War has not weakened Iran’s ruling apparatus; it has enriched the opaque clerical-military institutions that control oil, trade, confiscated wealth, and public resources.
In the aftermath of the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran, a new configuration of political and economic power appears to be taking shape. Almost two months after the war began, and despite a fragile ceasefire, its effects continue to weigh on Iran’s politics and economy. The 2026–27 budget, drafted and approved between the 12-day and 38-day wars, now functions as the operational framework of the state. At the same time, the growing role of the Revolutionary Guards, the weakening of the official government, and shifts at the top of power have raised urgent questions: Who has benefited from the war, who has paid its costs, and has the balance of power shifted further toward military institutions and institutions tied to the Guardian Jurist?
A Reuters report cited in the article describes a shift in the structure of power after Ali Khamenei was reportedly killed on the first day of the war and authority passed to his wounded son, Mojtaba Khamenei. According to this account, a new order has emerged in which Revolutionary Guards commanders hold the upper hand, while Mojtaba Khamenei’s role is less to issue direct orders than to legitimize decisions made by commanders and security institutions.
In an interview with Radio Zamaneh, Mehrdad Vahabi, professor of economics, examines these questions through the concept of “Anfal”—a term from Islamic jurisprudence that, in the Islamic Republic’s political economy, has come to designate public, ownerless, confiscated, or abandoned assets placed under the authority of the Guardian Jurist. He argues that recent military tensions have not weakened the hard core of power. Instead, by creating an “independent economic circuit,” they have strengthened institutions tied to the Guardianship of the Jurist and the Revolutionary Guards against Masoud Pezeshkian’s official and declining state.
Anfal as a System of Clerical Ownership
Mehrdad Vahabi is a professor of economics at Sorbonne Paris Nord University and director of the Centre d’Économie de l’Université Paris Nord, affiliated with France’s National Centre for Scientific Research. He has published widely in Persian, English, and French on political economy. His major works include The Political Economy of Destructive Power, The Political Economy of Predation, and Destructive Coordination, Anfal and Islamic Political Capitalism: A New Reading of Contemporary Iran.
Vahabi uses “Anfal” to describe an expropriatory system that has existed in Iran since 1979, under which public assets are treated as belonging to the Leader. In Shiite jurisprudence, Anfal refers to ownerless public assets or resources attributed first to the Prophet, then to the Imam, and, in the Imam’s absence, to the Guardian Jurist. For Vahabi, this concept is not simply a category of “public property,” but a mechanism through which natural resources, confiscated assets, and abandoned property are placed under a supra-state clerical authority. He sees this as one of the foundations of the Islamic Republic’s political economy.
At the beginning of the interview, Vahabi explains his theoretical framework:
“In Anfal, ownerless public property belongs to the Guardian Jurist. In this sense, the Guardian Jurist does not only hold power; he also holds sovereignty and ownership. He becomes the ultimate sovereign-owner.”
He then turns to the central question: what happens to Anfal in the context of what he calls the “Third Gulf War”?
“What have been the effects of this war, which began with Israel’s military aggression and the imperialist aggression of the United States? To summarize, almost all media have focused on the destructive effects of this war on Iran’s economy. But what has barely been examined is who has profited during these two months of war.”
Vahabi stresses that, contrary to the dominant image, not everyone has lost:
“My aim is to tell you, and to emphasize this point, that according to my estimates, the greatest economic beneficiary of this war has been the Anfal sector—that is, the institutions tied to the Guardianship of the Jurist, including the Revolutionary Guards.”
For him, this outcome runs directly against the stated objective of the United States and Israel:
“If the hidden sovereignty, or the real sovereignty of clerical political power, has in fact benefited economically, this is exactly the opposite of what Trump and Netanyahu expected. My theory is that this sector has not only not been weakened; it has gained the greatest revenue from this war.”
