Tehran, Iran – In a sign reflecting the depth of the economic crisis gripping the country, leading Iranian economists and researchers have issued stark warnings that the number of citizens living below the poverty line could exceed 40 million by the end of this year.
This came during a specialized meeting held to discuss the repercussions of the “Twelve-Day War” and the US naval blockade imposed on Iranian ports. The experts unanimously agreed that the Iranian economy is facing a “catastrophic scenario.”
Negative economic growth and record poverty rates
The newspaper Donya-e-Eqtesad, in its Thursday edition, quoted Hojjat Mirzaei, a faculty member at Allameh Tabataba’i School of Economics, who asserted that the cessation of Iranian oil exports to near-zero levels, resulting from the tightened naval blockade, will lead to a severe economic contraction.
Mirzaei predicted that the country’s economic growth rate in 2026 will range between -8.8% and -10%.
He indicated that the cumulative effects of the war will push an additional 3.5 to 4.5 million citizens into poverty. This will raise the total number of people living below the poverty line to over 40 million, a very significant percentage of the total population.
Labor market crisis: “The poor employees”
The challenges were not limited to the contraction of GDP; they extended to a sharply declining labor market.
Hossein Rajapour, head of the Saba Research Institute, explained that job creation aspirations in Iran have been largely dashed. Only 57,000 jobs were created in 2024. He also emphasized that the positive trend the labor market had witnessed in the spring of 2025 had completely reversed into a negative trend following the outbreak of the recent war.
In a related context, Kawsar Yousefi, a faculty member at the Institute of Educational Management and Planning and Research, highlighted the phenomenon of “employee poverty,” a large segment of the population who hold stable jobs but whose income is insufficient to rise above the poverty line.
Yousefi pointed out that periods of unemployment in Iran have become increasingly prolonged, often lasting three or four years, unlike in developed countries where unemployment typically lasts only a few months. This exacerbates social crises and increases the pressure on families.
Security warnings of social unrest
For his part, Gholamreza Keshavarz Haddad, a faculty member at the Faculty of Economics at Sharif University of Technology, pointed out that the Iranian economy was already suffering from “extremely critical” conditions even before the outbreak of the recent war. The military conflict only served to deepen the structural wounds of the national economy.
These bleak economic projections coincide with official security reports. Last Wednesday, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence warned that the repercussions of US economic pressure, including shortages of basic goods and skyrocketing prices, could trigger renewed social unrest.
These concerns come amid a sharp decline in government revenue. This reinforces fears that the economic and living crises could become a direct threat to the country’s stability in the near future.
