Across Iran, war has deepened inflation, reduced consumption, made medicine scarcer and more expensive, and intensified fears of unemployment, illness, and homelessness.
The most visible consequences of the 40-day war are now appearing in people’s livelihoods: rising prices, reduced consumption, and, of course, the anxiety of unemployment and unaffordable medical treatment.
Accounts from people living in Iran about the rising cost of goods and services shed clearer light on the gravity of the situation. In the days when news of negotiations between Iran and the United States has replaced news of Israeli and U.S. attacks on Iran, the wounds of war are becoming more visible on people’s bodies and minds: inflation has surged, unemployment has spread, the risk of homelessness has grown, and the public psyche is bruised.
Those few people in Iran who can still get online, at enormous cost, say that after the war a slow-moving disaster is unfolding beneath the skin of the cities. Golshan, a resident of Tehran, wrote on X: “You cannot understand inflation through official statistics.”
In her account, the cost of a “minimal life, just for staying alive and with no future and no savings, is around 35 to 40 million tomans a month. This figure speaks of bare survival. This is the painful reality of Iran today … To stay alive, you have to erase life itself. The boundaries of life are shrinking day by day to less than the size of the human body, and death is tightening its grip around life’s throat.”
On April 18, 2026, the newspaper Donya-ye Eqtesad reported that the cost of a standard food basket for a four-person household in March 2026 had reached 25,159,000 tomans. On that basis, basic food items alone now consume 85 percent of a household’s minimum income.
Under the resolution of the Supreme Labor Council, the minimum wage for a married worker with two children—a four-person family—is 25,575,000 tomans. Even assuming the continuation of the food-voucher scheme, the combined cash and voucher income of a minimum-wage worker with two children remains below 30 million tomans. Even that level of income, moreover, depends on the formal implementation of the minimum wage decree.
According to Donya-ye Eqtesad, often regarded as the unofficial platform of the neoliberal current in Iran, “an examination of online retail data points to a 68 percent rise in average food prices over the past four months and shows that the cost of the food basket has now reached 85 percent of minimum income.”
The Statistical Center of Iran, in its report on the average prices of goods and services, put food inflation at 112 percent, a new record over the past fifteen years. This figure is even higher than inflation in 1401 (2022–2023), when the government of the time eliminated the 4,200-toman preferential exchange rate for essential goods.
Forced Cuts in Consumption
In another report under the headline “Consumers Have Become More Cautious,” Donya-ye Eqtesad wrote, citing sellers of food, clothing, toys, and café owners in Tehran, that demand has dropped sharply. One grocery seller in Tehran said:
“In recent months, demand for chocolate, biscuits, coffee, and imported beverages has fallen sharply. This drop in demand has intensified in recent weeks. At the same time, demand has also fallen for prepackaged factory-made sandwiches, ready-to-drink Iranian coffee, tea marketed under foreign brands, and even products such as chips and puffed snacks.”
Along the same lines, a worker at a chain store in Tehran described the situation this way: “Over the past few weeks, demand for some semi-prepared food products has declined. Of course, this has not had a major impact on food-industry production yet.”
He attributed this to “the shrinking income sources of many families in recent months” and said that under these conditions “many families have redefined their priorities of consumption. In addition, our daily customers have become fewer. It is as if people prefer to shop at longer intervals so that managing purchases becomes easier.”
On April 13, 2026, the newspaper Shargh, in a report titled “The Shrapnel of War in the Food Market,” published accounts from people in Iran complaining about rapidly rising food prices. One resident of Tehran said:
“A one-kilogram package of minced meat that cost 800,000 tomans before the war has now reached 1.1 million tomans. Of course, even before the removal of the preferential exchange rate, two packs of minced meat had already reached about one million tomans, and one 800-gram frozen chicken had reached 800,000 tomans; before the war, the same item cost 500,000 to 550,000 tomans.”
Another resident of Tehran told Shargh: “During the war, the price of one kilogram of Hashemi rice rose to 500,000 tomans. Before the war, each kilogram cost around 400,000 tomans. And it should also be said that the quality of the rice has declined; it is usually mixed with Pakistani or Indian rice.”
Another interviewee told the paper that “cooking oil has long been scarce on the market, and each two-liter bottle of cooking oil costs around 500,000 tomans.”
Another resident of Tehran said that “three bananas cost 400,000 tomans, and three basic household cleaning items came to one million tomans.”
The rise in prices, of course, did not stop at food. Transportation costs also increased, according to one person who travels between Tehran and Qazvin. He said: “The intercity taxi fare from Qazvin to Tehran rose to 360,000 tomans, whereas before the war it was 200,000 tomans.”
Medicine Became Scarcer and More Expensive: A Threat to the Lives of Patients with Serious Chronic Illnesses
Most importantly, and in a way that can directly threaten the lives of patients with serious chronic illnesses, medicine has become both more expensive and harder to obtain. At least two pharmaceutical factories and research institutions connected to the health and pharmaceutical sector are confirmed to have been hit by the United States and Israel during the 40-day war.
