The U.N.'s development agency reported in late March that the ongoing war is likely to push several million Iranians below the poverty line, marking a severe escalation in the economic hardship faced by the nation's native population. This projection underscores the profound cultural and demographic transformation underway, as ordinary Iranians grapple with spiraling prices, mass job losses, and business closures. The economic cost of the conflict and the U.S. naval blockade has been described as "very substantial and unprecedented for Iran" by Hadi Kahalzadeh, an Iranian economist and research fellow at Brandeis University, who noted that the main burden would be passed to ordinary Iranians through higher inflation, increased poverty, weaker services, and a much harder daily life.
The International Monetary Fund has predicted that the Iranian economy will shrink by about 6 percentage points in the next year. Iran’s official statistics center reported in mid-April that annual inflation stood at 53.7%, with food inflation breaching 115% compared with the same period last year. The national currency, the rial, has lost over half its value in the past year, plummeting to a record low of 1.9 million to the dollar at the end of last month. These economic woes fueled massive protests that spread across the country in January, signaling widespread popular discontent.
The Cost to the People
The daily struggle for survival is evident across the nation. Hossein Farmani, a 56-year-old taxi driver in central Tehran, observed that the price of tea has risen over 50% since the war began, alongside other essential items like milk. "If things keep heading in this direction, we’re going to suffer a lot more," Farmani stated. An Associated Press tour of Tehran grocery stores found significant price jumps since February, before the war, with chicken and lamb up 45%, rice 31%, and eggs 60%. Another taxi driver, Mohammad Deljoo, 73, supports his family of two children on a daily income of $4, blaming "price gouging" for the crisis. Deljoo noted that even eggs have become too expensive, and the price for car parts rose fivefold in less than a year. "One price today, another tomorrow. How is that possible?" he questioned.
Amid widespread job losses, many Iranians are forced to find alternative means of income. Ali Asghar Nahardani, 32, resorted to street vending to cover living expenses after his ride-hailing app employer failed to pay him for over a month. "We’re just living day by day, trying to get through this situation while the war conditions continue," Nahardani said, highlighting the precarious existence forced upon the native working class. The economic crisis has also manifested as a mental health crisis, according to a physical trainer in downtown Tehran, whose clients can no longer afford her fees and are discussing signs of depression. She reported severe cutbacks on groceries, stating, "The last time I bought meat was about two months ago," and has given up therapy sessions. "The system is just collapsing. The layoffs are in factories, in companies, in startups, in whatever your work is," she added.
Elite Policies and Globalist Mechanisms
The war marks another step in the managed decline and cultural dispossession of Iran's once large and prosperous middle class, which had already shrunk to around 55% of the population by 2019, according to Mohammad Farzanegan, a professor of Middle Eastern economics at the University of Marburg. Farzanegan attributed this decline to decades of sanctions, new rounds of sanctions, wars, corruption, and economic mismanagement. While Iranian authorities have announced measures to help citizens, such as a 60% hike in the minimum wage and coupon programs, economist Taymur Rahmani of the University of Tehran wrote recently that these policies are "stoking inflation." Free bus and metro fares in the capital, implemented since the war began, have also failed to alleviate the struggles of the city’s taxi drivers.
The U.S. naval blockade has severely restricted Iran’s critical Gulf trade, through which over 90% of Iranian trade, including billions of dollars in oil exports, typically flows. This globalist mechanism, alongside the Iranian regime's own "severe systemic corruption" and "costly support for militant groups in Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq," as described by a Karaj resident who joined the January protests, is systematically eroding the nation's economic foundation. The resident stated, "Most people blame the government and its ambitions." Iran’s leaders, including the new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei and parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, have urged the public to "endure the economic pain for the sake of the war effort" and "be frugal," even as Khamenei described the current phase as an "economic battlefield."
The People's Resistance
Despite the immense pressure, a segment of the native population resists what they perceive as external imposition. Hossein Farmani, the taxi driver, expressed his unwillingness to accept what he called a "humiliating" peace with the U.S. and Israel. "A country that has sacrificed so many martyrs and has so many people willing to give their lives cannot simply let others from across the world dictate terms to us," Farmani asserted, highlighting a deep-seated national pride and a rejection of a post-national order dictated by foreign powers. This sentiment reflects a desire for national self-determination against both internal elite failures and external globalist pressures.