Vahabi also speaks of the weakening of the “official state”:
“I have always emphasized this duality in the political apparatus. On the one hand, we have a state tied to the Guardianship of the Jurist; on the other, an official state. To the same extent that the former has grown fatter during this war, the official state, in my view, has become more indebted and more miserable than before.”
He explains this through the concept of “resilience,” arguing that “this war has economically increased the resilience of the sector tied to the Guardianship of the Jurist.”
Who Profited from the War?
Vahabi identifies four main sources of profit for the Anfal sector:
“In this sector, I believe the revenues, profits, and gains acquired by Anfal, including the Revolutionary Guards, have increased in four areas: first, oil sales; second, what can be called parallel and illegal trade, or non-transparent and illegal ports and docks, as well as airports that are not officially declared but are unofficially controlled by the Revolutionary Guards and used for trade; third, companies affiliated with this sector and the Guards; and fourth, confiscation policies. These confiscations still have a punitive dimension today, but they can acquire increasingly economic dimensions, especially if the war de-escalates or the ceasefire becomes more permanent.”
Vahabi rejects the common argument that Iran’s reduced oil share in the official budget means lower dependence on oil. In his view, “this does not mean that Iran’s ruling power has become less dependent on oil revenues. On the contrary, that dependence has increased. It only means that the official state is no longer supposed to benefit.”
He explains:
“In the 2026–27 budget bill, first presented by Mr. Pezeshkian in December 2025, certain amendments were introduced and later preserved. This budget became known as a ‘non-oil budget’—a budget based on taxation by the state and revenues collected by the state. Taxes were supposed to increase by around 50 to 60 percent to compensate for reduced oil revenues feeding the government. When I say reduced, the figure we have is that oil was supposed to account for around 15 percent of the current budget: 5 percent from oil sales and another 10 percent released from the reserve fund whose key is in the hands of the ‘Imam’ to assist the state. This was reflected in the press, even in high-circulation media, as if it were a very positive development—that we were moving toward a state budget independent of oil revenues, as if, in a sense, Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh’s dream of closing the budget without oil had been realized. But this does not mean that Iran’s ruling power has become less dependent on oil revenues. On the contrary, that dependence has increased. It only means that the official state, whose keyholder is Mr. Pezeshkian, is no longer supposed to benefit.”
Vahabi argues that, according to the concept of Anfal and under the country’s laws, oil is not a national revenue. It belongs to Anfal. In his words, oil is not part of the public treasury, but part of the “Imam’s treasury”:
“According to the concept of Anfal, oil is not a national revenue. This is very important. Oil is part of Anfal. This appears both in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic and in the parliamentary law passed in 1988. Article 2 of the Oil Law explicitly states that oil is public property and therefore part of Anfal. What does Anfal mean? It means that it must be under the direct supervision of the person of the Imam. In this sense, oil is not part of the public treasury; it is part of the Imam’s treasury. The Imam is its guardian, and it is outside the control of Parliament and the official executive apparatus. The term we should use instead of ‘non-nationalization’ or ‘privatization’ is the ‘Islamization’ or ‘clericalization’ of oil-sale revenues. This means that oil revenues are, in principle, distributed among five or six institutions, all of them tied to the Guardianship of the Jurist: the Revolutionary Guards and Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters, the Foundation of the Oppressed and Veterans, the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order, Astan Quds Razavi, the Relief Committee, and, as the sixth institution, the official state.”
