For decades, the economy has been Iran's Achilles' heel — the one vulnerability its adversaries never tire of exploiting and its leaders never quite manage to remedy. Now, with the wounds of a fresh conflict still raw, that weakness is being laid bare with new and painful clarity. A spreading wave of mass layoffs, shattered supply chains and a business climate in freefall are forcing the question: when the shooting stops, can Iran rebuild? Writing in the Iranian daily Ettelaat, analyst Mohammad Ali Sanjideh warns that the economic fallout may ultimately prove harder to manage than the war itself.
"The consequences of the recent war, compounded by the stagflationary conditions already gripping the business environment, are so severe and damaging that they simply cannot be concealed," Sanjideh wrote in his opinion column published by Ettelaat. News of layoffs — or what Iranians call ta'dil-e niroo, workforce adjustment — has become so widespread that it has generated deep anxiety across society.
An unofficial estimate circulated on social media last week suggests that in just the first month of the Iranian year 1405 (beginning March 2026), not a single new job has been created. Worse, at least 4 million job opportunities have been lost or placed under layoff status at production and service firms, largely due to the disruptions caused by the conflict and the severing of internet access for economic operators.
According to Sanjideh, enemy bombardments have effectively halted operations at many of the country's key industries, severing supply chains and leaving downstream production units without the inputs they need to function. Official estimates, he notes, put the total damage to economic infrastructure, industrial units and residential areas at over $270 billion — a figure that, for an economy already starved of investment, could take more than a decade to repair.
The financial system was in poor shape even before the war began. Iran's banking sector and capital markets had already reached the limits of their capacity to support the real economy, and the private sector was struggling under severe capital constraints. Against that backdrop, Sanjideh dismisses calls from some government officials urging the private sector to lead reconstruction efforts. "If the private sector had adequate financial capacity, it would not need the banking system or the capital markets," he writes in Ettelaat.
The columnist argues that Iran's negotiators at any peace talks must treat economic survival as a core priority, alongside the territorial integrity, defensive capability, nuclear development and national values they are already rightly defending. "Iran's governance authority in the region was demonstrated through its staunch defense of its territory and its leverage over the Strait of Hormuz," he writes, "but Iran's future standing depends on having a dynamic economy."
A business environment gripped by mass layoffs, Sanjideh concludes, cannot play its role in that vision of national strength. He calls for urgent, comprehensive state support — financial, insurance, tax and customs relief — for crisis-hit private businesses, warning that measures approved so far fall far short of compensating the damage inflicted on firms now forced to cut their workforces.
The piece reflects a growing chorus of concern inside Iran that the economic cost of the conflict risks becoming its most enduring legacy. With no new investment horizon in sight and the social safety net fraying, the unemployment crisis and runaway inflation it threatens to unleash may yet prove, as Sanjideh put it, "a far greater challenge than any decision about the future of the current war."