The Crisis Iran’s Leaders Can’t Ignore

The war between Iran and Israel and the United States has been an economic catastrophe for Iranians. Their country has lost at least 1 million jobs—possibly 2 million—since the war began. In the same period, almost 300,000 eligible Iranians have signed up for unemployment insurance, and job-seeking websites are so inundated with new applications that they keep crashing.U.S. and Israeli strikes over the winter degraded Iran’s industrial capacity. At the same time, the blockade that the U.S. imposed on the Strait of Hormuz, in response to Iran’s seizure of control of the waterway, has made life difficult for businesses that rely on imports. So has the continued fall of the Iranian currency: A U.S. dollar now sells for 1.75 million Iranian rials.The regime compounded these effects with its total shutdown of the internet, first during the mass protests in January and then during the war. Access is now mostly restored, but for many Iranians who relied on the internet for their work, the damage is already done. Iran might end up experiencing a double-digit economic contraction this year—a calamity with little precedent in its modern history.[Yeganeh Torbati and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin: How Iran killed its economy]Many Iranians I spoke with last week were acutely suffering. I have withheld their full names to protect them from reprisal for speaking to an American media outlet.Sara, a 33-year-old graphic designer in Tehran, told me how she was faring economically: “Let me be honest with you,” she said. “I have no idea how I’ll survive.” Until last year, she made something of a middle-class living illustrating and designing book covers and restaurant menus. She had more customers than she had time for, and even though Iran’s currency was continually depreciating, “I had no problem affording the basics and even an occasional vacation,” she said. Now wartime uncertainty has meant that few Iranians are thinking about publishing books or opening restaurants.“It’s the same news alm