A U.S. maritime blockade traps oil at sea, while Iran’s workers are left to absorb the costs of war on the ground.
In debates over oil, the main issue is not always what first appears. The usual question is how much oil Iran can sell under conditions of war, blockade, and disruption in maritime routes. But the more urgent question may be this: how much of the oil Iran continues to produce can it store?
This seemingly technical distinction is in fact political and decisive. If part of Iran’s oil had already left the danger zone before the blockade intensified and is now offshore, along routes near the Strait of Malacca, Malaysia, or Singapore, then oil exports may not be completely locked down in the short term. For a few weeks, or even a month or two, there may still be some possibilities for sale, transfer, or trade. But the real crisis is not necessarily where markets and media are looking. The main knot may form in the chain of production, storage, the entry of empty tankers, port capacity, insurance, payment, and the return of foreign currency revenues.
An oil well is not a water tap that can be turned off and then turned back on whenever desired. Oil production is a technical, costly, and time-consuming process. If wells are shut down, bringing them back into production is not simple and can damage part of the country’s production capacity. Production must therefore continue. But when production continues, the oil must be stored somewhere.
This is where the entry of empty tankers becomes important. Under conditions of maritime blockade, the issue is not only the departure of full tankers from Iran. Sometimes the entry of empty tankers near Kharg or Jask becomes even more important. If empty tankers do not enter, storage is disrupted; if storage is disrupted, production comes under pressure; and if production comes under pressure, the crisis of oil exports turns from a sales problem into a crisis across the entire cycle of production, storage, and revenue.
This is precisely where the maritime blockade must be understood more seriously. This is not just sanctions. Nor is it merely economic pressure. When the routes for incoming tankers, oil storage, exports, and the continuity of production are targeted, we are dealing with an act of war: an act that seeks to lock the country’s economic and operational capacity from within. Here, war does not proceed only through missiles and bombs; it also proceeds through ports, insurance, tankers, bank accounts, payment schedules, and delays in the return of oil revenues.
But it is precisely here that a more fundamental question must be asked: if Iran’s oil is “national,” why is its first function in a moment of crisis not to support society? Why, when oil sales and storage are disrupted, does the state not first think of protecting the workforce, paying wages, guaranteeing unemployment insurance, and preventing layoffs? Why has nationalized oil, instead of serving as a social shield for workers, become a resource for the survival of the apparatus of power?
The question of oil in Iran is not only a question of exports, storage, or foreign currency revenue. The issue is that oil, despite all the historical slogans about its national character, has in practice been separated from society. Oil was taken out of the ownership of foreign companies, but it was never transformed into the real ownership of the people and workers. If “nationalization” means only the transfer of ownership from a foreign company to the state, it still does not mean the socialization of wealth. The state can own oil in the name of the nation, while spending its revenues within a structure in which people have no role.
In the Islamic Republic, this separation has taken a more naked form. Oil is not society’s public fund, but the financial pillar of the security state, opaque budgets, contracting networks, foundations, IRGC-linked headquarters and conglomerates, rent-seeking projects, and costly foreign policy. The people are nominally the owners of oil, but they are absent from decision-making about it. Oil workers extract it; they keep refineries running, petrochemical plants alive, and ports active. Yet in moments of crisis, they are the first to face dismissal, contract suspension, reduced shifts, delayed wages, and loss of insurance.
In this sense, oil is nationalized in law, but not socialized in practice. Law and slogans speak of “national wealth,” but in real life this wealth is not transformed into public rights, livelihood security, unemployment insurance, housing, healthcare, education, or protection for the workforce. Oil exists, but society does not own it. Revenue exists, but accountability does not. Production exists, but social control does not.
The oil crisis lands on a labor market that is already defenseless, temporary, outsourced, and fragmented. A large part of Iran’s workforce does not work under stable contracts, but under temporary, blank-signed, subcontracted, project-based, daily-wage, and intermediary arrangements. This is not merely an administrative flaw or a scattered violation by employers. It is the form in which the labor market has been organized.
In the oil industry and its related chains, from drilling and refining to petrochemicals and contracting projects, non-permanent and outsourced labor makes up a large share of the workforce. This very structure means that, in moments of crisis, the state does not need to openly announce that it is sacrificing workers; the mechanism it has built does so automatically. A project stops, a contract is not renewed, shifts are reduced, overtime is cut, daily-wage workers are no longer called in, and the employer refers everything to “wartime conditions,” “lack of liquidity,” “project suspension,” or “enemy pressure.”
