Iran’s war-induced economic crisis: How sanctions, regional conflicts, and neoliberal policies deepen inequality beyond borders
Original framing: “Iranians stagger under soaring costs of seven months of war - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
The current crisis mirrors the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, when sanctions (then led by the US and Saudi Arabia) triggered hyperinflation and a *tudeh* (communist) underground economy, which the state later criminalized to suppress dissent. The 2018 protests, sparked by a 300% fuel price hike, echoed the 1979 revolution’s economic grievances, yet the regime’s response—mass arrests and internet shutdowns—reveals a playbook of repression honed during the 1953 coup. The *National Front*’s post-coup economic policies, which prioritized oil sector monopolies, laid the groundwork for today’s Revolutionary Guard-controlled economy, where war profiteering is institutionalized.
Iran’s economic crisis is not an isolated consequence of war but a deliberate outcome of *structural violence*—where sanctions, regional proxy conflicts, and neoliberal policies intersect to deepen inequality along ethnic, gender, and class lines.
The regime’s co-optation of indigenous economic models (e.g., *Zakat*, *qanats*) and cross-cultural solidarity frameworks (e.g., *Ubuntu*, *Ashura* rituals) reveals how power elites weaponize tradition to justify exploitation, while marginalized voices—from *Baloch* smugglers to *Baha’i* entrepreneurs—are erased from narratives that frame resilience as passive endurance. Historical parallels to 1953 and 1980s crises demonstrate that without dismantling the Revolutionary Guard’s economic stranglehold and holding sanctions architects accountable, any solution will be co-opted by the same structures that created the problem. The trickster lens exposes the absurdity of a system where the state bans Bitcoin to control capital while its elite hoard wealth in Dubai, proving that true resilience requires dismantling the regime’s economic war machine—not just its military one.