A post on X by Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's highlighting income inequality between women and men in the West stoked criticism by users who pointed to the Islamic theocracy's record on women's rights.
“In many Western countries today, women are paid less than men for doing the same work." Khamenei’s official English-language account posted on Wednesday. "That’s how they are today, which is totally unjust.”
The message echoed parts of a speech he delivered the same day to an audience of women and girls, in which he defended the compulsory Islamic veil and criticized the treatment of women in the West.
A "readers added context" note under his post, a feature introduced under the platform's new owner Elon Musk which collates users' responses, said bluntly:
"Iran has a greater gender inequality than the entire west."
X user Guney Yazar quipped: "So the guy who jails women for not covering their hair now lectures the West on pay equity. The irony’s richer than any oil field."
One user prompted Grok, the artificial intelligence feature on X, to describe the punishment for defying the hijab under the 86-year-old theocrat.
"Under Iran's 2024 Hijab and Chastity law, women not wearing the hijab face fines from 15 million to 500 million rials ($24–$790), escalating to up to 1.5 billion rials, travel/online bans, and prison up to 5-15 years for repeats," it said.
"Severe cases may invoke the death penalty under 'corruption on earth.' A recent Supreme Leader directive calls for stricter enforcement, though many women continue to defy it."
'Enslaving not liberating'
The nearly 50-year-old system over which Khamenei presides views the veil as an emblem of Islamic identity and chastity.
One of the gravest sins of Western capitalist logic and culture is that they deceitfully label corruption and promiscuity as 'freedom,' he added in another post. "And when they try to spread that culture, they say, 'We're liberating you!' But in fact, they're enslaving people."
Other users cited data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) appearing to confirm an element of Khamenei's assertion.
The bodies found that, adjusted for experience and hours, the gender pay gap in Western countries stands at around 1-4%.
But both the World Bank and the International Labor Organization (ILO) list Iran’s gender pay gap for identical roles at 35%, fueled by laws requiring male guardian permission for women to travel, work or study.
Gender rights record
Users also replied with pre-1979 Islamic Revolution photos of unveiled Iranian women, images of morality police violence and memorials to a young woman named Mahsa Amini whose death in morality police custody stoked mass protests in 2022.
The demonstrations were quashed with deadly force.
Iran ranks 143 out of 146 countries in the latest World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report.
Amnesty International has documented systemic gender discrimination in Iran in its 2024 report, including up to 74 lashes for defying hijab rules and frequent impunity for honor killings.
“This sentence happened in the middle of this process, but I will finish this campaign and go back to Iran as soon as possible after,” Variety magazine quoted Panahi as saying at the Marrakech Film Festival in Morocco.
“I have only one passport … the passport of my country, and I wish to keep it,” Panahi added. “Although I was given the opportunity, even in the hardest years, I never considered leaving my country and being a refugee elsewhere.”
Panahi’s remarks come after his lawyer, Mostafa Nili, announced the prison sentence issued against the filmmaker in absentia earlier this week.
Nili said the sentence includes a two-year travel ban and bars him from membership in political or social groups, adding that they plan to appeal.
Panahi, whose movies have repeatedly brought him into conflict with Iranian authorities, said he is aware of the risks of returning.
“I know my films don’t please the government,” he said. “But that’s not a reason for me not to go back to my country.”
Panahi’s latest film, It Was Just an Accident, inspired by his experience as a political prisoner, is France’s submission for the Oscars and screened at the Marrakech festival on Thursday.
It was filmed in secret in Iran and follows the moral journey of a group of former political prisoners who believe they have captured their torturer.
In May, Panahi received the Palme d’Or at the 78th Cannes Film Festival for the film.
Panahi has faced restrictions and arrests for more than a decade.
He was sentenced in 2010 to six years in prison and a 20-year ban on filmmaking, travel and giving interviews, though he continued to work in secret. In 2022, he was detained again and spent seven months in prison before launching a hunger strike that led to his release in early 2023.
Lean is a mixture made by combining cough syrups containing codeine with sweetened beverages. The name lean refers to the sedating effect of codeine, which can make users feel unsteady or inclined to recline.
Long popular abroad and popularized in some corners of American hip hop culture, the habit is potential fatal.
It is sometimes known as purple drink because certain cough syrups contain dyes that turn the mixture violet, though local versions in Iran often appear in other colors depending on the medicines used.
The mixture, according to the expert, spreads easily because it can be prepared with medicines already found in many Iranian homes or purchased cheaply over the counter.
Alcohol and drugs are strictly forbidden in the Islamic Republic, and authorities have executed hundreds of people this year accused of drug offenses.
But basic codeine syrups and antihistamines require no special authorization, making the drink inexpensive, discreet and accessible to young people with limited means.
