Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian on Friday issued a rare admission, describing that after six months of war initiated by the United States and Israel, the country's economy is feeling significant pain.
The statement came days after on Monday US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveiled Trump's "Economic D-Day" plan against Iran, noting that while military operations have ceased, a far-reaching and sustained economic warfare campaign is in full effect.
via Reuters"Some say sanctions have no effect at all; to those people, I really don’t know what to say," Pezeshkian told state TV in an interview late on Friday. "We are in a war situation, and we must accept these wartime conditions."
He appeared to be pushing back against some Iranian hardline officials who have asserted that the sanctions basically have not impacted the government or population whatsoever.
As evidence of the early and ongoing impact, lines at gas stations have gotten longer and more frustrating for consumers of late. Pezeshkian openly acknowledged this, and indicated for the first time the country is raising gasoline prices:
The president said the price of petrol should be increased in Iran to account for the fall in trade. “We should raise the price of the third-tier quota... For example, from 5,000 tomans to 10,000 tomans,” he added.
That quota refers to one of several consumption rates that determine the price an Iranian consumer is charged. Iran, a major oil producer with some of the world’s cheapest fuel, has for years heavily subsidized petrol, making any changes to pricing politically sensitive.
This represents a 100 percent increase from the current 5,000 tomans ($0.025) per liter, and comes as a result of the ongoing US naval blockade, which has prevented regular imports from covering the shortfall of domestic production, amid an overall import fall of 25 to 35 percent. But clearly some shipments are still getting in.
However, in what was perhaps Pezeshkian's more long view, wishful, and also defiant assessment - days prior to the Friday comment, he had asserted that latest US sanctions "will not achieve anything."
"We will stand firm against economic pressures, as we have done so far and will continue to do," Pezeshkian told state media.
Meanwhile, President Trump had reaffirmed there are currently no talks happening with Tehran. "We're not looking to meet or anything," he said Thursday.
Curiously, other Iranian sources have been painting a picture which downplays potential petrol shortages, saying instead that gas station delays are but the result of a sudden surge in demand...
⚡️⭕️ Iran: National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company reports no gasoline shortage; recent 10% demand increase and storage damage in Tehran caused supply delays and queues. (IRIB News) pic.twitter.com/9C0scnCFO0
— Middle East Observer (@ME_Observer_) August 29, 2026Last week, a top Iranian official in charge of domestic energy supply said the gasoline market had a daily deficit of 14-15 million liters due to record demand, damage incurred in the war and “changes in the national budget’s priorities.”
"We have to do something to bring consumption down to domestic production levels," Esmaeil Saqab Esfahani, head of the Energy Optimization and Strategic Management Organization, had stated, according to the semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency.
Tyler Durden Sat, 08/29/2026 - 11:05Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,
The sister of a young British mother butchered by a small-boat arrival has torn into the Labour government for going to court to keep the public from seeing who is committing what crime in this country.
Alex Whyte told GB News she feels "sick, disgusted and completely let down." Anger, she said, "doesn't even cover what I feel, and it never will."
Labour, she added, is "too afraid to admit" what open borders have done to Britain.
Rhiannon Whyte was a 27-year-old mother. Her son was five when she was murdered by a Sudanese migrant being housed at the hotel wage worked in.
Deng Chol Majek stabbed her 23 times with a crosshead screwdriver. Nineteen blows were to the head. Eleven penetrated her skull. One went so deep it pierced her brain stem. She never regained consciousness and died in hospital three days later.
Majek had arrived in Britain on a small boat, and claimed asylum. He had already been refused in Germany and Italy. He lied about his age, claiming to be 19. The court put him between 25 and 28.
After the killing he threw Rhiannon's phone in the River Tame, bought a beer, changed his clothes and was caught on CCTV dancing and laughing. He showed no remorse, and in January of this year he was given life with a minimum of 29 years.
Alex Whyte now helps raise that little boy. She has described the scream he made when he was told his mother was gone as something that will haunt her for the rest of her life. Rhiannon, she said, "never saw danger." She "wanted people to be happy and safe. Hence why she worked at the hotel."
"But we're not safe. She wasn't safe," she urges.
She is among relatives who have now written to Justice Secretary Alex Norris. Reporting has put the group at 11 families, with 18 relatives of victims signing. They want publication of conviction data by nationality for England and Wales from 2018 to 2024 - the dataset the Centre for Migration Control requested under Freedom of Information law.
