As a blistering heatwave sweeps across Iran, pushing temperatures to a staggering 53°C (127°F) in Ahvaz and over 40°C (104°F) in Tehran, widespread power outages are crippling daily life and fueling public outrage. The crisis has been intensified by accusations of systemic inequality after a local electricity official openly admitted that certain politically "sensitive areas" are being spared from the rolling blackouts plaguing ordinary citizens, a move critics are calling proof of discriminatory governance.
The admission came from Hussein Souri, head of the Quds County Electricity Department, whose statement was highlighted and analyzed on the news program "The Program with Kambiz Hosseini" of Iran International. According to the program, which featured business journalist Atta Hosseini as a guest, Souri stated, "We were unable to disconnect electricity from residential areas in some sensitive areas, so those areas will not be cut off. But we promise to cut off everyone's electricity fairly next year." Critics on the show interpreted this not as a simple operational issue, but as a stark confession that public services are managed based on "security and class-based" priorities, rewarding geographical and political proximity to centers of power.
For millions of Iranians, these unequal blackouts are a matter of survival. The loss of power turns off essential air conditioners, spoils vital medicines in refrigerators, and puts the lives of patients dependent on home medical devices, such as dialysis machines, at risk. Children suffer in unventilated apartments, while workers, teachers, and retirees endure the sweltering heat. The outages halt economic activity for everyone from bakers who cannot bake bread to factory workers whose production lines go silent, exacerbating hardship and deepening the gap between the government and the people.
This energy crisis stems from the government's failure to meet its own development goals. Despite promising to resolve the electricity imbalance by building new power plants by the end of the Persian year 1403, the national grid faces a deficit of over 18,000 megawatts. Instead of investing in infrastructure, the state's primary response has been to enforce widespread blackouts, a policy critics have dubbed "sharing the pain."
However, this pain is not shared equally. The exemption for areas adjacent to security institutions, IRGC buildings, and government offices reveals a system that prioritizes its comfort over public need. Analysts argue that the regime has distorted the very concept of justice; instead of an equal distribution of resources, it is now defined as an equal distribution of suffering. In this inverted logic, if some must suffer, then all ordinary people must suffer alike for "justice" to be served, while the elite remain insulated. This has transformed the power outage from a technical problem into a potent symbol of a policy designed not to "turn on" progress, but to "turn off" the daily lives of the population.
Photo: Iran International