The 1405 budget: a mirror of a useless government with no plan

What he says

An English translation of the talk, which is in Persian. It was made with AI from YouTube's automatic captions and may contain errors; the Persian transcript is authoritative. Click a timestamp to jump to that part of the video.

0:01 Hello. It is Wednesday, Dey 1404, December 24, 2025. Tomorrow is Christmas Day, which according to the tradition of most of the world's Christians is the birthday of Jesus Christ, the prophet of peace and friendship. From right here I congratulate all our Christian compatriots, all Iranians and all the people of the world on this day and wish them joy. Now, the general budget bill for the year 1405 has been submitted by Mr. Pezeshkian to the Majlis. This draft will probably be hammered at in the Majlis as well and shifted up and down.

1:01 In a single sentence, one could say it is a budget of day-to-day survival, without any kind of innovation. In most countries, the budget law, because it is a law in which all the ministries and government agencies are involved, is the appropriate place for solving the country's problems; if there are solutions and programs, they are brought together there. But when you look at this budget, regarding the country's most important problems, such as the air problem, the water problem, the environment, land subsidence, fuel, electricity, and so on and so forth, as well as foreign policy problems and so on, you see no solution in it at all, and there is no sign of any approaches

2:05 to solving these problems in the budget law for the year 1405. On the other hand, despite the request of a number of economists, who rightly told Mr. Pezeshkian, "At least make the budget transparent and clear, a glass room," this budget once again lacks that very transparency. The figures are hidden between the lines, and in particular it is still unknown whether taxes will be collected from the institutions under the Supreme Leader, the IRGC and so on, or not — while half of the country's economy is in the hands of Khamenei and 30 percent of it is in the hands of IRGC institutions.

3:10 In any case, in this budget the salary increase for government employees for next year has been set at only 20 percent. A figure that seems like a joke, because up to this point in the year — and we still have three more months until the end of the year — employees' purchasing power has dropped by at least 50 percent, and we are already witnessing 50 percent inflation, although for some items, such as food and the like, this figure is much higher. In contrast, the military budget has increased by 14 percent, the largest share of which goes to the IRGC General Staff, which has been allocated

4:02 a budget increase of more than 50 percent, while the increase in development budgets is zero percent. That is, a country whose budget will in fact be spent only on day-to-day expenses and on strengthening its military, while in the area of development, construction and the country's projects, it will at most continue previous work. The budget of the useless institutions that Mr. Pezeshkian had promised he would shut down, or at least not fund, remains in place — institutions such as the Islamic Propagation Organization, the Seminaries Management Center, or Al-Mustafa University, that terrorist factory, and so on and so forth.

4:57 In any case, there is still time until the end of the year and the final approval of the budget, but even as it stands, this budget not only fails to untie a single one of the country's knots, it is in fact a mirror of the dire state of Iran's economy. If we convert the figures of the government's general budget at a dollar rate of 130,000 tomans — although today the dollar even passed 136,000 tomans — the government's entire budget comes to 45 billion dollars. That is, on the level of a small, or at most a medium-sized, American company.

5:52 Meanwhile Turkey and Saudi Arabia — Turkey with a population equal to Iran's, Saudi Arabia with a population of about one-third of Iran's — have government budgets nine times that of the Iranian government. Not to mention America, with six times Iran's population, whose budget is 15 times that of the Iranian government — and that is only the budget of the U.S. federal government; otherwise the bulk of government budgets there belongs to the 50 states. If we calculate the budget figures per capita based on population, Iran falls at the very bottom. Even if we want to be lenient and adjust based on the purchasing power of one dollar inside Iran, it still makes no

6:49 difference: compared with, say, Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, South Korea and others, it lands at the very, very bottom of the table, and by a wide margin. As I said, it is a mirror showing an incapable, weak government and a chaotic and corrupt economy, and the only thing they will do is raise taxes, which will impose a double burden on production, on services, on employees, on wage earners and others. Now, the United Nations Security Council held a meeting today. This meeting, which was held to brief

7:48 — at the request of countries such as Denmark — to brief countries on the snapback mechanism and the compliance they must show toward the UN, was held even though Russia and China were opposed to holding such a meeting at all. In it, the representatives of Russia and China argued that Security Council Resolution 2231 ended on October 18, and therefore its consequences no longer apply. The representatives of Britain and France argued, on the contrary, that triggering the snapback mechanism was part of Resolution 2231, which had previously been approved by the UN Security Council, and that it was also stipulated in it that it could not later

8:45 be changed or vetoed. In any case, because the voting in this has been designed in such a way that a negative vote by Russia and China will in fact have no effect, it can be said that the return of UN sanctions and the obligation of UN member states to comply is a matter that was consolidated today in the UN Security Council meeting. The U.S. representative at this meeting, Ms. Morgan Ortagus, who is the U.S. deputy special envoy for the Middle East, also stated that America is ready for direct and meaningful negotiations.

9:41 But Mr. Amir Saeid Iravani, the Islamic Republic's representative, stated that by insisting on a policy of zero enrichment, America is not seeking fair negotiations. In any case, this exchange, or semi-quarrel, between America and the Islamic Republic was another of today's issues. America has once again emphasized that it is ready to talk directly with the Islamic Republic, on the condition that it accepts reducing enrichment to zero and taking it off the table. America has, of course, also mentioned two other issues: first, shutting down the proxy forces, and second, limiting the missile program.

10:36 Now, Mr. Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, held a press conference in Kyiv today and unveiled the finalized 20-point plan. This plan reached its final form after consultations with Europe and a meeting the Ukrainians had with America, and it has now put the ball in Russia's court. Under this plan, Mr. Zelensky said, NATO-like security guarantees will be given to Ukraine after the peace agreement is signed, and after the peace agreement is signed, a presidential election will be held in Ukraine. The current front lines of the war will be considered the dividing line between Russia and Ukraine. But any withdrawal

11:37 of Ukrainian forces can only be carried out through a referendum of the people. Regarding eastern Donbas, that is, the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces that are under Russian occupation, Mr. Zelensky said that creating a free economic zone is one of the options. Regarding the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which the Russians say belongs to them and have seized, Mr. Zelensky stated that it will be run under joint Russian-American-Ukrainian management. In any case, we must see what Russia's response to this plan will be, and whether this

12:31 destructive war, which has cost the blood of many thousands of people in Ukraine and Russia, will come to an end or not. Hoping for the victory of Iran and Iranians.