From his home in Mashdad, a city in the northeast corner of Iran, Jalil roused himself from bed at 4 in the morning to head to his local gas station. In a country with the fourth largest oil reserves, gasoline has become hard to come by.
Jalil waited 10 hours, hoping to purchase 20 liters — just over five gallons — of fuel. No luck. Before he got to the front of the line, the station had run out. Try again tomorrow, the attendant told him.
MBN is using only the first names of sources interviewed in Iran to protect them from state retaliation and security risks.
Long lines at gas stations have been a feature of summer in Iran, where damage from its war with the United States and Israel and a U.S. naval blockade on imports through the Strait of Hormuz have devastated the economy.
Procuring fuel is only part of the problem. Iranians in several cities who spoke with MBN said prices for food and medicine have also skyrocketed, though precise figures are difficult to obtain. Iranian authorities do not regularly publish financial data like inflation figures.
Things could get worse, if a new campaign to strangle the Iranian economy announced this week in Washington works as intended.
After U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent promised an “economic D-Day” for Iran, videos surfaced on social media showing long lines at gas stations in different parts of the country.
Mohammad Jafar Qaem-Panah, Iran’s vice president for executive affairs, said Thursday that the blockade imposed on Iran’s ports was preventing fuel imports, and domestic production can no longer meet demand.
Daily gasoline consumption averages about 135 million liters, while production has fallen to 112 million liters. Authorities have tried to cover the 23-million-liter shortfall through imports, much of it from Russia, and by drawing down strategic reserves.
From his home in Tehran, Heshmat, 65, told MBN that his monthly salary of 17 million tomans, equivalent to $86, hasn’t kept pace with rising prices. He said he was forced to sell his wife’s last piece of gold jewelry to feed his family of four.
“I sold the piece of gold for about 40 million tomans ($200), and bought food for my family that did not include meat — only small amounts of vegetables, a small bottle of cooking oil, a loaf of bread and rice. It cost me more than 2 million tomans, and it is enough for only two days.”
The toman is an unofficial unit of account used by Iranians in daily transactions. One toman equals roughly 10 Iranian rials.
Iranian officials responded to the growing crisis by raising the minimum wage by about 60% this year. But the continued depreciation of the rial has continued to erode purchasing power.
An increasing number of Iranians aren’t getting a wage at all. Sadiqa, a widow from Bukan in Iran’s northwest, had been supporting her family of five through her job at a leather shop since her husband died last year. In July, the shop closed.
She and her children have since moved into her brother’s home. But his salary of about $83 a month is not enough to support both families.
Farzin Karbasi, an Iranian opposition activist based in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, said Iran’s economy has been in a state of complete collapse for months. He said Tehran has lost most of its domestic industries, particularly iron and steel, which had been among the sources supporting the local economy.
The U.S. maritime blockade could cut daily economic activity in Iran by $435 million—an amount equivalent to roughly 40% of the country’s daily economic output—and shut down oil fields within weeks, according to a report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based think tank that says its work is designed to strengthen U.S. national security.
Karbasi told MBN that Iranian authorities are concerned about the possibility of uprisings as the economy worsens. Officials are responding by increasing surveillance and deploying forces in the streets.
The Wall Street Journal reported labor unions representing oil workers and teachers, along with retirees, have organized marches in some part of Iran to voice concerns about the higher costs of living.
Rising inflation had led to mass protests at the start of the year. Authorities responded with a violent crackdown that reportedly left thousands dead, and such demonstrations had all but disappeared after February, when the American and Israeli bombing campaign started.
Iran has lived under U.S. sanctions for years through smuggling networks, and its leaders said after Bessent announced the latest campaign that it too would fail to topple the government.
Iranian state media have reported that Tehran expects China and Russia to disregard the threats from Washington. Iranian Economy Minister Ali Madani Zadeh predicted other countries would resist them too, although he didn’t name them.
Karbasi believes the current economic crisis may have reached a critical stage, particularly if Washington’s latest effort succeeds in increasing the pressure.
For Jalil and millions of other Iranians, the hardship is already considerable. And there may be worse to come.
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic.