According to Vahabi, a significant share of oil has been placed directly in the hands of the Revolutionary Guards under the new budget, and the rise in global oil prices has doubled their gains:
“In this situation, these institutions benefit directly from foreign-currency revenues from oil sales. In the years after 2021 and 2022, Parliament even approved the transfer of oil sales to these institutions themselves, including the Revolutionary Guards. The reason was that, under Trump’s maximum pressure, the state had difficulty selling oil and could not provide the rial equivalent or liquidity to the Revolutionary Guards or other institutions. In the 2026–27 budget, because the state cannot monetize oil sales, half of Iran’s oil exports were to be handed over to the Revolutionary Guards so that the Guards could sell it directly. I should say that this figure—half of the oil—did not decrease in 2026–27; it rose slightly, and exports were preserved. Therefore, Trump’s maximum pressure, and even the 12-day war, did not reduce Iran’s oil exports. Almost 90 percent of this oil is sold to China and India. What happened during this period was that, because of the crisis, oil prices increased by 30 percent compared with the prewar period. If oil had been calculated at 55 to 60 dollars, estimates rose to between 90 and 103 dollars, and recently to 108 dollars. This oil revenue brought the Revolutionary Guards’ share to 30 billion dollars and effectively doubled it. Of course, this 30-billion-dollar figure is approximate and based on calculations in the bill. How much they have actually been able to sell or store, given their contracts with the Chinese, is itself debatable. But whatever the exact figure, the Guards have made enormous profits from oil sales.”
Parallel Trade, Informal Ports, and Sanctions Economies
On informal trade, Vahabi points to the role of ports and parallel networks:
“The second profit source is the rise in prices and commercial activity at so-called unofficial and parallel docks, ports, and airports operating under the Revolutionary Guards and other institutions tied to the Guardianship of the Jurist, including the Foundation and the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order. Control over these ports and borders creates monopoly power over trade. In 2025, Iran’s imports from the United Arab Emirates might have declined, but following the regional escalation in the first month of the war, the UAE began imposing severe restrictions on Iranian assets. There were thousands of shell companies in Dubai to which the Emirates had previously turned a blind eye. But the clerical apparatus, by controlling these ports, imported many goods and extracted a premium on trade. Because it has the ability to move goods, it sells smuggled goods at higher profits and engages in a kind of rent extraction and extortion. Even in terms of money conversion, the Anfal apparatus has connected Iran’s domestic payment system to Russia’s Mir system and to the Central Bank of China. The money they receive from oil, 90 percent of which is in Chinese yuan, circulates several times through these shell companies, the operation of the Central Bank in China, and the Iranian and Russian payment systems. It does not remain limited to yuan; it is converted and cashed in both euros and dollars, and tracing it becomes almost impossible. These unofficial ports have therefore made the import of goods possible to the benefit of the Revolutionary Guards, allowing them to profit from the import of high-value goods.”
Vahabi also explains the role of companies affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards and institutions tied to the Guardianship of the Jurist:
“Half of the companies operating in Iran are under the cover of this sector, whether in pipe manufacturing, housing construction, pharmaceuticals, car manufacturing, petrochemicals, steel, aluminum, cosmetics, or food. In conditions where there is no foreign competitor for domestic production, people are forced to use Iranian goods, and within just one month, the prices of cosmetics and processed foods doubled. The same applies to aluminum, steel, and domestically produced mechanical parts, from which companies affiliated with the Guards have made enormous profits.”
On confiscations as the fourth channel of profit, he says:
“Since the January 2026 protests, we have witnessed the growth of retaliatory regulations. They confiscated the assets of people who supported these uprisings, on the grounds that they had acted in favor of hostile states. This trend increased after the Israeli and U.S. attacks, and it was officially announced that the assets of those accused of espionage, or of those abroad who defended the military attacks, would be seized and confiscated. Reports by The Times, Reuters, and HRANA confirm this. This line of confiscation, which we also saw during the eight-year war and against Baha’is, has resumed.”
The Official State as the Loser
By contrast, Vahabi describes the condition of the official state as entirely different and deeply critical:
“The official state has not profited at all. Why? Because its revenue has become dependent on tax collection. Under conditions of stagflation and wartime uncertainty, no one invests, the market is stagnant, and half of production has stopped. So there is no one to pay taxes. This means reduced state revenues and a turn toward money printing and inflation.”
