Iran spends a massive portion of its budget on military, which has ultimately amounted to nothing. The official budget is 10-15% of government spending, but the IRGC is mostly off-books, and likely to be at least 4x higher than the official budget states when counting just funds embezzled from public works projects [1] — since the official budget has about a third of all military spending going to the IRGC, this implies Iran's actual military expenditures are more like 30% or more of total government spending.
You can try a lot of mental contortions to justify it, but I think the simplest explanation is the cleanest: this forever war against Israel and America — the "little Satan" and the "great Satan" as they referred to them — was a catastrophic miscalculation. They should have spent the time and money elsewhere, and reconciled with America at least, and life would be better for Iranians if they had.
You can try a lot of mental contortions to justify it, but I think the simplest explanation is the cleanest: this forever war against Israel and America — the "little Satan" and the "great Satan" as they referred to them — was a catastrophic miscalculation. They should have spent the time and money elsewhere, and reconciled with America at least, and life would be better for Iranians if they had.
1: https://www.janes.com/osint-insights/defence-and-national-se...