10 million unemployed in Iran due to internet shutdowns, including 4 million workers

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, 2 Ordibehesht 1405, April 22, 2026. First, I apologize that on Monday I was unable to be with you as usual because of several problems that had come up. The most important issue is still the war, the ceasefire, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and related matters. Mr. Trump had declared a two-week ceasefire, and the deadline was to expire last night. He had also threatened to strike power plants, transportation infrastructure and so on. With a few hours left before the deadline,

0:56 he announced that at the request of Pakistan's Army Chief of Staff and Prime Minister, he had extended the ceasefire. Today he also announced that it is indefinite, that it isn't a matter of four or five days. His reasoning is that the ceasefire is indefinite, but he will keep the Strait of Hormuz closed to Iranian ships, or rather, he will continue the naval blockade of Iran. He said Iran's economy is in very bad shape, and the blockade will stay until they can reach an agreement in Tehran and come to the table with a proposal. On the other side, Mr. Ghalibaf, who headed the Iranian delegation in the first round

1:52 of negotiations, wrote that a full ceasefire only has meaning if it is not violated by a naval blockade and global economic hostage-taking. He also said that reopening the Strait of Hormuz is impossible given America's flagrant violation of the ceasefire. In this way, the Islamic Republic has in turn responded to the naval blockade by saying that it is an "act of war," in effect an action that takes place in wartime.

2:48 Therefore, since America has not observed a ceasefire, we too will keep the Strait of Hormuz closed. As part of its naval blockade of Iran, America seized an Iranian container ship east of the Strait of Hormuz. It took control of it; forces actually landed on it and captured it. Iran, for its part, seized two ships, mostly Greek-registered, carrying cargo to various cities, and brought them into its own waters for questioning. It also attacked another ship with unmanned speedboats, without causing damage; that ship then anchored at an Omani anchorage on the other side of the strait.

3:43 In any case, these events over the past two days meant that the Strait of Hormuz remained closed. The price of oil, which had come down, went back above 100 dollars, and today Brent was at 101 dollars. So we see that once again, this time not in the form of war but in the form of a naval blockade and a reciprocal closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the question of endurance has come up. America believes Iran cannot hold out, because as its oil production continues, the storage tanks at Kharg will fill up, its tankers will fill up, and then it will have to shut in its oil wells, which would cause it great damage, and economically

4:43 it would be paralyzed. Iran, for its part, believes that it can endure the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and that closing the strait puts pressure on the world economy; taking 13 million barrels of oil a day off the market creates pressure that will force America to back down sooner and lift the naval blockade, and then it will negotiate. Interestingly, Mr. Scott Bessent, the US Treasury Secretary, on the one hand stated that Iran's oil wells will soon stop working because their storage will fill up and they will have no room left, so they will be forced

5:34 to shut in their wells, and reopening them later is very difficult or impossible. But on the other hand, he announced that upon request, the lifting of sanctions on Iranian and Russian oil has been extended for another 30 days. These moves actually seem somewhat contradictory. Of course, Iraq has the same problem of shutting in oil wells; it is said that within another week Iraq's remaining storage and its tankers will be full, and since it cannot pass through the strait, it will have to shut in its wells. Its wells are very old and use old technologies, and some of them it may never be able to reopen. The Islamic Republic may also face problems, in Iran

6:31 too there may be problems with the wells, but previously, because of sanctions, there were cases where it shut in some oil wells and later reopened them. Experts say Iran has adopted certain technologies so that the pressure, the oil in the capillaries of the well, which must be pushed up by water pressure, can be managed with its methods to keep the problem to a minimum, and then later it can reopen the wells. In any case, there are problems on every side. On Iran's side, it must be said that pressure in the Strait of Hormuz may well put pressure on the American economy and the world economy, but it's like the story of the man who

7:24 said, "I'll grab you by the ear and drag you around town," and the other replied, "Then you'll be walking around town with me too." The problem is that on this side, the pressure on Iran's economy is far more terrifying than the pressure that may fall on the world or American economy. For example, the Minister of Communications said today that the internet shutdown is a direct threat to the employment of 10 million people. Or take the attacks Israel carried out on Iran's petrochemical industry: experts in this industry say that until the damaged plants are back up and running, downstream factories will face shortages of raw materials and supplies, and they estimate that 2 million workers will be at risk of unemployment.

8:25 For industry as a whole, given the damage done not only to steel plants but to many of the country's factories, the same figure is estimated at 4 million workers in total across Iran's industry becoming unemployed. The Islamic Republic government itself, through its spokesperson, stated that 270 billion dollars of damage has been sustained, while in Washington, American experts and American sources estimate that 500 billion dollars of damage has been inflicted on Iran's facilities, factories, industries and infrastructure overall. And if we add the lost income from factories sitting idle until they are restarted and repaired, this figure might well

9:26 reach as much as 1 trillion dollars as the cost of this war, which, one could say, is equivalent to a nation's savings over the lifetime of a generation. Those who say "we have oil, we'll rebuild later, we'll build it even better" don't understand these numbers, and don't realize that the country's facilities are the product of a generation's toil, national capital that has been accumulated in the form of these factories. Even if those who run them are thieves, a mafia gang, the IRGC, this one or that one, they are nonetheless part of the functioning of the country. Industry alone provides about 30 percent of Iran's gross domestic product, whereas agriculture is only about 8 percent,

10:27 give or take, of our GDP. About 50 percent of our GDP is the service sector, such as computer jobs, hotels, transportation, various services and so on, banking, insurance, etc., and the wheels of the country grinding to a halt will damage all of these as well. Altogether, this will cause production and economic activity in the country to fall, in effect increasing recession, while on the other hand inflation will rise because the country's supply of goods will fall. On top of that, the government will also have large

11:24 budget deficits, which will add to inflation as well, and in any case life for the people will become much, much harder and more bitter than it is now. So the point is that at the end of this fruitless war, whether in the form of economic war or military war, the biggest losers are the people of Iran. And now the question has been seriously raised: who makes the decisions in Iran? Who can have the final say? According to the report I gave you earlier, in Islamabad it turned out that 30 people were sitting in the room. They had brought all the factions

12:19 so they could decide together right there, respond to America and move the negotiations forward. It didn't work, and the disagreements were so severe that the shouting of the Iranian delegation in the room was heard by both the Americans and the Pakistanis, who finally went in and asked them not to yell at each other so much. And now, whether Mojtaba is alive or dead, in a coma or conscious, whether his face is mangled and he can't speak, or whether he even has arms and legs or not, all of this is shrouded in ambiguity. It is unclear how these mafia gangs of wealth and power and the various factions within the regime, the Paydari faction, the principlists, the reformists, the hardliners, the slow-movers,

13:17 the centrists, the pragmatists, the idealists, the apocalyptic ones, who always existed and were constantly in conflict, but Khamenei at least tried to maintain a balance among them and, as the final arbiter, somehow have the last word. Although he too often made no decision; he would say "neither war nor negotiation." But now the situation has gotten even worse, and this is adding insult to injury in the current situation. War inevitably creates a certain degree of unity, but once there is peace and the shadow of war is lifted, as soon as there is a ceasefire, like these peace negotiations, the disagreements break out into the open, and

14:09 later it is possible that things could even lead to bloody purges within the regime. Hoping for the victory of Iran and Iranians.