Iran’s Dual Crisis: Fuel Protests and a Generation Lost to Inequality

ERBIL (Kurdistan24) – As a fierce political and public debate erupts over rumored fuel price hikes, exposing the immense economic pressures on the Iranian state and its citizens, a far more insidious crisis is casting a long, dark shadow over the nation's future.

While government officials scramble to quell anxieties about a nearly four-fold increase in gasoline prices, a series of stark and gut-wrenching reports have laid bare a cavernous divide in educational opportunities, revealing a system where the futures of children are increasingly predetermined by the accident of their birth.

These parallel crises, one playing out in the public square and the other in forgotten classrooms and child labor markets, paint a grim picture of a society grappling with profound structural inequalities that threaten to permanently sideline a generation.

The Gasoline Price Firestorm

The latest wave of public anxiety was ignited by a social media post from Hamid Rasaei, a Tehran representative in the Iranian parliament.

Citing a recent cabinet resolution, Rasaei claimed the government of President Masoud Pezeshkian was poised to implement a drastic price increase that would see the cost of subsidized gasoline skyrocket from 1500 toman to 5,500 toman per liter, as reported by Mehr News Agency.

He contended that the resolution mandated adding fuel transportation costs and station owners' commissions directly to the pump price. The allegation was politically charged, with Rasaei reminding the public that during his presidential campaign, Pezeshkian had repeatedly dismissed such plans as "slander by the election rivals."

The government’s response was swift and emphatic. The head of the government's information affairs, Ali Ahmadinia, took to the same social media platform, X, to issue a direct rebuttal. “Some media claimed an increase in the price of gasoline! The Government Information Council, while denying this claim, announces that the government has no plan to increase the price of gasoline!”

Ahmadinia wrote, a statement cited by Khabar Online and Baztab news websites. This official denial was buttressed by an informed source within the Ministry of Oil, the executive body for any such policy.

Speaking to the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) and other outlets, the source stressed that the ministry had not been instructed to raise prices. “So far, no plan to increase the price of gasoline has been communicated to this ministry, and we are not the decision-maker. Therefore, if it is communicated, as the executor, we will implement the resolution,” the source clarified, indicating a state of readiness but a lack of orders.

Industry stakeholders also moved to defuse the situation. Reza Navaz, the spokesperson for the national fuel station owners' union, labeled the rumors inflammatory and misleading. “The claim that gasoline will become more expensive due to the separation of the commission from the product price is denied,” he stated, according to Mehr News Agency.

In a television interview reported by Khabar Online, Navaz described the cabinet resolution not as a prelude to a price hike, but as a "good resolution from an expert point of view" aimed at comprehensive energy sector reform. He explained that its provisions included strategies to combat fuel smuggling, rationalize quotas, and encourage the use of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG).

The controversial clause, he argued, was a "completely specialized" matter of financial transparency, designed to separate station commissions and transport costs from the fuel price if and when a future price adjustment occurs, thereby streamlining a currently convoluted payment process.

Reports from Baztab and Khabar Online further noted the resolution’s intent to widen the price gap between gasoline and CNG to promote the latter, explicitly stating this "does not mean that gasoline will become more expensive."

A Crisis of Consumption

Despite the official denials, the controversy has forced a national reckoning with an unsustainable energy policy. Iran is in the grip of a severe fuel crisis driven by record-breaking domestic consumption.

According to official statistics from the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company, cited by Mehr News Agency, consumption this past summer reached an unprecedented 12.5 billion liters. 

This marks a daily increase of about 10 million liters compared to last year, with average consumption now at a staggering 134 million liters per day.

Energy expert Hashem Oraee, in an interview with Mehr News Agency, confirmed the alarming figures and warned that domestic production can no longer meet this demand, forcing the country to spend an estimated eight million dollars daily on gasoline and diesel imports.

This financial burden is exacerbated by geopolitical constraints. "For now, the only import option is Russia; a country that itself is facing a gasoline shortage," Oraee noted, highlighting the vulnerability of the supply chain. The situation is made worse by rampant smuggling, with estimates suggesting 30 million liters of heavily subsidized fuel are illegally transported out of the country each day.

