ژورنال سایت خبری سیاسی ژورنال
PDF-English Journal-13 July 2025-No22
Following widespread protests in Tehran over shockingly high utility bills, Tehran Province’s Water and Wastewater Company has claimed that, due to “security conditions” in the aftermath of the war, bills have been issued based on average past consumption. A statement from the company reads: “To observe security considerations and prevent potential exploitation by Israeli infiltrators, the process of meter reading and dispatching field agents has been suspended.”
We have long urged people to refuse to pay their water, electricity, and gas bills. What once seemed like an isolated act of defiance now appears to be spreading. The Islamic Republic, in its relentless efforts to squeeze every last breath from a society crippled by poverty, continues to raise the cost of these basic services. This, despite the fact that for nearly a year, amid the freezing winter and blistering summer heat, power has been regularly cut off from homes and workplaces. The result has been a deepening societal collapse and a further erosion in quality of life.
Amid this decline, the regime has brazenly hiked prices. But now a collective response is emerging. Citizens are preventing inspectors from reading their meters, forcing the regime’s looting apparatus to issue bills based on estimates—thus avoiding direct confrontation with the public.
And, as ever, the spectre of “infiltrators” is invoked. It remains unclear how these supposed foreign agents—chiefly from Israeli intelligence—have supposedly infiltrated every home in the country to make it necessary to block meter readings. Even by the Islamic Republic’s own standards of deception, this claim stretches credulity. It reflects nothing more than another humiliating failure in the face of an exhausted yet defiant population.
Refusing to pay utility bills can and must become a nationwide act of resistance. If we act together, not only do we ease the economic pressure on households, but we forge a new front of social and political unity. Let us stand shoulder to shoulder and bring this regime to its knees through mass defiance.
Editor: Patty Debonitas
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