Iran International
Tehran may have crushed street unrest with brute force, but it has no comparable solution for an economy gripped by surging inflation and collapsing incomes.
The protests initially erupted over a sharp spike in exchange rates but soon escalated into open calls for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.
Many Iranians now say they personally know at least one or two people killed on January 8 or 9. Arrests and enforced disappearances—whose exact scale remains unknown—have also drawn countless families into the crisis, deepening fear and uncertainty.
According to people who have recently left Iran or managed to communicate via Starlink, businesses across the country are either closed or operating at minimal capacity, battered by currency turmoil and the prolonged internet shutdown.
On one side, customers have disappeared; on the other, sellers are reluctant to part with their goods.
Merchants say they cannot be sure they will be able to replace inventory amid exchange-rate volatility, turning even routine transactions into a gamble. Many now prefer not to sell at all.
Even before the unrest, businesses were under intense pressure.
Data published by the economic website Eco Iran show that bank lending from April to December rose 47 percent year-on-year. But 82 percent of loans to the productive sector went toward “working capital”—a sign that firms were borrowing not to expand, but simply to survive.
Shrinking purchasing power
Soon after the protests began, the government announced a plan to offset declining purchasing power following the removal of subsidized exchange rates for essential imports.
Under the plan, low- and middle-income individuals are to receive 10 million rials per month—about $7.50, roughly equivalent to one day’s wage for a construction worker.
Four months of payments were deposited at once, with recipients told they could spend one-quarter of the sum each month on 11 basic items, including rice, cooking oil, protein products, and dairy, at state-set prices in designated stores.
Prices for most of those goods in the open market have continued to surge, and some items have become scarce. Most readers responding to a poll by the news website Khabar Online said the subsidy was insufficient or ineffective.
One reader commented on the website that the handout offsets at most half the price increase for the 11 subsidized items, noting that rising food costs would also push up prices for everything from biscuits to restaurant meals, for which no compensation exists.
Many also fear the government will finance the program by printing money, further accelerating inflation, which official figures show had already surpassed 50 percent by December.
Cost of blackout
The nationwide internet shutdown, imposed on January 8 and still in place, has crippled hundreds of thousands of small and home-based businesses.
From home food producers to online language and music teachers, entire livelihoods have vanished overnight, with authorities offering no clear timeline for restoring connectivity.
These businesses relied almost entirely on online platforms for advertising and sales. Many were small producers in cities and even remote villages, selling handicrafts, agricultural goods, or homemade food directly to customers through Instagram.
Even before the shutdown, widespread filtering had forced them to pay for VPNs, further straining already fragile operations.
Kourosh, the manager of an advertising company who left Iran for Turkey after the January 8–9 killings, said all advertising activity had come to a halt.
“My clients have lost any hope of selling their products before the Iranian New Year, which is just two months away,” he told Iran International.
“People have no money, and even if they do, they won’t spend it on clothes, shoes, or home goods. Everyone was counting on sales in these final weeks of the year.”
Judicial authorities in Qom province last week announced the confiscation of all assets and bank accounts belonging to Mohammad Saeedinia, the founder of a popular cafe chain operating in several Iranian cities.
Saeedinia had been arrested a day earlier and officials linked the move to his alleged support for strikes and protests after he temporarily closed his cafés following calls for strikes and work stoppages.
State-affiliated Fars News reported that assets linked to Saeedinia—including cafe chains, a roadside complex and food-industry businesses—were valued at between 25 and 27 trillion rials ($17.5–19 million).
Prosecutors said similar cases had been opened against dozens of other cafes, as well as actors, athletes and signatories of protest statements, adding that some assets had already been seized to compensate for damage to public property.
No violent crime, financial fraud or national-security offense has been publicly substantiated in Saeedinia’s case. Instead, it illustrates how economic pressure has emerged as an element of state repression in a practice with a long pedigree.
Confiscation codified
From the earliest months after the 1979 revolution, confiscation was used not only to dismantle the ancien régime’s economic base, but to restructure ownership and concentrate power within institutions aligned with the new state.
In the chaotic post-revolutionary period, seizures were carried out in what amounted to a legal vacuum. Revolutionary courts and ad hoc committees confiscated property under broad ideological justifications, often before a coherent judicial framework existed.
Decrees issued by Ruhollah Khomeini concerning “ownerless” or “illegitimate” property created elastic categories through which private assets could be absorbed by revolutionary bodies.
Although framed as redistribution, these measures laid the economic foundations of new power centers.
Over time, confiscation was institutionalized through bodies such as the Foundation of the Oppressed and the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order, as well as through legal provisions including Article 49 of the constitution, which targets “illegitimate wealth” without defining the term.
Among the early and most consequential targets was Ahmad Khayami, a pioneer of Iran’s modern auto industry and co-founder of Iran National, later Iran Khodro. The seizure of his assets and removal of private control over the company marked a decisive break with Iran’s pre-revolutionary model of industrial entrepreneurship.
Another prominent case was Habib Sabet, an entrepreneur active in media, construction and commerce, and the founder of Iran’s first private television network. His assets were confiscated in the revolution’s aftermath, reflecting how independent capital—even without overt political involvement—was treated as incompatible with the new order.
Private sector hobbled
The execution of Habib Elghanian, a leading industrialist and head of Tehran’s Jewish community, sent a particularly chilling signal. After a summary revolutionary trial in 1979, his assets were seized and he was put to death, accelerating capital flight and underscoring the risks facing private enterprise in the new Islamic Republic.
The impact on Iran’s modern private sector was significant.
Entrepreneurs who had built manufacturing, retail and financial enterprises over decades were removed, their assets transferred to state or quasi-state structures. Many left the country.
Others were sidelined through prosecution or regulatory exclusion.
As revolutionary fervor faded, the practice evolved rather than disappeared. Highly publicized trials and executions gave way to asset freezes, license revocations and selective enforcement. Confiscation became less spectacular but more routine, embedded in administrative and judicial processes.
Recent protest cycles have again brought these mechanisms to the fore. Business closures, account seizures and professional bans have accompanied crackdowns, reinforcing the message that economic activity remains conditional on political compliance.
The seizure of Saeedinia’s assets fits squarely within this longer trajectory. It is not an isolated response to unrest, but part of a system in which control over property has, from the outset, served as a means of political management.
