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A street in Iran dimly lit amid electricity shortages
Three-minute read
On August 15, 2025, in the town of Kavar in Fars province, two teenagers died not from an accident or illness, but from the unbearable summer heat during a power outage. Tara Younesi, 16, and Sadegh Khoshdel, 18, had sought refuge from the sweltering temperatures in a parked car, turning on the engine for air conditioning. They were found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Their deaths are a tragic symptom of a nationwide crisis manufactured by the Iranian regime’s gross incompetence. Across Iran, relentless and widespread power failures have pushed the country’s infrastructure to the breaking point, turning hospitals into danger zones and threatening the lives of the most vulnerable citizens.
Why #Iran Is Running Out of Water, Power — and Patiencehttps://t.co/9ZghlJCNpO
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) August 13, 2025
Hospitals on Life Support
Inside Iran’s medical facilities, the daily blackouts have created a state of perpetual emergency. Testimonies from medical staff paint a harrowing picture of a system on the verge of collapse. In the intensive care unit of a Tehran hospital, a nurse identified as “Zahra” described the moment the power cuts out: ventilators, infusion pumps, and all life-sustaining machines fall silent simultaneously.
In the critical 5 to 30 seconds before backup generators activate, nurses are forced to manually pump air into the lungs of unstable patients with Ambu bags to prevent them from suffocating. “Every time the power goes out, the anxiety of the patient and the nurses doubles,” she explained.
The situation is equally dire in operating rooms, where surgeons have been forced to continue complex procedures, including heart, vascular, and kidney transplants, using the light from their mobile phones.
#Iran’s Water and Power Crisis: A Mirror of Administrative Collapse and the Regime’s Fear of Public Outragehttps://t.co/Jv8FtSbMPc
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) July 30, 2025
The Coming Drug Shortage
The crisis extends far beyond the hospital walls, crippling the production of essential medicines and setting the stage for a future public health catastrophe. According to Mohammad Abdehzadeh, the head of the syndicate for pharmaceutical industries, factories are facing power cuts two to three days per week. This has slashed their production capacity by a staggering 40%. Abdehzadeh issued a stark warning that unless the situation is resolved, Iran will face a “significant increase” in drug shortages beginning in September. The cost for these factories to operate on generators is unsustainable, reaching 120 million tomans per week for fuel alone. This enormous financial burden, coupled with the regime’s chronic mismanagement of currency allocation and delayed payments, is pushing the pharmaceutical sector toward a cliff edge.
A Strategy of Denial
Faced with this overwhelming evidence of a system in collapse, the regime’s response has been not to address the crisis, but to deny its existence. Health Minister Mohammadreza Zafarghandi publicly claimed, “To date, we have not had a report of a special incident or serious event resulting from power outages in hospitals.” This official denial is a blatant falsehood, directly contradicted by the harrowing experiences of medical staff and even by members of the regime’s own parliament.
Salman Eshaghi, the spokesperson for the Parliamentary Health Commission, acknowledged widespread dissatisfaction among medical personnel, particularly in dialysis units where power failures can cause catastrophic damage to life-saving equipment. He further admitted that the energy crisis has “inflicted damage in the field of drug and medical equipment production.” The regime’s hollow promise of 1 trillion tomans for generators is a transparent attempt to deflect blame, failing to address the fundamental corruption and mismanagement that caused the energy grid to fail in the first place.
August 13—Chabahar, southeast Iran
Residents of Chabahar rally in front of the offices of the electricity department, protesting the a 24-hour-long power outage that has disrupted their lives in the summer heat.#IranProtestspic.twitter.com/H6xLXYoLiM
— People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) (@Mojahedineng) August 13, 2025
The deaths of Tara Younesi and Sadegh Khoshdel, the surgeons operating by phone light, and the looming collapse of the nation’s drug supply are not isolated incidents. They are the direct and predictable consequences of a kleptocratic regime that has plundered the nation’s wealth and neglected its infrastructure in favor of funding terrorism and its repressive apparatus.
The anxiety of ordinary Iranians is palpable, captured in a social media post from a citizen whose father was scheduled for surgery: “I’m scared the hospital’s power will go out while my father is in the operating room. God, I hope the hospital’s power doesn’t go out tomorrow.” For the people of Iran, the struggle for basic necessities like electricity has become inseparable from the broader struggle to overthrow the regime and replace it with a free, competent, and accountable government that values their lives.