The Islamic Republic is rotting from the inside. They know it. A highly classified report, quietly slipped to the desk of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, lays bare a terrifying reality for the regime: the public isn’t just angry anymore. They want the whole system dead and buried. This isn’t some Western propaganda piece. It’s their own data.
The document, titled “What Iran Wants,” is a devastating read. Only nine percent of those surveyed support the status quo. Let that sink in. Nine percent. Meanwhile, 53 percent are screaming for fundamental structural reforms, and nearly a fifth—over 19 percent—want the entire political system tossed into the trash. That is nearly three-quarters of the country demanding a reset. The crisis has long outgrown mere grumbling over gas prices or local officials. It is existential.
IranWire leaked the document on July 13. Compiled by Ali Rabiei, a former government spokesman turned social adviser to the president, the report relies on polling conducted in May 2026 by the Ara Opinion Research Center. It made the rounds among Tehran’s ruling elite in June. They must have choked on their tea.
“If anything, this research understates the depth of Iranians’ rage,” says Miad Maleki, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He has a point. In a brutal police state, people lie to pollsters to stay alive. If you think the wrong thought, you disappear. Therefore, these terrifying numbers are not a ceiling. They are a floor.
The misery is palpable. Sixty-four percent of respondents reported feeling persistent anger, a massive jump from late 2025. Half are hopeless. Nearly half are depressed. Economic survival is a daily war. Over 81 percent struggle to put food on the table. Three-quarters cannot afford basic healthcare. Only a measly eight percent can save a single coin at the end of the month.
Tehran loves to blame Washington. The people aren’t buying it. Nearly 47 percent blame sheer government incompetence for the economic collapse. Another 26 percent point to rampant corruption. Only 20 percent blame foreign sanctions. The mullahs can no longer hide behind the Great Satan.
Trust is dead. Over 60 percent of the population distrusts major state institutions. But the regime’s response? Pure public relations. Rabiei’s report doesn’t suggest fixing the economy or stopping the executions. Instead, it advises officials to watch their tone, use state TV to look nice, and explain sanctions better. It is lipstick on a corpse. They treat a terminal systemic failure as a mere marketing problem.
Will it spark a revolution? Maybe. Protests have ballooned from 80 cities in 2017 to over 200 across every single province this year. Strikes have quadrupled. But the regime was born in blood, and they know how to spill it. They have spent decades building a massive apparatus of terror designed specifically to crush dissent. They are very good at it. Still, the pressure cooker is whistling. The explosion is coming. The only question is who will stand with the Iranian people when the lid finally blows.
