Sadeghat: Expanding Protests Show That Poverty, Executions, and Foreign Wars Are Parts of the Same Policy

Ali Reza Sadeghat, an economist and opponent of Iran’s ruling regime, said that the simultaneous protests held in Tehran, Shush, and Yazd on Sunday, July 19, 2026, demonstrate the widening scope of social anger across Iran.

He said the crisis is no longer limited to a particular city or social group. Retirees, prisoners’ families, housing applicants, workers, and other citizens are increasingly protesting against poverty, institutional corruption, repression, and executions.

Sadeghat said the demonstrations by Social Security retirees in Tehran and Shush were the direct result of declining living standards, soaring prices, and the continued collapse of the national currency. Inflation has eroded pensions and savings, leaving millions unable to afford essential food, medicine, housing, and other basic needs.

He stressed that Iran does not lack financial resources. The problem is that the authorities divert national wealth to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, repressive institutions, military projects, and proxy militias abroad instead of improving pensions and public services.

The protest by applicants to the Bonyad Beton housing project in Yazd, he added, illustrates a broader pattern of institutionalized corruption. Families hand over their savings in the hope of securing a home, only to face delays, mismanagement, a lack of transparency, and the absence of accountability.

Sadeghat said the gathering of more than 500 prisoners’ relatives outside Qezel Hesar Prison in support of approximately 1,500 death-row inmates was especially significant. The prisoners have continued their hunger strike and joined the “No to Executions Tuesdays” campaign, declaring that Iranian youth deserve neither prison nor execution.

He said the prison guards’ attack on the families and the authorities’ efforts to restrict communications reveal the regime’s fear that opposition to executions could develop into a broader social movement linking prisoners, their relatives, and the wider public.

Sadeghat described the British government’s decision to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization as an important step. The IRGC, he said, is not simply a military force; it is the backbone of domestic repression, economic plunder, regional warfare, and terrorism.

He urged other European governments to follow Britain’s example and target the financial, commercial, and political networks linked to the IRGC.

Sadeghat concluded that the regime is attempting to escape its domestic crises by fueling foreign conflicts. Yet the simultaneous protests show that public anger is continuing to expand.

Any agreement that stops the war and reduces the suffering of the Iranian people should be welcomed. However, the fundamental solution lies in ending the rule of the clerical regime through the Iranian people and their organized resistance, and establishing a democratic republic that places Iran’s wealth at the service of its citizens rather than repression and war.