{"id":3228,"date":"2026-09-27T10:33:24","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T10:33:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/?p=3228"},"modified":"2026-09-27T10:33:26","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T10:33:26","slug":"the-price-workers-and-poor-people-pay-for-the-naval-blockade-of-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/the-price-workers-and-poor-people-pay-for-the-naval-blockade-of-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"The Price Workers and Poor People Pay for the Naval Blockade of Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The naval blockade and air restrictions imposed on Iran have caused unprecedented disruption to the country\u2019s trade routes. With ports, which were the backbone of Iran\u2019s foreign trade, out of operation, and alternative air routes blocked, land crossings ‘particularly the borders with Turkey and Pakistan’ have become the country\u2019s only active economic lifelines. But these crossings, which even under normal circumstances faced infrastructure limitations, lack both the capacity and facilities to compensate for the enormous volume of trade that was previously transported by sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In such an environment, the borders have transformed from simple crossing points into the main scene of Iran\u2019s economic crisis; where multi-kilometer lines of trucks, days-long waits, and drivers\u2019 protests provide a tangible picture of the pressure caused by the war and blockade. In the mountainous region of eastern Turkey, hundreds of trucks have remained stopped along the road leading to Iran. This crossing, which was already heavily used under normal circumstances, has now taken on a vital role in supplying Iran with imported goods. According to the Associated Press, the lines have stretched for several kilometers, and waiting times have increased from the usual three days to five days or more. According to data from Turkey\u2019s border logistics sector, truck waiting times have increased by more than fourfold, and the number of trucks present at the border has risen from 200 to 1,200; a figure that the destination country essentially lacks the capacity to receive. On the Iranian side, the situation is more difficult: waiting times vary between 12 and 25 days, and longer inspections have slowed the process of goods entering and leaving the country. Similar delays have also been reported at the Iran\u2013Pakistan border; although the two countries have agreed to keep the crossings open 24 hours a day and open a new crossing in the Kuhak region, the volume of trade shifted from sea routes to these crossings has been so large that these measures reduce only a small part of the pressure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is less visible behind these multi-kilometer lines is the chain of effects that this transportation bottleneck leaves on people\u2019s daily lives, particularly workers and low-income groups. When a product that previously entered the country through a port within a few days now spends weeks waiting at a border crossing, the direct result is reduced supply in the domestic market; and reduced supply, in an economy where demand has not declined, means higher prices. This mechanism is particularly evident in essential goods for poor people: livestock feed and poultry feed, whose imports are tied to the border bottleneck, quickly contribute to rising prices for bread, dairy products, chicken, and eggs; medicines and pharmaceutical raw materials that are stuck in weeks-long queues worsen shortages of medical supplies; and other essential goods whose supply chains partly depend on imports face the same fate. Additional transportation costs ’caused by longer routes, higher fuel prices, and border waiting costs’ are also directly passed on to the final price of goods in the market. Under such conditions, low-income families, who spend a larger share of their income on essential goods, suffer a heavier blow than wealthier groups; groups that either have the ability to absorb price increases or have access to the black market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The impact of this bottleneck is not limited to the consumer market. A large portion of the country\u2019s small and medium-sized production units ‘from textile and auto-parts workshops to packaging units, food industries, and household-appliance manufacturers’ depend on imported raw materials, spare parts, and machinery to continue operating. When these same items remain stuck behind the border for weeks, production lines come to a halt. For workers employed in these units, the result is nothing other than the temporary or permanent closure of workshops, delayed wages, and ultimately unemployment. In this way, the same crisis that appears in the consumer market as rising prices for bread and medicine is reflected in the production market as workshop closures and the loss of workers\u2019 jobs; two sides of the same coin, both weighing heavily on the working class and low-income groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This micro-level picture is also confirmed by macroeconomic figures. According to official data, Iran\u2019s economy contracted by more than 10 percent in the first quarter of the solar year. The collapse in the value of the rial and rising inflation have intensified social pressure. Truck drivers, who now carry the main burden of the country\u2019s trade, are themselves among the first victims of this situation: a 25 percent increase in fuel prices, a reduction in the number of trips and halving of income, rising prices for spare parts and tires, severe vehicle wear and tear, and the lack of basic facilities at the borders have made their daily lives unbearable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Associated Press quotes an economic expert emphasizing that before the war, more than 80 percent of Iran\u2019s trade depended on the Persian Gulf; a volume that cannot be transferred to land routes in terms of capacity, speed, and cost. Land routes, no matter how much they are strengthened through agreements such as keeping borders open 24 hours a day or opening new crossings, can only serve as a temporary palliative, not a sustainable replacement for maritime routes. Multi-kilometer lines of trucks, declining drivers\u2019 incomes, workshop closures, rising prices and shortages of essential goods, and the continued contraction of the economy all show that this emergency solution has merely postponed the real cost of the blockade and shifted it from the ports to the tables of low-income households and the doors of production workshops. The future of Iran\u2019s foreign trade, and consequently the economic fate of millions of working-class and poor families, is more than ever tied to domestic political developments, the outcome of Iran\u2013US talks, and the future of peace in the region. Without lifting the naval blockade, no infrastructure improvement at the borders can contain this crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The naval blockade and air restrictions imposed on Iran have caused unprecedented disruption to the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3229,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[33,24,10,18,30,8,181,13,15,39,40],"post_badge":[50],"class_list":["post-3228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-quote","tag-abroad-committee-of-the-communist-party-of-iran","tag-communist-party-of-iran","tag-cpi","tag-daily-quote","tag-iran","tag-komala","tag-naval-blockade","tag-usa","tag-war","tag-worker","tag-workers","post_badge-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3228"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3230,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3228\/revisions\/3230"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3228"},{"taxonomy":"post_badge","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_badge?post=3228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}