Exclusive: Iran's school year opens as fees triple and enrolment falls

# Why This Matters Iran's collapsing education system signals a broader breakdown in state capacity that extends far beyond schooling. When families can no longer afford to send children to school due to currency devaluation and fee increases, the immediate consequence is a generation with reduced literacy and skills—but the longer-term effects are destabilizing: uneducated populations become harder to employ, more susceptible to radicalization, and less able to participate in civil society. The timing is particularly consequential given regional tensions; a weakened Iranian state struggling to maintain domestic legitimacy may resort to aggressive foreign policy or proxy warfare to consolidate nationalist support, potentially drawing neighbors and foreign powers into conflict. For the U.S. and Gulf states monitoring Iran's stability, these economic indicators matter as much as military metrics—they reveal whether Iran's government can govern, and whether it will turn inward or outward in response to crisis.