Here, unemployment is not simply a consequence of crisis; it is a function of the very labor-market model that has been imposed on Iran for years. A temporary contract means that the worker always lives on the verge of removal. A blank-signed contract, in which workers are made to sign incomplete forms later filled in by employers, means that the worker has already lost the means of self-defense. Subcontracting means that the main employer can hide behind an intermediary company. Project-based labor means that when the project stops, the worker’s life stops too.
Even unemployment insurance, within such a structure, does not become a real instrument of support. On paper, a dismissed worker should be able to receive social protection. In reality, however, a large share of workers are so trapped in temporary, subcontracted, blank-signed, daily-wage, project-based, and precarious arrangements that their access to unemployment insurance becomes limited or impossible. When the employment relationship is unclear, insurance records are incomplete, workers do not possess their real contracts, and subcontractors shift responsibility to the company above them, the worker faces yet another wall when trying to receive unemployment insurance.
In Iran’s oil industry, depending on whether one counts only the Ministry of Oil or the entire chain of oil, gas, drilling, petrochemicals, contracting, and project-based work, the share of non-permanent and subcontracted workers has been estimated at least between 55 and 70 percent, and in some sectors around 75 percent.
This exclusion is not accidental. The precarious labor market was not built only to keep wages low; it was also built to evade social obligations. A worker without a contract is easier to dismiss. A worker without full insurance is easier to push outside social protection. A worker without an organization cannot turn their own removal into a public issue.
From this angle, unemployment should not be seen merely as a “side effect” of war or recession. In Iran, under crisis conditions, unemployment becomes a method of governance. The state does not need to officially announce that it is withdrawing from responsibility for people’s livelihoods. It is enough to leave intact the same subcontracting structure, temporary contracts, lack of independent organization, and weakness of unemployment insurance. The market does the rest: a market already organized in favor of employers and against workers.
This is the privatization of catastrophe. The crisis is public, but its costs are privatized. The war is public, but unemployment becomes individual. The blockade targets the country, but the worker is left alone to face the landlord, the bakery, the pharmacy, the school, debts, and medical expenses. The state speaks of the “nation,” but when it comes to support, it reduces the worker to an administrative file, a workplace dispute, or a private relationship with the employer.
The absence of independent labor organizations and independent media completes this process. When workers have no independent organization, unemployment and delayed wages become scattered and silent experiences. When there is no independent media, especially labor media, the worker’s voice is removed from the public sphere. As a result, the state and employers can narrate the crisis in their own language: “lack of liquidity,” “special conditions,” “enemy pressure,” “production necessity,” “national endurance.” But behind these words are families losing their income, without any independent institution capable of turning this suffering into a public demand.
Sanctions and war are real. The maritime blockade is real. Targeting tankers, insurance, ports, storage, and oil revenues is an act of war against Iran’s economic capacity. But the reality of external pressure must not allow the government to conceal the internal structure of exploitation. The Islamic Republic uses external pressure to justify what already existed before the war: the privatization of crisis, the cheapening of labor, the fragmentation of the workforce, the repression of organization, and the evasion of social responsibility.
If economic war is being waged against the country, the government’s first duty should be to protect the workforce: banning dismissals in units affected by the crisis, immediately paying delayed wages, guaranteeing unemployment insurance for all dismissed workers, obliging the main employer to be accountable, eliminating intermediary companies in vital projects, automatically extending temporary contracts under crisis conditions, controlling the prices of basic goods, and recognizing the right to organize.
But this is precisely what the Islamic Republic avoids. Real support for the workforce is not merely a welfare decision; it changes the balance of power in society. A worker with real unemployment insurance is less vulnerable to threats. A worker with a permanent contract is less likely to remain silent. A worker with an independent organization turns crisis into a public issue.
For this reason, the regime prefers to speak of resistance, but it does not want resistant workers; it wants obedient workers. Workers who endure but do not demand. Workers who make sacrifices but do not organize. Workers who live under the pressure of war but do not hold the state accountable. This is the hidden class politics at the heart of the war economy.
Oil may remain on the water, but workers must not be abandoned on the ground. The final question is not only how much oil Iran sells. The question is why oil produced in the name of the nation does not serve the nation in a moment of crisis. The answer lies in the structure of power itself: oil is national, but not social; there is a state, but it is not accountable; there is production, but no workers’ control; there is resistance, but no support for workers. In such a situation, oil remains on the water, while workers fall to the ground.