'Highly addictive'
The counsellor, who asked not to be named due to security concerns, said the mixture first surfaced in parks and schoolyards where teenagers gather after long days in classrooms where education is often by rote and has a strong focus on ideological content conforming to the ruling theocracy.
Students, she said, were searching for “something that breaks the monotony” after hours spent in lessons centered on ideological narratives and obligatory religious themes.
She described the drink’s beginnings as “born out of boredom,” saying that many adolescents felt they had no engaging place to spend their time.
“Recreation is squeezed, cultural choice is narrow and even access to a simple beer is criminalized,” she said. “When all conventional outlets are shut, young people invent alternatives.”
Lean is a highly addictive mixture that slows the body’s functions and can cause drowsiness, euphoria, nausea, dizziness, visual disturbances and hallucinations.
Mixing it with alcohol or sedatives greatly increases the risk of dangerously slowed breathing, low oxygen levels, brain injury, seizures, coma or death.
Long-term use can damage teeth, impair memory and vision and lead to serious heart and breathing problems.
Government oversight
Health professionals say the drink spread quietly because Iran lacks a unified system to track unusual purchases of over-the-counter medicines. Basic cough syrups containing codeine are widely available, and the country’s fragmented regulatory framework does not flag high-volume sales or patterns of youth misuse.
A Tehran pharmacist, Omid, said its abuse was predictable.
“When oversight is inconsistent and pharmacies operate without shared monitoring tools, teenagers can gather ingredients unnoticed,” he said. “These medicines sit in almost every home, and no authority has built a mechanism to prevent misuse.”
Omid told Iran International that the state’s regulatory posture has long focused on punitive measures against alcohol while failing to address practical gaps in the medical supply chain. “The priorities are mismatched,” he said.
Education system failure
The trend, according to the counsellor, also reflects shortcomings within classrooms where students rarely receive consistent health education or clear information about the dangers of misusing common medicines.
Instead, timetables remain filled with obligatory ideological material that leaves little room for life-skills programs or discussions about adolescent well-being.
Parents, the counsellor said, receive almost no guidance from schools on the needs of Gen Z or the pressures they experience. “Families are left to guess what their children are going through,” she said.
“Instead of equipping parents with tools, the curriculum focuses on messaging that feels distant from young people’s realities.”
Many teenagers, she added, report feeling disconnected from school content and turn to private rituals and drink simply to “break the cycle” of pressure they cannot voice openly.
Families on their own
Parents who encounter the issue typically do so after it has taken root. This late detection, according to the pharmacist, reflects a systemic failure.
“There is no coordinated pathway between schools, clinics and households,” he said. “Warnings come only after the consequences appear.”
Gen Z’s experimentation, the counsellor added, reflects unmet needs rather than deliberate risk-taking. “If young Iranians had engaging cultural venues, balanced schooling and genuine recreation, this drink would never have become a pattern.”
The two experts said the drink’s spread among 13- to 28-year-olds is a direct product of policy choices: narrow social freedoms, numbing school content, criminalization of ordinary leisure, fragmented pharmaceutical oversight and insufficient support for parents.
“The moment we print money without backing, inflation rises and people pay the price,” President Masoud Pezeshkian said during a visit to the southwestern city of Yasuj.
Monetary expansion driven by unfunded pledges, he said, “takes money from people’s pockets” and intensifies existing pressures.
Economists widely link Iran’s continued inflation and the collapse of the rial to persistent reliance on money creation.
The government’s use of bank borrowing and indirect central bank financing expands the monetary base without matching growth in real output, entrenching price instability.
Iran’s rial continued to weaken on Wednesday in a sign of flagging confidence in the country's troubled economy, with the US dollar trading at an all-time high above 1.2 million rials according to local exchange-rate websites.
Rapid liquidity growth
Iran's broad money doubled during the 2.5-year presidency of Ebrahim Raisi, according to statistics from the country’s Central Bank (CBI).
Broad money, the total money supply within an economy, is the primary cause of rampant inflation in Iran.
Over the past years, Iran’s Central Bank has ceased publishing government budget reports.
Local media tracking shows that in the past year, food prices in Iran have risen by an average of more than 66%.
According to the Supreme Audit Court of Iran, however, it is estimated that since 2018 – when the US withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and imposed sanctions on Iran’s oil exports – the government's annual budget deficit has consistently exceeded 30%.
The Iranian government has been compensating the budget deficit by borrowing money, in particular, from the banking system.
Budget capped
Pezeshkian said his administration set an unprecedented ceiling on expenditure. “For the first time, we have kept budget growth to around two percent and cut the rest,” he said.
Some recipients, he added, had protested reduced allocations but argued that expanding spending without resources would heighten inflation rather than solve shortages.
He added that the government could not “spend from people’s pockets” for short-term gains and warned that raising expectations without funding would deepen internal disputes.
“If we think the situation is fine, that the government has money and is not giving it, or if we only raise our own expectations, we will increase disagreements and conflicts.”
