Iran International
Iran’s deepening economic crisis is pushing cafés and coffee culture toward collapse, as soaring prices and falling incomes force both businesses and customers to cut back.
Mohsen Mobarra, head of the union overseeing coffee shops in Tehran, told economic daily Donya-e-Eqtesad that café operating costs have more than doubled while customer numbers have fallen by as much as 50 percent in recent months, with up to 40 percent of cafés shutting down.
“Continuing operations does not mean profitability,” he said. “The profits of these businesses are steadily shrinking. As a result, cafés that rent their locations or lack strong financial backing are heading toward closure.”
Over the past two decades, cafés became an important part of urban life in Iran, taking root in Tehran before spreading across the country.
With affordable entertainment options limited, they emerged as some of the few accessible spaces where young Iranians could socialize, work and spend time outside the home.
Many evolved into more than places to drink coffee or eat light meals. They hosted poetry nights, small music performances, photography exhibitions and informal gatherings, becoming rare spaces for social interaction at a time when few other public spaces remained accessible.
Until a few months ago, Tehran alone had around 6,000 cafés of different sizes in operation. But the collapse in consumers’ purchasing power has hit the industry hard.
Sanaz, a 28-year-old receptionist at a private company, said she and her friends used to visit cafés several times a week. But now, with sharp increases in the costs of food, transportation and housing, even such small pleasures require careful calculation.
“I have to calculate every expense, even this simple form of entertainment, just to make it to the end of the month — assuming I don’t lose my job,” she said.
“If I lose my job, after years of financial independence, I’ll have to move back to my parents’ home in my hometown.”
The closures and downsizing have also eliminated jobs for many workers, most of them young people and women.
Shana, 26, completed professional barista training before finding work at one of the branches of the well-known Saedi Nia café chain.
In January, the chain’s branches were abruptly shut down after the owner voiced support for opposition protesters. Shortly afterward, war broke out.
“Even cafés that have survived the economic downturn are not hiring new staff anymore,” she said. “Many are actually laying off existing employees.”
“I have no hope that even by learning new skills like cooking or other work, I’ll be able to find a job. The economy keeps getting worse every day, and the job market is shrinking.”
Coffee itself is also becoming a luxury.
Tea remains Iran’s dominant traditional drink, but coffee consumption expanded rapidly in recent years. Now, however, the sharp rise in foreign currency prices and disruptions to imports have pushed coffee prices so high that many households are cutting consumption or abandoning it altogether.
Although global coffee prices have declined, the cost of coffee beans in Iran — largely imported through the United Arab Emirates before the war — has nearly doubled compared to pre-war levels.
The increase has directly affected café prices. With rents and other expenses also rising, the price of a cup of coffee in some cafés has climbed by as much as four times.
One café owner told Donya-e-Eqtesad that even cafés specializing in basic coffee drinks are seeing falling demand because many people can no longer justify going out even for coffee.
Tara, the manager of an advertising company with ten employees, said coffee has become so expensive that even buying it for office use is increasingly difficult.
“For the first time in the past twenty years, I’ve had to stop buying coffee for the office kitchen, where it was always available for employees alongside tea,” she said.
“It’s not just about coffee prices. Since last summer’s war, work has effectively been frozen. Clients have even canceled half-finished projects, and everyone knows the company is taking its last breaths.”
“If this situation continues, we’ll have no choice but to shut down.”
Tehran’s unveiling of a towering statue depicting the Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling before pre-Islamic Persian King Shapur I has renewed criticism of the Islamic Republic’s appeal to nationalist sentiment following the June war with Israel.
For over forty years, the theocracy purged ancient Persian history from schoolbooks, replacing it with post-Islamic narratives. But after the 12-day conflict with Israel, officials have turned to the distant pre-Islamic past to rally a divided society.
From murals of ancient kings and soldiers to patriotic songs added to Shi’ite mourning ceremonies performed before Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Tehran now embraces imagery once deemed heretical by its own revolutionary ethos.
'Kneel before Iran' campaign
Tehran’s Revolution (Enghelab) Square was the scene of an unusual spectacle on Friday as officials unveiled a massive bronze statue depicting Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling in submission before Sassanid King Shapur I, commemorating Iran’s victory at the Battle of Edessa (260 AD).
The event was held under the slogan “Kneel before Iran,” part of what authorities describe as a campaign to project “national unity and historical pride” following the June war with Israel.
Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, a staunch ultraconservative, said on X: “Enmity with Great Iran can only end in kneeling before this historic nation.”
Municipal official Davood Goodarzi said the installation would be accompanied by visual displays depicting “other victories of Iranians over foreign aggressors,” including the defeat of British forces by local commander Rais-Ali Delvari, Mirza Kuchak Khan’s resistance against Russian troops, and Surena’s triumph over Rome at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE.
The goal, Goodarzi said, is “strengthening concepts such as national dignity, social unity, and Iranian identity.”
The statue, he said, would remain temporarily at Revolution Square before being moved to a city gateway “where it will stand as the first emblem of Iran before diplomats and foreign visitors.”
Unveiled women were allowed to attend the unveiling ceremony—an uncommon scene at events organized by Tehran’s ultra-hardline municipality.
The turn to the pre-Islamic past
The sharp reversal also recalls remarks once made by Khamenei. In a 2011 speech, he asserted that “all the great military victories of this nation came after Islam,” dismissing pre-Islamic accounts as “things that are not documented.”
In 1987, he had said that prophets triumphed over kings such as Cyrus and that “nothing remains of these monarchs in history but names remembered with derision.”
Nevertheless, pro-government social media accounts have now gone so far as to circulate posters equating Khamenei himself with Shapur, showing him standing with a staff as Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump kneel before him. The caption reads: “You will kneel before Iran.”
'Hypocrisy'
Pro-government figures have hailed the move as a patriotic success. Conservative political reporter Hossein Saremi posted: “Today’s grand Iranian gathering showed that people and the state share one essence: Iran itself. Nothing can take our homeland away.”
Others, however, called the spectacle “hypocrisy.” Journalist Gholamhossein Pashaei wrote on X: “Every year you close Pasargadae to stop people from celebrating Cyrus Day, yet you unveil Shapur’s statue in Enghelab Square with drums and fireworks during Fatimiyya (mourning period)!”
Dissident commentator Hamid Asafi called the ceremony “a perfect snapshot of the Islamic Republic’s contradictions.”
On Telegram he wrote: “A week ago they closed Cyrus’s tomb out of fear of the crowds, and now they glorify Shapur in the same breath. The Islamic Republic fears living history but poses for selfies with its corpse.”
He added: “They know people no longer respond to rosaries and sermons. That’s why they’ve brought history back to the stage—in a controlled costume. If they can’t erase the past, they’ll try to own it.”
The irony deepened as UNESCO formally recognized Cyrus’s Charter as one of the earliest human-rights documents.
President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X: “Iran, the cradle of dialogue, justice, and coexistence, can still inspire peace today.”
Users swiftly replied, questioning how such pride could coexist with a government that blocks access to Cyrus’s tomb each year to those wishing to visit it on his birthday.