Iran Company & Beneficial Ownership Directory

Analysis

What this data actually tells you about Iran

Iran’s 2025 GDP growth is estimated divergently by international institutions: the IMF projected +0.6% real growth (October 2025 World Economic Outlook, revised up from an earlier +0.3% estimate), while the World Bank projected the economy would contract by -1.7% (October 2025 reporting, a sharp downward revision from an April 2025 forecast of +0.7% growth) — a genuine disagreement in direction, not just magnitude, reflecting the difficulty of modeling an economy whose own national accounts are not always independently verifiable, and both forecasts predate the escalation into the 2026 Iran war described below. Inflation has been persistently extreme and appears to be accelerating beyond pre-war forecasts: Iran’s Statistical Center (SCI) recorded point-to-point inflation of 52.6% in December 2025, rising to 68.1% by February 2026, a level analysts have described as the highest recorded in Iran since World War II, well above the IMF’s own October 2025 forecast of 43.3% for full-year 2025. The rial operates on a multi-tier exchange-rate system that should never be cited as a single number: the free/open-market rate, tracked by exchange platforms such as Bonbast and Alanchand, stood at approximately 2.29 million rials per US dollar on September 17, 2026, having lost roughly 60% of its value since the start of the Iranian calendar year in March 2026, an acceleration Euronews (September 2026) linked to the US reimposing a naval blockade on Iranian ports as part of the 2026 war; this free-market rate runs, per Iran International (September 2026), at ‘more than double’ a separate, lower official Central Bank rate used for subsidized essential imports, though no precise current figure for that official rate was located and should not be invented. Sanctions pressure intensified across 2025: the US reinstated a ‘maximum pressure’ campaign via a February 2025 presidential directive, and on August 28, 2025 the UK, France and Germany (the E3) triggered the JCPOA ‘snapback’ mechanism, resulting in the reimposition of all UN sanctions lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal on September 27, 2025, with the EU following with its own restrictive measures on September 29, 2025; Iran, China and Russia disputed the move’s legality.

Iran’s relationship with Israel and the United States escalated into two distinct armed conflicts within about eight months of each other, which should be understood as separate, sequential events rather than one continuous episode. From June 13, 2025, Israel struck Iranian nuclear, military and energy facilities in what is referred to as the Twelve-Day War, and on June 22, 2025 the United States struck three Iranian nuclear sites, including the underground Fordow enrichment facility, using bunker-buster munitions delivered by B-2 bombers; Iran retaliated with strikes on Israel and on a US base in Qatar, and a ceasefire took effect June 24, 2025, with Iran’s Health Ministry reporting approximately 1,062 people killed as of July 22, 2025 and Israel reporting 29 killed as of July 13, 2025. A much larger conflict began February 28, 2026: Israel and the United States launched a large-scale strike campaign, reported by outlets including NPR, CNN, Al Jazeera and CNBC to have included approximately 900 strikes within twelve hours, targeting Iranian missile, air-defense, military and leadership sites; Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was reported killed in the strikes, with his death confirmed by the Iranian government on March 1, 2026, and the Assembly of Experts named his son Mojtaba Khamenei as Iran’s new Supreme Leader on March 8, 2026, amid reporting that the succession followed pressure from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and that the elder Khamenei had previously indicated opposition to a hereditary succession. President Masoud Pezeshkian, in office since July 28, 2024, has remained the nominal head of government throughout, though reporting describes his authority as constrained during the crisis. Multiple ceasefire attempts followed without producing a durable settlement as of this writing: a US-Iran ceasefire was agreed April 7-8, 2026, with reports the Israeli military struck Lebanon hours afterward, a broader ‘Islamabad Memorandum’ including a Lebanon ceasefire was agreed June 15, 2026, and this broke down in July 2026 after Iran struck three commercial vessels, with fighting resuming July 8, 2026; per a GlobalSecurity.org tracker dated September 16, 2026, core disputes over the nuclear program, the Strait of Hormuz, and sanctions relief remained unresolved, and the Strait has been effectively closed to Western-allied commercial shipping since approximately May 4, 2026, with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard operating a toll regime over transiting vessels. Despite the war, Iran continued exporting roughly 1.4 to 1.8 million barrels per day of crude and condensate to China through 2025 and into early 2026, almost entirely via a sanctions-evading shadow fleet of tankers routed to independent Chinese refiners, with official Chinese customs data understating true volumes because cargo origins are frequently falsely relabeled.

Iran’s population was estimated at roughly 86.2 million by the end of 2025. Official unemployment figures vary by reference season: one series puts full-year 2025 unemployment at 8.3% with youth (15-24) unemployment at 21.9%, while a separate Statistical Center of Iran seasonal reading shows unemployment at 7.8% and youth unemployment at 20.2% for the winter 2025 season, with a persistent gender gap, female unemployment at 14.2% versus male at 6.5% for that season, and unemployment among women aged 20-24 reaching 34.9%; Iran’s working-age population grew by an estimated 825,000 over the past year against only about 57,000 net new jobs created. Poverty estimates also diverge by measure: Iran’s national poverty rate was reported at 30.1% for the Iranian year ending March 2024, separately described in some reporting as ‘about 25 million’ people below the poverty line, while opposition-affiliated outlets (NCRI, Mojahedin.org) have cited officials warning the figure could reach 55 million under different assumptions — a warning or projection, not a measured current rate, and reported here with that distinction preserved. Beginning December 28, 2025, economic-collapse-driven protests spread to roughly 200 towns and cities across all 31 provinces, described by multiple outlets as the largest wave of unrest since the 1979 revolution; the government responded with a security crackdown, an internet blackout beginning January 8, 2026, which Iran’s Communications Minister acknowledged was costing the economy an estimated $35.7 million per day, and more than 50,000 reported detentions. Death-toll estimates for the protests vary enormously by source and should not be presented as a single settled figure: CBS News initially reported ‘at least 8’ killed, other early Western reporting cited figures in the low dozens, and the opposition-aligned Iran International network claimed on January 13, 2026 that its sourcing suggested approximately 12,000 killed, a figure CBS News stated it could not independently verify. Iran is separately in its sixth consecutive drought year as of the 2025-2026 water year, with Tehran’s Latyan Dam reservoir reported at roughly 9% capacity and Amir Kabir Dam at roughly 8% (CNN, December 2025; CSIS satellite-imagery analysis), and faces a parallel energy crisis despite holding the world’s largest natural gas reserves — Iran’s power-plant association chairman estimated a 25,000-megawatt electricity deficit for 2025-2026, roughly a third of national consumption, which Iran’s Energy Minister said in February 2025 would require an estimated $45 billion in investment to resolve.