Post-war price shocks expose a hollowed-out state: officials shrug, markets rule, boycotts spread, and society faces intensified repression alongside the risk—and possibility—of rupture.
After the 12-day war with Israel and then the activation of the “snapback mechanism” against Iran, inflation and instability have accelerated. Speaking of these geopolitical processes, however, does not mean they are the only primary causes of this miserable situation. They have intensified a broader, structural trend inside the country.
An assault on household food baskets
Dairy products, rice, oil, eggs, and chicken are the latest items to undergo several-hundred-percent inflation in Iran within just a few weeks.
Rice was made more expensive when the state removed a key import subsidy: for years, some essential imports were financed through a cheaper, official exchange rate. Once that preferential rate was removed, import costs shifted closer to the free-market rate, and consumer prices jumped. The rest of these staples have also skyrocketed under the impact of shortages in livestock feed and the rising exchange rate.
To resist inflation in their own way, people have launched a “No to Buying” campaign on social media. In particular, products from two major dairy companies—Kaleh and Mihan—have become targets of this boycott, as they are among the most visible giants in a highly concentrated market and thus a focal point for public pressure.
The “No to Buying” campaign
This campaign might be able to temporarily, and only to some extent, curb the rise in dairy prices. But the issue goes beyond this.
A doubling of the exchange rate in two months is not something whose effects remain limited to food prices. Similar leaps should be expected in housing, automobiles, and other markets that directly shape everyday survival.
Consumers in Iran have already experienced a boycott of domestically produced cars before. In 2015, car companies’ shareholders and the state took a harsh stance against the public and called them “traitors.” And yet the boycott worked: the two major automakers in Iran saw their production cut in half, and car prices fell—but only for one year. Today, a 550-million-toman Pride—a low-end mass-market compact car—stands as proof of the need for deeper, longer-term solutions for the country’s economy than episodic “no to buying” campaigns.
The state and the stoking of public anger
The “No to Buying Dairy” campaign has been accompanied by public fury—sparked by the comments of state officials and managers of the producing companies. A regime-affiliated expert on state TV recently said: “If rice is expensive, people can eat barley instead!”
The Minister of Agriculture Jihad, speaking in the lead-up to Yalda—the winter-solstice celebration associated with family gatherings, fruit, and nuts—said: “The price of nuts and dried fruits is in the hands of the relevant guilds; it has nothing to do with us… Sellers should be fair.” He also said the government is willing to dump rice into the sea but not provide it cheaply to the people.
President Masoud Pezeshkian has been repeating the same few sentences ever since he came to office:
“There is nothing I can do. We—the heads of the three branches—are sitting here and we can’t do anything. I’m like you! If anyone has a solution, tell me! This issue is beyond the state’s capacity.”
But what exactly is Pezeshkian saying, and what does it mean when a president says these things?
The age of statelessness
Pezeshkian is speaking of a hard reality. The state, as the executive body responsible for organizing society in Iran, no longer exists. We are living in an age of “statelessness.” There is no longer any will, law, or capacity to regulate even the most basic everyday economic relations. There is no state left—but for a segment of society, the image of “the state” as an entity standing above society, attentive to people’s lives, has not yet died.
Over the past three decades, the state has devoted all its energy to destroying itself—trying to rid itself of the social responsibilities that the 1979 Revolution imposed on it.
This process—emptying out the state and dismissing responsibility for social life—began years ago under the code phrase “handing over people’s affairs to the people themselves.” They said the state in Iran is too “big” and must be made smaller; the “market system” should do its work; “price suppression” should be abandoned. Right-wing economists proposed this to the ruling establishment. Today’s condition of Iran’s economy and society is not “disorder.” On the contrary, years of planning and energy have gone into producing precisely this “order”—one in which plunder, exploitation, and the appropriation of value are backed by the judicial and legal system.
Society and its paths
Iran’s ruling political system, through discriminatory mechanisms of privilege-granting and the distribution of power and wealth, has swallowed the resources needed for the continuation of social life. At the same time, as the state’s social-services branch has been weakened, systems of surveillance, control, and repression have been updated and fattened.
While the Islamic Republic’s judiciary maintains medieval punishments such as stoning and execution, it also makes use of advanced surveillance and control systems. While it imposes Taliban-like Islamic rules of lifestyle on society, it also draws on complex hardware and software capacities to manufacture compliance. They have shown that there is no contradiction between technological advancement and the intensification of repression.
The importance of this issue lies in how society responds. When political options and pathways for rebuilding the social and for solidarity have been eliminated, the danger of accumulated grievances—and their eruption in the form of reactionary movements—lies in wait. Yet at the same time, there is also a capacity for a progressive transition.
