“Iran cannot survive like this much longer" filled up my X feed Thursday morning, attributed to Mohammad Ghalibaf, Speaker of Iran's Islamic Consultative Assembly. "No matter how much military power we have, if people are hungry and we don't have financial circulation, economic growth and domestic production, we will not endure," he reportedly said during a meeting with Iranian and Iraqi business leaders at Iran’s embassy.
What, again?
Again. Ghalibaf's assessment is actually from three weeks ago, which is why it sounded so familiar.
But as it turned out, there was perhaps good reason for last week's news to resurface — renewed protests in various Iranian cities.
Videos like these two appear to be genuine and not just reposts from earlier this year — although 100% verification of anything that comes out of Iran is basically impossible.
Today, September 8th, Ahvaz:
— Marziyeh Amirizadeh مرضیه امیری زاده (@MAmirizadeh) September 8, 2026
Brave Iranians have taken to the streets in Tehran and several other cities to protest against the evil Islamic regime.
Please pray for the Iranian people—for courage, protection, and strength—and that this time they will be able to take back their… pic.twitter.com/u7KQ0FRUCo
If the protest videos are genuine, the reason could be that prescription medicine is getting harder to come by, and prices for some are up over 500%. Al Jazeera reported Thursday on "growing shortages of medicine for cancer and other serious illnesses amid a crisis in Iran’s pharmaceutical sector."
"Pain and fever pill Acetaminophen has risen by 375 percent, antibiotic Amoxicillin by 285 percent, and anti-depressant Fluoxetine by 100 percent," the story continued. "Insulin, a daily necessity for diabetics, now costs up to six times what it did a year ago."
However things might appear to outside observers, Tehran seems to be doing its best to party like it's 2015. President Donald Trump said during a national address in July that he might soon orders strikes against Iran's Pickaxe Mountain, believed to be "one of the last remaining vestiges of Iran’s nuclear program," as CSIS put it on Wednesday.
According to the same report, new satellite imagery shows "more road activity at Pickaxe Mountain in 2026 than at any point in the site’s history." It seems obvious that neither last summer's 12-Day War nor Trump's on-again/off-again strikes since Feb. 28 dissuaded Tehran from its nuclear ambitions.
CSIS concluded that the ongoing buildup at Pickaxe illustrates "the need for a verifiable diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear challenge," but we tried that already, too.
That isn't to say everything is going swimmingly in the Islamic Republic, because nothing could be further from the truth.
Meanwhile, Gulf energy outflows aren't up to prewar levels — and might never be, thanks to Arab efforts to reroute to the Red Sea — but they are up month-over-month. Again:
Gulf of Oman Ship-to-Ship transfers of crude oil are up!
— TankerTrackers.com, Inc. (@TankerTrackers) September 10, 2026
Over the past full 14 days, there were 7.15 million barrels per day being exchanged. These numbers are based on both AIS and satellite imagery of unique sessions.
This is up 56% MoM.#OOTT #IranWar #Tankers pic.twitter.com/v0jM15203q
And Ynet reported on Tuesday that "no Iranian crude has crossed the US naval blockade since mid-July, while offshore reserves [i.e., oil previously loaded on tankers] have plunged from about 90 million to 29 million barrels." The outlet concluded that "dwindling sales are depriving Tehran of foreign currency as inflation and the rial worsen."
Hence the protests.
There's no way to completely cut through the fog of war, but maybe Hugh Hewitt got closer to the truth than anyone else when he pointed out on Thursday that "The IRGC has been deterred from striking at Israel. They are afraid of Israel. But not yet afraid of us."
If Hugh is correct, then there is likely no way out until Islamic Republic fears Trump the same way it does Netanyahu.
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