The Information Commissioner ordered the Ministry of Justice to release it. The MoJ's cost and "identification" arguments were rejected. Then Justice Secretary David Lammy sanctioned an appeal to the First-tier Tribunal. Taxpayers are now funding a legal fight to keep the figures sealed.
The families' letter put it plainly: "Imagine if someone you loved had been attacked, abused, or killed by a person who had entered Britain from abroad." They wrote that victims and the public "deserve transparency about the people who enter our country and the crimes they subsequently commit." Withholding the data, they said, damages trust and blocks "meaningful action." They urged ministers to "stop spending public money on this attempted cover-up."
Among them: eight members of Rhiannon's family; relatives of a 14-year-old girl sexually assaulted by an Ethiopian asylum seeker housed at the Bell Hotel in Epping; Ann Newman, partner of dog walker Wayne Broadhurst, stabbed to death by Afghan national Dawood Safi in Uxbridge; Fiona Goddard, a Bradford grooming gang victim; and Sammy Woodhouse, raped in the Rotherham scandal.
Alex Whyte cannot see why British sex offenders can be checked on a register while foreign offenders are wrapped in official silence.
"If you have a sex offender who's from this country, you can go on a register and find out who they are. Why is that not for everyone who's a part of this country? They want to be treated the same as everyone else. They want to be entitled to everything that we are entitled to here. We should know who they are and what they're doing."
'I feel sick, disgusted and completely let down. Anger doesn't even cover what I feel, and it never will.'
Sister of Rhiannon Whyte, Alex Whyte, criticises the Labour Government for blocking the release of data on offences committed by foreign nationals. pic.twitter.com/sQ64KiDzwb
Asked what her sister would make of the block, she did not hesitate. "She would be outraged. Completely outraged."
"She no longer has a voice, but I do. And I will never stop until there is real justice."
'We as a country deserve better, my sister and her little boy deserve better, we will never stop until we've got real justice.'
Sister of Rhiannon Whyte, Alex Whyte calls out Labour for being 'too afraid to admit' the impact of foreign criminals on Britain. pic.twitter.com/wrFya6PIn8
"Open your eyes. You are so aware of what is happening, but you are too afraid to admit it. We as a country deserve better. My sister deserved better. Her little boy deserves better, and we will never stop until we've got real justice."
Rhiannon's mother Siobhan Whyte called the refusal "diabolical." Labour, she said, is "constantly denying what's going on." She pointed to Home Office leaflets telling asylum seekers that rape is illegal and what the age of consent is - documents that exist only because officials already know the risk.
"They know they're a danger, and that's the sad reality of it. Instead of stopping, detaining, deporting, they'd rather spend thousands on publishing stupid documents that mean nothing," she urged.
She aded, "I think our Government should be protecting women and children and the men of this country, and there is definitely something there, definitely something very weird going on that they seem too scared to protect us."
The MoJ's stock line is that public protection is "our priority," that there is a "record £550 million" victim-support package, and that it will not comment on live proceedings. It denies a cover-up. The appeal itself is the comment.
Partial releases and earlier FOI work have already sketched the picture ministers would rather not print in full.
Foreign nationals accounted for 14.1 per cent of sexual offence convictions in 2025, according to Police National Computer figures the MoJ has allowed out. That lump sum does not break out rape, child sexual abuse or grooming.
Earlier analysis comparing prison numbers with census figures found foreigners overall 27 per cent more likely to be imprisoned than British citizens. Albanians sat at 232.33 imprisonments per 10,000 against 14 for Britons. Kosovars, Vietnamese, Algerians, Jamaicans, Eritreans, Iraqis and Somalis all ran well above the British baseline.
On the railways the imbalance is starker. British Transport Police data obtained by the Centre for Migration Control showed foreign nationals made up 79 per cent of theft arrests on trains in 2025, 40 per cent of drug-offence arrests, 37 per cent of sexual-offence arrests and 36 per cent of violent-crime arrests.
Of 9,771 arrests across England, Wales and Scotland, nearly 3,700 were foreign nationals. CMC research director Robert Bates said the government had "made our trains unsafe" and that any sane government would end the inflow and start deportations.
Across England and Wales, foreign nationals were arrested 172,889 times in the year ending March 2025 - one every 183 seconds. That included 51,212 violence arrests and 11,264 sexual-offence arrests.
