Did Gasoline Just Become Three-Tier? What Actually Changed on 1 Mordad 1405 (23 July 2026) and What Is Just a Rumor

Before dawn today, Thursday 1 Mordad 1405 (23 July 2026), the monthly gasoline quota was loaded onto smart fuel cards, and at the same time a pilot began in Kerman province that moves the 5,000-toman emergency ration from stations' open cards to personal fuel cards. (One toman equals ten rials.) Online, however, these two items blended with a third wave: the rumor of "10,000-toman gasoline from 1 Mordad." This report separates three things: what actually took effect today, what is merely a proposal or a rumor, and the number standing behind the whole file that explains why this debate returns every few months. This analysis is not buy or sell advice.

What exactly changed today

Three separate events should not be confused:

1. The monthly quota load (nationwide, routine). The gasoline quota on smart cards for private cars, public vehicles and motorcycles was loaded at the start of 1 Mordad, the fifth ration of 1405. This is a recurring monthly event, not a new policy.

2. The Kerman province pilot (regional, new). According to Ahmad Salarifar, head of the National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company (NIOPDC) for the Kerman region, from the start of Mordad the 5,000-toman ration that until now was delivered through stations' emergency cards is being moved, as a "third tier," onto vehicle owners' personal fuel cards. The stated reason: problems after the coding scheme and long fueling queues at some stations in the province. The practical result is that in Kerman, a personal fuel card can hold all three rates, 1,500, 3,000 and 5,000 tomans, at once.

3. What did not change: any price. The 1,500, 3,000 and 5,000-toman rates are the same as before. The three-tier structure is not new either; the third 5,000-toman rate has been in place since Azar 1404 (late 2025). So the headline "gasoline just went three-tier today" is not accurate: gasoline has been three-tier since Azar 1404, and what began today in one province is a change in the access path to the third tier, not the addition of a new rate.

The three gasoline rates at a glance

We record two ambiguities honestly. First, sources do not agree on the volume of the Tier 2 ration: some reports say 70 liters and some 100 liters. Second, there is disagreement on the storage cap for the subsidized ration; some sources say three months and some up to 360 liters, equal to six months. Both figures should be verified against an official NIOPDC notice. What sources do agree on is that the 3,000 and 5,000-toman rations are not storable.

Brand-new (zero-kilometer) cars and government plates (except ambulances) do not receive the subsidized ration and take their fuel at the third rate.

Where the "10,000-toman gasoline" story came from

The wave originated in a post on the social network X by Malek Shariati, a member of parliament's Energy Committee. He wrote that the idea of implementing a third gasoline rate at 10,000 tomans was being pursued seriously in the government and might start from the beginning of Mordad, adding that this would conflict with Article 46 of the Seventh Development Plan. Telegram channels and Instagram pages multiplied the message, and "third rate of 10,000 tomans" turned in later retellings into "a general gasoline price hike."

Two clarifications are needed here. First, the original post said nothing about changing or raising the 60-liter 1,500-toman ration or the 3,000-toman ration; those two tiers, which cover most private-car consumption, were not the subject. Second, Article 46 of the Seventh Plan, cited as the basis, in its own text obliges the government to prepare a comprehensive plan for supplying and allocating energy carriers in transport, to address the gasoline imbalance, diversify the fuel basket and observe passive-defense requirements. In other words, even the legal citation is contested, and this file also has the flavor of a factional dispute.

In the policymaker's logic, the third rate is a deterrent tool aimed at a small group of heavy users and at countering cross-border smuggling, not a general pricing mechanism for gasoline.

The government's official position

The positions stated as of this report:

• Government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani, around 28 Tir 1405 (about 19 July 2026) in Bandar Abbas: the government has no plan to raise the third gasoline price, and rumors of a gasoline price hike are false; any possible decision would be announced only through official channels.
• Esmail Saqqab-Esfahani, vice president and head of the Energy Efficiency and Strategic Management Organization (Khordad 1405): reforming energy carrier prices is not on the agenda now, given economic and social conditions.
• Deputy for communications at the presidential office (Aban 1404, late 2025): no plan for a several-hundred-percent gasoline price increase was on the agenda, and the emphasis, even in proposed plans, was on keeping the current price with existing rations.