Oraee argued that in a high-inflation environment, price stabilization is unsustainable, as it effectively halves the real price of gasoline annually. While he believes a price increase is necessary, he cautions it is not a panacea. Any sudden hike, experts warn, would trigger a new inflationary wave, as transportation costs account for roughly 40 percent of the final price of goods and services.

The Mehr News Agency report points to a deeper, structural cause: Iran's inefficient automotive industry, which it labels the "first-degree accused in gasoline consumption." Domestic vehicles consume, on average, 2.5 times the world standard for fuel. If they were built to modern standards, national consumption would plummet, potentially turning Iran into a major exporter and generating over 15 billion dollars in annual revenue.

The gasoline crisis, the report concludes, is a symptom of a systemic conflict between a subsidized economy, industrial weakness, and political indecisiveness. The path forward, experts agree, requires not a sudden shock but a gradual, comprehensive reform linking economic and social realities.

A Tale of Two Childhoods

While the economic pressures of the fuel crisis are felt across society, a more profound and lasting crisis of inequality is unfolding in Iran's education sector, as starkly documented in a recent report by the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA).

The report paints a devastating picture of educational apartheid through a series of recently circulated videos that capture the unbridgeable distance between the lives of the rich and the poor. The first video is a slick promotion for a bilingual kindergarten in affluent north Tehran, showing happy, well-dressed children in colorful classrooms, speaking fluent English. It is presented as a sign of educational progress.

The second video, however, offers a brutal counterpoint. It shows the "critical situation" of education in the village of Esfakeh in the Chabahar region of Sistan and Baluchestan.

Dozens of primary school students with "dusty and old clothes and sunburnt faces" are seen sitting on a threadbare rug in a dusty schoolyard under the scorching sun, without desks or benches. Their school, local residents say, has been a half-finished construction site for years. The third video is even more harrowing.

It captures the aftermath of a road accident near Mashhad that killed at least five child laborers. The children, some under 15 and mostly from Baluchistan, were packed into a car, some in the trunk, on their way to pick saffron for daily wages. They were, the report notes, deprived of education entirely. These three scenes, ILNA reports, occurring within the same week, reveal class difference in its "most naked form."

The Sobering Statistics of a Lost Generation

This anecdotal evidence is backed by alarming official statistics. According to the Ministry of Education figures cited by ILNA, the number of children dropping out of school is rising dramatically. In the 2023-2024 academic year, 902,188 children left school; in the 2024-2025 academic year, that number climbed to 928,729.

The report stresses that these figures only account for children with official records, and the "real number is undoubtedly much higher."

The root cause is crushing poverty.

ILNA notes that for a working-class family, the cost of a basic food basket is double the approved minimum wage, making the costs associated with education an impossible burden. In deprived provinces like Sistan and Baluchestan, where employment is scarce, families are forced to choose between sustenance and schooling, leading to a tragic rise in school dropouts and child labor.

Labor activist Maziar Gilaninejad, speaking to ILNA, framed this as a systemic issue where the prosperity of a few is built on the exploitation of the many.

"In a society where a minority is raised in security, education, and well-being from childhood, and a majority struggles with poverty, insecurity, and early work from the very early ages, the issue is not just inequality," he argued. "The wealth of the minority is built on the labor and suffering of the majority."

He pointed out that the most deprived workers lack union representation, ensuring that their dispossession is passed down to the next generation.

The ILNA report concludes with a deeply pessimistic outlook, asking, "What future will the children of these workers have, who sit on the dirt and dust, study with hungry stomachs, or work with their small hands in fields and workshops?!"

The answer, it suggests, is already written.

The child studying on the ground in Esfakeh will soon be forced to abandon education for a life of hard, low-wage labor in coal mines, agricultural fields, or on construction sites. These two national crises—one over the price of a liter of gasoline and the other over the value of a child's future—are inextricably linked, revealing a society where the gap between the haves and the have-nots has become a chasm that threatens to consume the next generation.