Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has said his salary is equal to only $1,000 a month after the country's currency, the rial, plunged to record lows.
Acknowledging the economic crisis that fuelled recent protests, Mr Pezeshkian admitted some Iranians were “dissatisfied with the government’s performance”.
He said workers had greater buying power in the past. “Now, my salary as president is $1,000,” he said while visiting Iran’s Golestan province.
Many Iranians earn far less than Mr Pezeshkian. The minimum wage was set at $3.76 per day last year, since when the value of the currency has depreciated further.
It fell last month to 1.5 million rials per dollar, a record low. The protests that followed escalated into one of the broadest anti-regime revolts in Iran since the 1979 revolution.
Activists say as many as 7,000 people were killed in a crackdown by state security. Iran has accused the US and Israel of stirring up unrest, describing the protesters as rioters and terrorists.
Mr Pezeshkian struck a more conciliatory note while meeting activists in Golestan, offering an apology for “problems that the people have suffered”. He said a special working group would look at currency issues.
“The existence of problems in society is an undeniable reality and we cannot turn a blind eye to it,” he said, before adding that foreign powers had “sought to ride on the bedrock of these problems and direct the path of the country's internal developments to their own advantage”.
The US president is paid $400,000 a year, and six-figure salaries are common for other world leaders.
