Rising risk of war and economic tsunami on the way

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. Monday, 14 Ordibehesht 1405, May 4, 2026. Tension in the Persian Gulf rose again today, and the likelihood of a military clash, of war, reached its peak. Mr. Trump had announced that today, Monday, he would carry out a project called "Project Freedom" and would help the ships stuck in the Persian Gulf that cannot pass through the Strait of Hormuz to get through the strait. Two American warships also passed through the Strait of Hormuz and entered the Persian Gulf, and then CENTCOM, the headquarters of the US military

1:01 in the Middle East, announced that it had escorted two commercial ships flying the American flag through the Strait of Hormuz in this way, without Iran being able to stop them. CENTCOM also announced that it has allocated 15,000 troops and 100 aircraft to the Project Freedom operation. In fact, it seems that America is doing this to take the card of closing the Strait of Hormuz away from Iran while the negotiations with Iran are underway. On the other hand, however, Tehran announced that this

1:54 action by America is a violation of the ceasefire, and the army also said: we warned the two American warships. While their radars were off they were fine, but when they passed through the strait, entered the Persian Gulf and turned their radars on, we fired rockets and missiles toward them, in fact around them, as a warning. In return, America said that it had hit Iranian speedboats. Mr. Trump said seven of them, while the US military said six, and the IRGC immediately denied that any speedboats had been hit. It seems that some of these Shahpad drones, that is, unmanned speedboats, went toward the warship, and naturally it hit them, and

2:52 the two sides are in fact playing with words. On the other hand, what Iran did was launch a missile attack on the oil facilities of the emirate of Fujairah, one of the seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates. These facilities were set on fire, and a number of people were injured. Abu Dhabi, which controls the UAE's oil, has built a pipeline that runs to Fujairah, and Fujairah is on this side of the Strait of Hormuz, on the coast of the Sea of Oman, so the pipeline was in fact meant to bypass the Strait of Hormuz.

3:51 Of course, the capacity of this pipeline was limited, but in any case it could export part of the oil from the terminal there, and with today's attack Iran has in effect warned that it will not allow this either. The UAE announced that it reserves its legitimate right to retaliate. Israel, which has signed the Abraham Accords with the UAE, also stated that it is monitoring these events. The result of these clashes was a 5 percent increase in the price of oil in a single day, with North Sea Brent reaching $115 a barrel. Of course, these prices are on paper and usually for

4:49 the coming months. What is actually traded on the spot, for example, is sometimes over $140 or $150 a barrel. Meanwhile, these clashes have taken place in the Persian Gulf, and things are now on the edge of war. Because if Mr. Trump wants to continue Project Freedom, and the Islamic Republic wants to keep attacking ships or oil facilities and so on, things may escalate to harsher and larger operations. At the same time, however, the 14-point proposal that the Islamic Republic gave to America, as a revision of its previous 15-point proposal, was reviewed in America over the weekend, Saturday

5:47 and Sunday, and a response was sent to Iran. All these exchanges of questions and answers are carried out through Pakistan, and Iran has announced that it is reviewing the response. Mr. Araghchi also stressed today, in the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, the Majlis, that the Strait of Hormuz will never return to its previous status, and he stated that there are no negotiations on the nuclear issue. However, news agencies say that Iran's 14-point proposal does include nuclear issues, including that it is prepared to bring enrichment down to zero over 15 years, and after that to keep enrichment only at the level of 3.6

6:42 percent. It has also previously said it will hand over the 400 kilos of 60 percent enriched uranium to Russia, and in these 14 points it has in a way tied together the lifting of America's naval blockade, the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and a permanent peace. In fact, they have somewhat merged the previous plan, which had three stages. But in any case, all these clashes, where they will lead, nobody knows, have caused the Islamic Republic, on the one hand, to resort inside Iran to more savage, more violent and

7:37 more murderous repression. Just today, the wave of executions and the gallows claimed four more victims: Mehdi Rasouli, Mohammadreza Miri and Ebrahim Dowlatabadi, who had been arrested during the protests of last Dey 1404, were executed on charges of collaborating with Mossad and leading the riots. And Mehrab Abdollahzadeh, who had been in Urmia prison since 1401 and from whom a confession to killing a government agent had been extracted under torture, was executed today. The Islamic Republic, which has a long record in executions, has for a long time held first place in the world relative to its population, and in terms of absolute numbers it ranks second after China, with its

8:34 one point something billion people. This wave of executions, which is no longer limited to political prisoners, and in which the executions of ordinary prisoners sentenced to death have also intensified, is one of the well-known faces of violence and of baring its teeth and claws at the people. On the other hand, the main pressure is in fact coming down on the entire population. On one side there is the shortage of medicines, especially drugs such as insulin, MS drugs or cancer drugs; it is said that between 30 and 35 people die every day because of these shortages. And on the other side, an economic tsunami

9:33 is on its way. The International Monetary Fund has forecast that in 2026 Iran's economic growth will be minus 6.1 percent, meaning the economy will shrink by more than 6 percent, and at the same time it has forecast inflation of 68.9 percent, close to 69 or 70 percent, for 2026. This is already happening right now: for example, in food, according to the Central Bank, inflation is over 70 percent, and some estimates say food inflation has reached 115 percent. Perhaps never before in the 47 years of the Islamic Republic has there been such damage to the economy as from this

10:29 40-day war. In fact, one can say that five crises are acting at once, each of which alone could bring an economy to its knees. On one side is the production crisis: with the strikes on core industries such as steel and petrochemicals and so on, and on industrial parks, there is a production crisis that has affected industrial and agricultural output and so on, and this sector alone is said to result in more than 4 million unemployed. It puts workers out of work. So far, more than 1 million production jobs have been lost. At the same time, a currency crisis is arriving because of the sanctions and the closing of the route for exporting oil, petrochemicals and so on through the naval

11:27 blockade. Then there is the employment crisis, which means not only the unemployment of workers but also of startups, technology companies, people whose livelihood and income are tied to the internet, street vendors, shopkeepers and so on and so forth, who have already been forced to cut staff in various workshops. And all of this leads to the livelihood crisis: the shortage of food, its high prices, people's inability to provide even their bare subsistence and livelihood, rent, and other issues. And finally, the crisis of confidence in the future, which this state of "neither war nor peace" has intensified, and

12:25 this crisis of confidence blocks any kind of investment, any long-term planning, construction and so on. In short, the cycle of Iran's economy in its various sectors, from industry to agriculture, from tourism to startups, from education to health and medical care, has all been disrupted. In fact, one can say that the earthquake that this war caused on the seabed of Iran's economy is creating and generating a tsunami whose tall waves are on their way, and these waves are probably the highest waves of economic crisis the country has experienced in its contemporary history. On previous nights we talked about how more

13:23 than $200 billion of the country's capital is in the hands of the Office of the Supreme Leader, the IRGC, and the institutions affiliated with and dependent on them, and that now is the time this capital must be brought in to support and rescue the people. We also talked about plans that have been implemented in other countries and that managed to come to people's aid at such critical junctures. We will talk more about this in future programs. Hoping for the victory of Iran and Iranians.