Separate CMC work using police, Home Office and ONS figures found foreigners 3.5 times more likely to be arrested for sex crimes than British citizens: nearly 165 arrests per 100,000 against 48 per 100,000 for Britons.
They formed 26.1 per cent of sexual-offence arrests while making up around 9 per cent of the population. In the City of London the foreign share of sex-crime arrests hit 66.9 per cent. In Derbyshire it was 44.8 per cent. Nationalities with the highest rates included Afghans, Iraqis, Algerians and Somalis.
CMC's Robert Bates has called the legal fight "astonishing" and an "attack on transparency and accountability." If some nationalities offend at far higher rates, visa policy can be tightened and, where needed, whole source countries shut off.
Reform UK's Robert Jenrick charged that successive Tory and Labour justice secretaries have refused to publish "this basic information." A Reform government, he said, "would immediately blow the lid on what's really happening and begin deporting these dangerous criminals."
Shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy asked the obvious question: "Labour has consistently refused to publish sex crime data by nationality. Why are they trying to appeal against releasing the data? Do Labour just want to cover up the truth about foreign national offenders?"
Reform's Zia Yusuf stated "It is a cover-up, and let's call a spade a spade. Tory and Labour Governments now for years have sacrificed their own people, sacrificed their own women and children's safety."
Yusuf further charged that they allowed British women and girls "to be raped and murdered by men who should never have been allowed into the country at all because they worship at the altar of diversity." If Reform wins and Nigel Farage is prime minister, Yusuf said, releasing "all of this data so the British people learn the truth" would be among the first acts of a Reform home secretary.
The same instinct to manage the public rather than inform it runs through the hotel system that employed Rhiannon and housed her killer.
Police Scotland has refused Freedom of Information requests for aggregated call-outs, crimes and arrests at five asylum hotels, including sites in Erskine, Glasgow, Paisley, East Kilbride and Falkirk. The force cited "heightened community tensions" and a risk of physical harm to officers, residents and the public. Even anonymised totals were withheld on the grounds that changing numbers might allow "inferences" about residents, or that incidents might be blamed on protests rather than people living there.
Scottish Conservative shadow justice secretary Liam Kerr called it another case of public bodies following an SNP "culture of secrecy."
Former Cladhan Hotel occupant Sadeq Nikzad, from Afghanistan, was jailed in June 2025 for raping a 15-year-old local girl. Another resident, Muhammad Sheikhi, 22, later faced sexual-assault charges. Locals who protested have been arrested, and the data stays locked.
In Epping, an Ethiopian small-boat arrival housed at the Bell Hotel sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl and a woman who tried to intervene. He received 12 months. Some locals who protested the hotel later drew longer sentences than the attacker.
That is the two-tier reality families in the Norris letter are living with: the state will spend years and legal fees protecting a spreadsheet, then come down hard on the people who object when the spreadsheet's contents walk out of a hotel and onto a platform.
Siobhan Whyte has said police encouraged the family to soften public remarks after Rhiannon's life support was withdrawn, with officers talking about avoiding "another Southport." She has also said the Prime Minister has "blood on his hands." Majek would have been among the first cohort eligible for Rwanda removals. Labour cancelled the scheme. He stayed. She is dead.
While ministers litigate against sunlight, ordinary Brits have been unwittingly underwriting the activist layer that treats borders as the problem.
A GB News investigation found the National Lottery has channelled more than £140 million toward refugee and migrant projects. A five-year Community Fund audit identified £114.7 million between July 2021 and June 2026 alone, jumping to £43.3 million in 2024/25.
Large recipients included Refugee Action (£3.21 million), the British Refugee Council (£2.97 million) and the Scottish Refugee Council (£1.75 million). Refugee Action has talked of a future "rooted in the fundamental right to move, underpinned by a commitment to anti-racism."
Commentator Rafe Heydel-Mankoo called it "the capture of these institutions by far-left ideology that should have no place in the charitable world."
So the public funds the hotels, funds the legal aid, funds the leaflets explaining that rape is illegal, funds the charities campaigning to keep the boats coming - and then funds the lawyers trying to stop anyone seeing the conviction table.
Alex Whyte and those supporting her are asking for the same honesty the state already applies to British sex offenders, and for a government that will say out loud what it already knows. Labour would rather fight the Information Commissioner than fight the people who should never have been here. That is not public protection. It is self-protection.
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Tyler Durden Sat, 08/29/2026 - 10:30