Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has recently delivered a series of unusually blunt remarks that point to growing despair at the top of the Iranian leadership over the country's situation. Speaking to academics, Pezeshkian sounded exasperated, saying, "I don't know what to do, please don't curse me," and openly acknowledged Israel's advantage over Iran in missile capabilities.
Iran has endured a punishing year marked by drought, an energy crisis and soaring inflation. But if Iranians were hoping their president might offer solutions, Pezeshkian suggested they should not bother. In a string of remarkably candid public speeches in recent weeks, he said the country was facing insurmountable problems and that he had run out of ideas for how to solve them.
"If anyone can do something, please go ahead and do it," Pezeshkian told students and academics in early December. "I can't do anything. Don't curse me."
In meetings with officials, he admitted the government was "stuck, badly stuck," adding: "From the first day we came in, disasters have been coming down on us, and it hasn't stopped."
He went further, saying Iran's woes were the result of corruption, internal factional infighting and decades of government spending that he described as "what crazy people do," rather than the fault of the US or Israel.
Referring to the fighting during Operation With a Lion, Pezeshkian said that although Iran had launched missiles, Israel's arsenal had proven superior both in quantity and in capability.
"It's true that we had missiles, but theirs were more numerous, more powerful, more accurate and easier to deploy," he said. He added, without elaborating, that in the end it was "the people" who thwarted Israel.
At the same time, Pezeshkian rejected calls for Iran to scale back its missile program, describing it as essential to national defense. "They tell us not to have missiles, while they arm Israel to the teeth so it can come here whenever it wants, destroy everything and leave," he said. "I won't accept that."
