Iran’s president urges officials to admit governance failures

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has called on the country’s authorities to acknowledge mistakes in governance, warning that ignoring public grievances could fuel anger, violence and social alienation.

Pezeshkian said that officials must take responsibility for policy failures rather than deflecting blame, Caliber.Az reports, citing the Free Iran Telegram channel. 

“We must recognise that we have made mistakes in governing the country,” he said. “If we do not admit our mistakes and try to correct them, and instead only blame others, we will achieve nothing.”

The Iranian president warned that public dissatisfaction would continue to grow if state institutions remained indifferent to the demands and problems of poorer and more vulnerable segments of society.

“When all institutions and authorities ignore the demands and problems of vulnerable groups, we cannot expect society not to move towards violence, indifference and alienation from the country and the system,” he added.

Mass protests erupted in Iran in late December 2025, first triggered by deepening economic hardship, including skyrocketing inflation, severe depreciation of the Iranian rial and rising prices of food and essentials. The unrest began with shop closures and strikes in Tehran’s commercial centres and quickly spread to many cities nationwide.

Although initially driven by economic grievances, demonstrations soon took on a broader political character, with some protesters chanting anti-regime slogans and demanding fundamental change in the country’s governance.

The government responded with a harsh crackdown, including the use of force by security forces, mass arbitrary arrests and restrictions on communications. Human rights organisations have documented lethal dispersals by police and the Revolutionary Guard in multiple cities.

The scale of the unrest has made the recent protests the deadliest in Iran since the 1979 revolution, with thousands of deaths reported by official and independent sources, widespread arrests and ongoing international concern over human rights abuses.