A confidential report prepared for Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian's office found that only 9% of the country's citizens support the political status quo, while nearly three-quarters want either deep structural reform or an entirely new system of government. The document, obtained and reported by IranWire on July 13, paints a picture of a regime whose own internal polling confirms what its critics have long argued: the Islamic Republic has lost the Iranian people.

The report, titled "What Iran Wants," was compiled by Ali Rabiei, Pezeshkian's social adviser and a former government spokesman. Polling was conducted in May 2026 by the Ara Opinion Research Center and the document circulated among Iranian governing institutions the following month. Its findings read less like a policy brief and more like a warning siren.

Approximately 64% of respondents reported persistent anger, a figure that jumped roughly 12 percentage points from a previous government survey conducted just six months earlier, in December 2025. Half reported hopelessness. About 48% described sadness or depression. Some 45% said they live with persistent fear or anxiety. And more than 19% told pollsters they want the political system replaced outright.

A population that can't eat, can't save, can't trust

The economic numbers in the document are staggering. More than 81% of respondents reported severe or partial difficulty obtaining enough food. Three-quarters said they struggled to cover medical costs. Over half, 54%, said their income did not cover current household expenses. Only 8% earned enough to save anything at all.

When asked who was to blame, Iranians pointed inward, not outward. Nearly 47% cited government inefficiency as the primary cause of the country's economic problems. Another 26.3% blamed corruption. Only 20.7% pointed to foreign sanctions, the regime's preferred explanation for decades of mismanagement.

That finding alone should concern Tehran. The Islamic Republic has long used Western sanctions as a shield against domestic accountability. When the regime's own pollsters find that fewer than one in five Iranians accept that narrative, the shield is cracking.

The broader context of U.S.-Iran tensions, including military strikes and the collapse of diplomatic channels, has undeniably shaped Iran's economy. But the Iranian public, according to its own government's research, holds its own leaders responsible first.

Institutional distrust runs deep

Roughly 60% of respondents said they distrust major government institutions. Distrust of the government, parliament, judiciary, and state television all remained above 50%. More than 61% gave a negative assessment of officials' ability to solve the country's problems.

Fifty-three percent called for fundamental or structural reforms. Combined with the 19%-plus who want the system replaced entirely, the numbers suggest a population that has moved well past the point of loyal dissent. These are not protesters on the margins. This is the mainstream.

Miad Maleki, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that even these dire numbers likely understate reality. In a country where speaking freely can cost you everything, respondents pull their punches.

"[In a police state] where expressing the wrong opinion can cost you your job, your freedom, or your life, respondents self-censor, which means these findings are best read as a floor, not a ceiling."

That observation deserves weight. If 64% admit to persistent anger in a country that has struggled with internal leadership confusion and routinely imprisons dissidents, the real number is almost certainly higher.

Anger beyond anything Gallup has recorded

Maleki placed the findings in global context, telling Fox News Digital that the anger levels exceeded any figure the polling firm Gallup has ever recorded anywhere in the world.

"If anything, this research understates the depth of Iranians' rage. And that is what makes it remarkable: even a survey prepared for the regime's own president, by its own pollsters, records anger levels above 63%, well beyond the highest rate Gallup has ever recorded anywhere in the world, alongside 81% struggling to put food on the table and a majority expressing hopelessness."

That comparison is worth sitting with. This is not an opposition group's propaganda. It is not a Western intelligence assessment. It is the Islamic Republic's own commissioned research, prepared for the president's desk, telling the regime that its people are angrier than any population Gallup has ever measured, and getting angrier fast.

The trajectory of unrest has matched the polling. Maleki noted that demonstrations spread from more than 80 cities in 2017 to more than 200 cities across all 31 provinces this year. Strikes, he said, have quadrupled.

"Iranians have moved from being skeptical of what another revolution might bring to concluding there is no alternative to one, because reform has proven impossible."

The regime's response: better messaging

Perhaps the most revealing element of the leaked report is what the regime plans to do about all of this. The answer, according to IranWire's analysis, is essentially nothing structural.

Rabiei reportedly urged state institutions to better explain the impact of sanctions, moderate the rhetoric used by officials and religious platforms, present a more inclusive image through state television, and avoid policies that place the government in direct confrontation with society. The recommendations centered on managing dissatisfaction, not addressing the demands for systemic change that the report itself documented.

IranWire's follow-up analysis noted the report offered few concrete proposals involving institutional accountability, political liberalization, or fundamental economic reform. In other words, the regime asked what Iran wants, got a clear answer, and responded with a communications strategy.

This pattern will be familiar to anyone who has watched authoritarian governments in their late stages. The instinct is always the same: if the people are angry, the problem must be messaging. Never the message itself. Never the system that produced the failure. The solution is always better propaganda, not better governance.

The question of whether outside pressure, including debates over frozen Iranian assets and the broader trajectory of U.S. policy, will compound or relieve the regime's internal crisis remains open. But the leaked document makes one thing clear: the Islamic Republic's legitimacy problem is homegrown.

The question is when, not if

Photo captions accompanying the Fox News Digital report documented the scale of recent unrest. Protesters marched in downtown Tehran in late December 2025. Cars burned in the streets during a January 2026 protest over the collapse of the currency's value. Buses were torched during separate January demonstrations. By May 2026, thousands gathered at Revolution Square in Tehran, though that particular rally was directed at U.S. and Israeli military actions against Iran, a reminder that the regime can still mobilize crowds around external threats even as it hemorrhages domestic support.

The tension between those two realities, a population furious at its own government, but also living under genuine external pressure, is what makes Iran's trajectory so volatile. Maleki acknowledged the regime's capacity for repression even as he argued the underlying dynamics are unsustainable.

"This regime was born of revolution, by revolutionaries. Preventing and crushing the next one is the one thing they genuinely know how to do."

But he added a pointed challenge directed at the international community.

"So the discontent will translate into renewed protest. The question is not if, but when, and whether anyone is prepared to stand with the Iranian people when it does."

That question hangs over Western capitals that have spent years debating whether the outcomes of confrontation with Iran have made things better or worse. The leaked report does not answer the policy question. But it demolishes one comfortable assumption: that the Islamic Republic, however repressive, retains meaningful popular support.

What the numbers actually say

The complete survey methodology, sample size, geographic distribution, demographic breakdown, was not included in the material IranWire obtained. That is a legitimate caveat. The Iranian government has not publicly confirmed the document's authenticity.

But the source of the polling matters. This was not a dissident survey smuggled out on a thumb drive. It was commissioned by the president's own adviser, conducted by a research center operating inside the system, and circulated among governing institutions. The regime treated it as credible enough to distribute internally. That alone makes it significant.

And the numbers are consistent with observable reality. When 81% of a country's people struggle to feed themselves, when anger jumps 12 points in six months, when nearly three-quarters reject the existing order, the question shifts from whether the regime is stable to how long it can hold.

The Islamic Republic asked its own people what they want. The answer was: not this. The regime's response was to work on its talking points. That tells you everything about who is governing Iran, and how little they have left to offer.