On April 12, 2026, the acting head of the General Department of Medical Equipment at the Food and Drug Organization said that the United States and Israel had bombed the companies Pars Medical Equipment Innovators, Tajhiz Gostar Salamat, Noavaran Teb Iranian, the Pik Med factory, Soha Company, Shalchilar Company, and the SA Iran factory, all of which were active in medical equipment and treatment.
Also on April 18, 2026, the newspaper Hamshahri quoted the CEO of Tofigh Daru as saying that full reconstruction of the complex would take up to three years. He nevertheless claimed that the factory’s production line had not stopped.
The spokesperson of Iran’s Ministry of Health Food and Drug Organization also said that “30 units” in the pharmaceutical and medical-equipment sectors had been targeted by Israeli and U.S. attacks. But on April 12, 2026, he denied any medicine shortage in Iran and described reports of insulin scarcity on the pharmaceutical market as “incorrect” and merely an expression of “demand for foreign-made products.”
Bahman Sabour, a member of the Pharmacists’ Association, also said in mid-February 2026 that under the impact of sanctions and war, “it is not possible to import all types of pharmaceutical brands from outside the country, but domestically produced or generic medicines are available, and most reports of shortages concern foreign brands.”
According to him, the full effects of the attacks on pharmaceutical companies “will become clear six months from now.”
In connection with medicine shortages and rising prices, the newspaper Ham-Mihan confirmed the price increases in a report on April 16, 2026, titled “The Drug Crisis in Iran: From Shortage and High Prices to Pressure on Patients and Producers”:
“Some widely used and regularly prescribed medicines that were previously sold within a relatively stable price range are now facing substantial jumps. Pharmaceutical companies have confirmed price increases of 200 to 400 percent for some medicines. Pharmacies have also reported that medicine prices, including asthma sprays, have risen by more than 50 percent.”
According to the report, “medicines that were previously available for around 100,000 to 200,000 tomans have now reached around one million tomans. In other cases, the price of some items has risen from around 400,000 tomans to 3 million tomans, meaning an increase of nearly sevenfold.”
The price of vital and specialized medicines, especially for cancer patients and other patients with critical illnesses, has risen several times over, and “a medicine that could previously be purchased at a known and predictable cost has now, for many patients, become an item almost entirely beyond financial reach.”
The report quoted several people in Iran as saying that some medicines have become scarce. The mother of a patient with leukemia, after searching several pharmacies and failing to find the necessary medicine, was ultimately forced to “buy it on the black market at several times the normal price.”
In another account, a diabetic patient said his insulin ration had been reduced and he had been forced to manage his own consumption, something that directly affected control of his illness. Medicine shortages have also prompted doctors to warn about the lives of thalassemia patients. Heart patients, meanwhile, have “dropped part of their prescriptions” because of rising prices and shortages of domestic alternatives.
The Iranian government had already intended, before the war, to eliminate the special exchange rate for medicine imports. In 1404 (2025–2026), the government withheld the anticipated foreign currency allocation for medicine imports, making shortages more acute. According to the government, a total of 3 billion dollars has been earmarked in 1405 (2026–2027) for importing medicines, medical equipment, and infant formula.
On April 13, 2026, Akbar Abdollahi Asl, Director General of Pharmaceuticals at the Food and Drug Organization, said that the share of medicines and raw materials from the projected preferential exchange-rate allocation was 1.5 billion dollars. He estimated the pharmaceutical industry’s import needs at around 2.2 billion dollars and said that half of the foreign currency needed for imports would have to be obtained from the open market. Securing foreign currency at open-market rates, which are three to four times higher than the preferential rate, will drive medicine prices up even further.
Struggling to Stay Alive
It is still not clear whether the ceasefire will hold, or whether a new wave of military attacks aimed at even greater destruction will begin. The financial cost of the war has not been officially announced, but already a large share of industrial jobs in steel, petrochemicals, and related industries has been wiped out.
Falling demand and rising production costs have led to more worker layoffs. In one case, just before “Labor Week,” the executive secretary of the Workers’ House in Fars Province said: “Factories that once had 2,000 workers have now reduced their workforce to around 1,000 or fewer, without hiring replacements.”
It is estimated that, due to the internet shutdown, between 300,000 and 500,000 workers in the gig economy have lost their jobs. At the same time, the drop in demand for leisure services and restaurants has also put workers in those sectors out of work. According to expert estimates, around two million workers may lose their jobs as a result of the war. The government has approved a support package to address the situation. Even so, workers fear that temporary unemployment will become permanent. ILNA quoted a worker at a petrochemical complex in southern Iran as saying: “About 2,200 workers outside the complex are in an uncertain situation. They have paid wages provisionally, but after that nothing is clear.”
The worker added: “They say production has stopped and they want to send workers onto unemployment insurance. Part of that may be real, but our fear is that this turns into a permanent trend.”
Unemployment, inflation, and economic recession are the most visible consequences of the 40-day war. With time, even more damaging consequences will emerge from a war that was falsely advertised as being “for the people.”
