” and “national reconciliation” has collided with Iran’s power structure, becoming a one-way street in which concessions flow to hardliners while the president gains little in return.
Tehran’s recent gestures of apparent flexibility—from looser enforcement of the hijab to an embrace of nationalist symbolism—recall moments in Communist history when a brief opening exposed risks the system ultimately moved to contain.
As Tehran grapples with a mounting mix of economic strain and public disillusionment, talk of constitutional reform is resurfacing among political insiders who say they have not entirely abandoned the idea that change from within is still possible.
Changes to how YouTube presents ads has dealt a sharp blow to Iranian content creator revenues while bringing mercifully fewer ads to ordinary viewers of the banned but wildly popular video app.
Recent rains delivered Iran from a dangerous dry spell straight into to destructive floods because the land has been denuded by years of poor management, environmental expert Roozbeh Eskandari told Eye for Iran.
As Azerbaijan and other Caspian Sea states deepen partnerships with Western energy companies to extract more oil and gas from aging offshore fields, Iran stands apart as the only Caspian littoral country that produces no hydrocarbons from the sea at all.
Faced with economic crisis, social defiance and regional strain, Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei continues to invoke earlier moments of “glory,” treating defeat and mismanagement as moral triumphs rather than political failures.
Iran is not a war-torn country, yet four decades of Islamic Republic rule have driven mass emigration. UN data show over five million registered refugees or asylum seekers since 1980, with millions more leaving legally – about one in every 15 Iranians now living abroad.
Iran’s president is facing growing heat as moderate allies turn against him, arguing that his promised government of national consensus has instead lost its authority and internal cohesion.
Tehran state-affiliated media are hinting that Judiciary Chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei could soon be appointed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to head the Guardian Council, the powerful body that vets election candidates and approves parliament’s legislation.
Iran faces a stark choice to address a cost of living crisis: preserve subsidized exchange rates that have failed to protect purchasing power and fueled corruption or remove it and risk triggering another wave of uncontrolled inflation.
An annual cultural celebration of women and mothers in Iran falling on the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad's daughter Fatimah has galvanized critics of the theocracy's rights record for women even as supporters come to its defense.
Iranians are increasingly discontented with how their country is run but the Islamic Republic persists because of its ability and willingness to crush dissent by force, ex-CIA analyst and National Security Council director Ken Pollack told Eye for Iran.
Lebanon is one of Iran's key launchpads for regional influence via its longtime armed ally Hezbollah, but Beirut dealt a deep cut this week when its foreign minister curtly declined an invitation to visit Tehran.
Ordinary Iranians are buckling under the physical and psychological strain of surging prices, toxic air and deepening food and medicine insecurity, officials and experts in Tehran have warned.
A dramatic cultural opening is sweeping across Iran, not as a government reform but as a bottom-up movement driven by a young generation that is less willing to be intimidated by the state, Iran analyst Omid Memarian told Eye for Iran.
A prominent academic’s assertion that many of Iran’s problems stem from “the dominance of the economically weak class” in governance has stoked outrage in a country whose theocracy bills itself as a champion of the downtrodden.