They’ve been saying this for years though.
Around a decade ago....Iranian business owners felt that a economic collapse was going to occur. So they started to take profits, buy into foreign currency (Euro, dollars or Dirhams), and move the money out of Iran. This meant that Iranian banks weren’t holding much in assets, and mortgage potential for young Iranians to buy houses diminished (a lot).
Year after year, that strategy has been taking place. Iranians who were marginally wealthy, moved a fair amount of cash to Dubai and simply bought property, condos, or gold....waiting out this believed-to-soon-occur collapse.
When Obama did his nifty ‘help-Iran’ deal....by flushing that money back into Iran (via dollars), without realizing it...the government flushed the cash into different things, and various people got their hands on it....again, moving it off-shore and waiting for this anticipated collapse.
If you go into Iran today, the chief word you’d use is ‘stagnation’. The exchange rates have gone to the extreme because everyone wants some type of foreign currency instead of the Rial.
In this case, the economic collapse can be made to occur, rather than some revolution or coup deal. It just takes a long period of time. The Mullahs have zero appreciation or understanding of economics.