Iran’s economy has passed the point of no return, and there is now no avoiding a historic economic collapse.
The raw numbers tell some of the story. Food inflation is at 104% per month. Iranians have lost 90% of their purchasing power. The rial has hit a new all-time low of 1.84 million against the U.S. dollar in the open market in Tehran.
That means that a 256GB iPhone 17 Pro Max, priced by Apple at $1,200 in the U.S., was being offered at close to 5 billion rials ($2,750) by some shops in the capital. Other shops are refusing to sell, knowing the price will probably dramatically increase in a few days.
Al Jazeera reports, “A Peugeot 206, a modest French passenger car that is also now produced and popular in Iran, costs an eye-watering 30 billion rials ($16,500).”
“The monthly minimum wage in Iran is currently less than 170 million rials ($92), and that is after the government raised it by about 60 percent for the current Persian calendar year that started on March 21,” reports the outlet. “The government is also offering subsidies towards food and essentials worth just less than $10 per month per person.”
“You look at the prices and salaries, and you see the numbers don’t add up,” one unnamed Tehran resident told Al Jazeera.
Naturally, the currency collapse and inflation have led to huge job losses. The government is no longer announcing unemployment figures, so we have to guess how bad it is.
In addition to the bombardment of Iran’s infrastructure, U.S. sanctions, and a naval blockade, the resulting economic crisis has magnified the already massive corruption in the economy. You can’t survive without cheating the system in some way, and even normally honest merchants have been forced into a life of crime.
Iran is entering the 65th day of a total internet shutdown. In trying to keep Iranians off the streets in protest, the government is deliberately sabotaging the economy.
But is all of this pain enough to bring about the kind of peace Donald Trump will accept?
The escalating pressure campaign marks one of the most aggressive U.S. efforts in years to economically isolate Iran. But the central question is whether this strategy can force meaningful concessions from a regime that has historically absorbed economic pain, or whether it risks triggering broader instability — from energy market shocks to regional escalation — before Iran is pushed to a breaking point.
A senior administration official told Fox News Digital that Treasury is aggressively expanding “Economic Fury” beyond traditional sanctions by targeting Iran’s ability to generate, move and repatriate funds across oil, banking, cryptocurrency and covert trade networks.
The official said Treasury has disrupted billions in projected Iranian oil revenue in recent days alone, including freezing half a billion dollars in regime-linked cryptocurrency, while also escalating pressure on Chinese “teapot” refineries, foreign banks and sanctions-evasion networks facilitating Tehran’s trade.
China is ignoring U.S. sanctions and is using these “teapot refineries” to buy up Iranian oil through third parties. The small, independentnt refineries have become a focal point in global energy politics. They have been instrumental in keeping the Chinese economy stable by importing sanctioned Iranian and Russian oil, often using China’s Cross-border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) to bypass Western financial networks.
They are very difficult to get at, especially since China is telling them to ignore the U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has got to find a way to, if not shut them down, then clog up their financial and supply networks, which is easier said than done.
Alireza Nader, an Iranian independent analyst based in Washington, doesn’t think that economic pressure alone will force Iran to settle.
“It looks like a game of chicken and I think the regime thinks that it can win this game of chicken with President Trump,” he told Fox News Digital.
“I don’t see this economic blockade … leading to some sort of breaking point for the regime,” Nader added. He says that the Iranian leadership has shown in the past their willingness to allow the people to suffer in order to maintain their hold on power.
According to U.S. intelligence, Iran will run out of places to put the oil they are taking out of the ground in less than two weeks. They are now loading crude into derelict tankers, railroad cars, and any other receptacle that can hold oil.
When they run out of places to store the oil, they will be forced to shut down wells. That will result in laying off large numbers of workers and losing revenue totaling hundreds of millions of dollars a day.
Eventually, Iran will be forced to meet Trump’s terms or witness the government’s inability to feed its 90 million people.
Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.
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