He also speaks of rising unemployment:
“It is estimated that this war has made between 2 and 4 million people unemployed—that is, around 10 to 15 percent of Iran’s employed population. The service sector, which accounts for half of all jobs, has been seriously damaged by shutdowns and by the stratification of the internet and platforms. The state has said it will provide six months of unemployment insurance to workers who lost their jobs because of the bombings. But a large share of these people work in the informal economy and have no insurance. At the same time, the state budget has shrunk, and the government’s debt to pension funds and the Social Security Investment Company has grown. The state has become more miserable and relies on printing money to fund itself.”
A Religious-Military Regime, Not a Military Regime
The conversation then turns to the structure of power. Has Iran become a military government? Vahabi rejects this interpretation:
“Many Iranian researchers have said that, because of the Revolutionary Guards’ penetration of the clerical establishment, the regime of the Guardianship of the Jurist has changed into a military regime, and they have explicitly said that the Guardianship of the Jurist has ended. But I think this view is wrong. I do not think a regime change has occurred. The structure of the system remains the Guardianship of the Jurist, and the Revolutionary Guards are its arm.”
He traces this situation to developments over the past two decades, especially the implementation of Article 44 of the Constitution, when “the Revolutionary Guards officially entered oil revenues, and state assets such as telecommunications were transferred to the Guards, the Foundation, and the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order.” From that point onward, he argues, Iran became a “religious-military” government.
For Vahabi, the relationship between the Guards and the clergy is structural:
“We are dealing with a vast apparatus of ‘state clergy,’ headed by figures such as Arafi, Mojtaba Khamenei, and Hossein Taeb. They are one side of the equation. On the other side, we have an army of religious eulogists and prayer leaders whose Islamic propaganda budget increased by 180 percent in the 2026–27 budget. The Revolutionary Guards were supposed to be a revolutionary and ideological army. That is why they were not merged into the regular army and instead acted as a force for exporting the revolution and projecting influence in the Shiite crescent. The Guards’ entry into the economy began under Rafsanjani and was consolidated under Khamenei through their entry into oil and politics. The relationship between the Guards and the clerical establishment resembles the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the Red Army. The two complement one another.”
Oligarchs, Pragmatism, and the Role of the People
Finally, Vahabi turns to the oligarchic structure produced by Anfal. In his view, this class is not emerging in the future; it already exists.
“The combination of religious, military, and economic power, in the clearest sense, means that we have the power of oligarchs in Iran. One of the most important features of Anfal is precisely that it has produced oligarchs. I have no opinion on what the future of the Guardianship of the Jurist will be, but I know that Mr. Khamenei’s killing by the United States was the main reason leadership was handed to Mojtaba. My impression is that Mojtaba was not killed—I do not know this with certainty, but I do not believe he has been removed from the scene. We know how difficult it has been to make the Guardianship of the Jurist hereditary. But in conditions where the main issue is survival, the apparatus unites to preserve itself. This is exactly what Mr. Shariatmadari says today in Kayhan. When objections come from the Stability Front or from Jalili, they are blocked, and a kind of feudal fragmentation is created. The regime is undergoing a shedding of skin, and pragmatism has become its most important concern. Why is there an interest in reaching an understanding with the United States? Because they want to reduce the intensity of conflicts and move toward economic security and expanded relations with the United States alongside China and Russia. Today, in the policies of the remaining force, we see a period of expediency. The part that acts in an extremist way consists only of threatening voices meant to show what problems the pragmatists are facing. These oligarchs are not a thing of tomorrow; they are here today. They existed under Khamenei as well, but he had coordinating power and prevented them from turning into endless wars.”
At the end, he emphasizes the role of the people:
“In all this, the factor that can play a role is the people. The people’s movement that was drowned in blood in January has not ended, although it has suffered major blows and needs a breathing period. One thing is clear: no force other than the people of Iran themselves can change the fate of their own sovereignty.”
Vahabi’s argument reverses the dominant reading of the war. Rather than weakening Iran’s hard core of power, the war has strengthened the opaque, supra-state institutions tied to Anfal, while the official state and society have absorbed the costs.