A neutral summary: as of today no official notice about a 10,000-toman rate has been published, and government officials have denied it. At the same time, the set of recent decisions shows the policymaker moving toward strengthening the role of the personal fuel card, restricting stations' emergency cards, and tighter control of consumption. These two statements are not contradictory: changing the distribution mechanism does not necessarily mean changing the price.

The number standing behind the whole story

This is where the debate shifts from policy to accounting. Per NIOPDC's account, from the start of 1405 through 24 Tir, average daily gasoline output was 121 million liters and average consumption 129 million liters, a deficit of about 8 million liters a day. In the first 24 days of Tir, output reached 127 million liters while daily distribution was about 134.5 million liters.

To grasp the pace, a historical comparison is clearer:

In five years, daily consumption has risen about 50% and the country has shifted from exporter to importer. Gasoline imports in 1403 reportedly exceeded 6 billion dollars.

Two 1405 factors must be added to this picture. First, war damage to refining infrastructure that has cut output capacity; Sahmino has previously covered the stock-market dimension of that damage in 42 war-damaged tickers. Second, fuel smuggling, estimated at about 20 to 25 million liters a day. That figure is an estimate, not verified official data, but even in the most conservative case it is the size of the entire balance deficit.

Why the Azar 1404 third rate did not work

This is the most important lesson of the file. The 5,000-toman third rate was introduced in Azar 1404 with exactly two goals: eliminating the station fuel card and cutting consumption. About eight months later, per Malek Shariati, in spring 1405 roughly one-third of the country's gasoline is still sold through station cards, and demand, outside the war window and holidays, has not fallen meaningfully.

In other words, the price tool alone, absent complementary reforms, did not meet its goal. Economic analyses stress the same point: the root of the gasoline imbalance is not only pricing policy but the structure of the auto industry and the fleet's high consumption, transport wear, weak public transit, smuggling, and insufficient investment in expanding refineries. The Kerman pilot should be read in this frame: an attempt to close the station-card gap after the price tool alone did not answer.

The hidden subsidy and who captures it

The gap between the sale price and the cost is what is called the "hidden subsidy." Per Malek Shariati, the domestic cost of each liter of gasoline is about 10,000 tomans excluding the value of crude, and close to 15,000 tomans once imports are included. Published estimates put the annual figure of this subsidy near 400 trillion tomans (400 hemat), though the daily estimate ranges between roughly 500 and 1,200 billion tomans across different sources, a spread worth keeping in mind.

A simple comparison makes the scale clear. At the free-market dollar rate of 193,115 tomans in Sahmino's price feed on 1 Mordad 1405, each liter of subsidized 1,500-toman gasoline equals about 0.8 US cents and the 5,000-toman third rate about 2.6 cents. At the same moment, a liter of gasoline was reported at about 1.3 dollars in Türkiye, about 0.78 dollars in the UAE, about 0.57 dollars in Iraq and Qatar, and about 0.34 dollars in Kuwait. This gap mechanically creates the economics of smuggling; and as long as the gap exists, any administrative mechanism merely raises the cost of smuggling, not its incentive.

The distributional point matters too: because the gasoline subsidy is distributed by consumption rather than need, published data show the top income decile benefiting several times more than the bottom; one report put that ratio at about 25 times. This should be read as a research estimate, not official data.

How this file reaches the market

For Sahmino's audience, three transmission channels matter:

Channel one, inflation and transport cost. Gasoline is a base input in the goods-transport chain. Any effective change in the average paid rate (not necessarily the announced rate) settles into the cost of distribution. Note that moving the 5,000-toman ration to the personal card, even without a rate change, can shift the "average effective rate" for some consumers; that is exactly what must be watched.

