Food security among rural households of paddy farmers is a multidimensional phenomenon influenced by economic, nutritional, institutional, social, and environmental factors. This study was conducted in 2025–2026 with the aim of identifying and prioritizing the challenges affecting food security from the perspective of paddy-farming households in the Sangar District of Rasht County, using a descriptive–analytical approach. The statistical population consisted of 15,122 rural households residing in the Sangar District of Rasht County, of which 12,525 paddy-farming households were considered the target population. Using a stratified random sampling method with proportional allocation (based on rural strata), data were collected from 313 paddy-farming households. The data collection instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire based on the theoretical literature on food security, whose content validity was confirmed by experts in rural development and agricultural planning. Given that the questionnaire items were not multidimensional in nature and were solely designed to measure the intensity of challenges, Cronbach’s alpha was not considered appropriate for reliability assessment. To weight the challenges, the SWARA technique was used, and for classifying the intensity of impacts, the ISDM approach was applied. The results indicated that the economic component, with a weight of 24.12%, was the most important challenge to food security, followed by nutritional-health (20.39%), policy-infrastructural (18.73%), socio-cultural (18.55%), and environmental (18.22%) components. At the sub-criteria level, reduced access to animal proteins and fruits and vegetables, climate change, water resource scarcity, soil erosion, and weaknesses in transport and irrigation infrastructure were identified as having a “very high” level of impact intensity. In contrast, rural migration, administrative corruption, and declining social cohesion were placed in the “very low” impact intensity level. Based on the findings, strengthening local healthy food production, improving agricultural infrastructure, and revising supportive policies such as rice pricing, import tariffs, and paddy farmer insurance are recommended.