Channel two, budget and FX. Importing gasoline at the global price swallows FX resources. In an economy where the gap between the free and remittance rates on 1 Mordad 1405 is about 27% (free dollar 193,115 tomans versus the Exchange Center remittance rate of 151,368 tomans), every billion dollars of fuel imports is both a budget and an FX strain. The live FX trend is tracked on Sahmino's price pages.

Channel three, the refiners. For Tehran Stock Exchange refining tickers, what makes profit is not the retail pump price of gasoline but the feedstock and product pricing formula and the crack spread. So changing the ration distribution mechanism has no direct, immediate effect on refinery profit; but any revision of the product pricing formula does. Sahmino has previously opened this mechanism in its analyses of Shapna's forward P/E and the Isfahan refinery's replacement value.

Risks and open questions

• Information risk: some details (the Tier 2 ration volume, the storage cap, the geographic scope of the third-tier pilot after Kerman) are not drawn from a single official notice and differ across news sources.
• Generalization risk: the third-tier pilot runs in one province for now. Extending it nationwide is an assumption, not an announced measure.
• Political and social risk: the experience of Aban 1398 (November 2019), when the rationed rate rose 50% to 1,500 tomans and the open rate went from 1,000 to 3,000 tomans, was accompanied by nationwide protests. That memory is the reason for the government's stated caution and makes it a real variable in decision-making.
• Imbalance-escalation risk: if refining capacity is not restored quickly and summer consumption stays high, pressure for faster action grows.
• Narrative risk: in a space where rumor spreads faster than official notice, the mere expectation of a price hike can affect market behavior and fueling queues, even when no rate has changed.

What to watch

• An official NIOPDC notice on the exact Tier 2 ration details and the storage cap.
• The Kerman pilot's result: does the share sold via station cards fall in that province? That is the test of the pilot's success.
• Monthly gasoline output and consumption data and the pace of refining-capacity repair.
• Any decision by the Supreme Council of Economic Coordination of the Heads of Powers; the legal path for changes like this runs through there.
• The FX trend and its effect on the cost of fuel imports, on Sahmino's price pages.
• Upcoming events on Sahmino's calendar.

Bottom line

What happened on 1 Mordad 1405 was the routine monthly quota load and the start of a provincial pilot to move the 5,000-toman emergency ration from the station card to the personal card. No new rate was announced, the three-tier structure has been in place since Azar 1404, and "10,000-toman gasoline" is, as of this moment, a contested proposal that government officials have denied.

But behind that denial stands an accounting reality that no denial removes: daily output of 121 versus consumption of 129 million liters, consumption that has grown about 50% in five years, a heavy price gap with neighbors that keeps smuggling economic, and a hidden subsidy that estimates put near 400 hemat a year. The Azar 1404 third rate showed that the price tool alone does not solve this equation. That is why the file is not closed and will likely return every few months; and why separating "a change of mechanism" from "a change of rate" matters for reading the news to come correctly. This analysis is not buy or sell advice and is only a framework for understanding this file better.

Sources

• National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company, gasoline output and consumption data from the start of 1405 through 24 Tir (via economic reporting).
• Ahmad Salarifar, head of NIOPDC for the Kerman region, on the third-tier pilot.
• Malek Shariati, member of parliament's Energy Committee, post published on the social network X.
• Fatemeh Mohajerani, government spokesperson, remarks in Bandar Abbas (around 28 Tir 1405).
• Esmail Saqqab-Esfahani, vice president and head of the Energy Efficiency and Strategic Management Organization.
• Article 46 of the Seventh Development Plan.
• EcoIran, Fararu, Tasnim, Mehr, Shargh, Tabnak and Jam-e Jam for ration details, the imbalance, and official positions.
• Sahmino's price feed for the free dollar and Exchange Center remittance rates on 1 Mordad 1405.