Seventy-five days without the international internet. Two million people without work. Basic goods that tripled or quadrupled in price in a matter of months. A currency worth 60 percent less than it was six months ago.

This is the texture of daily life in Iran after ten weeks of war, ceasefire, and blockade — costs that missile tallies and diplomatic summits rarely capture.

In New Delhi on Thursday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stood before fellow BRICS+ nations and called on them to “explicitly condemn violations of international law by the United States and Israel.” He accused the UAE — a fellow BRICS member sitting in the same room — of “direct involvement in the aggression against my country.” The gathering, meant to showcase an ascendant multipolar alliance, was instead strained by the Middle East conflict, with deep divisions over whether the bloc could produce a joint statement at all.

Two thousand kilometers away, Iranians were measuring the war’s cost in groceries.

“We have just been losing money”

Sarina, a Tehran-based e-shop owner whose name has been changed for her safety, sold handicrafts through Instagram — her only storefront. Before January, her monthly turnover ran between 100 million and 150 million tomans (roughly €660 to €1,000). For four months, that figure has been zero.

“Since January, we have just been losing money,” she told France 24. “Most of the manufacturers we collaborate with are shutting down because they have no orders, and I think we are going to shut down in the coming days too.”

The government first shut down the internet during mass anti-government protests in January, then imposed a complete blackout on February 28 when the US and Israel launched military operations, according to the Associated Press. Despite an uneasy truce, the shutdown persists — one of the longest and strictest national internet blocks on record, affecting all 90 million Iranians.

Independent experts estimate that more than 20 million Iranians earn their living through the internet, and that the shutdown costs roughly $80 million daily. Iran’s communications minister, Sattar Hashemi, has acknowledged that about 10 million jobs depend on internet connectivity.

Engineers driving delivery scooters

Saman, a startup CEO whose name has also been changed, ran a B2B service company with 28 employees. He laid off 25.

“Unfortunately, 12 of them are still unemployed, and the rest have found new jobs where the salary is not enough, so when they finish their first job, they start working as delivery drivers or Snapp! drivers,” he told France 24, referring to Iran’s equivalent of Uber. “And I am talking about well-educated people, engineers and university graduates.”

The private sector, in his telling, is functionally dead. His only remaining clients are government bodies — which rarely pay on time, if at all. Meanwhile, suppliers refuse to sell because the rial’s collapse means they cannot replace stock at the same price. The rial has become the world’s least valuable currency.

The arithmetic of survival

The macroeconomic picture confirms what individuals describe. The International Monetary Fund projects Iran’s economy will shrink 6.1 percent this year, with inflation reaching 68.9 percent. Official statistics put annual inflation at 53.7 percent in mid-April, with food inflation above 115 percent.

Rice prices have risen more than 300 percent, cooking oil more than 400 percent, and chicken and meat between 170 and 220 percent over the past 19 months, according to official figures cited by France 24. More than 34 million Iranians were already living below the absolute poverty line before the war began, according to Iran’s Welfare Organisation.

Rima, a retired woman, laid out the math. Her pension is 15 million tomans (about €71). A single chicken costs 900,000. A small basket of fruit and vegetables runs more than 2 million. Without help from her children, she said, she cannot survive.

At the tech sector’s upper end, the losses are equally sharp. The Iran Cyber Commerce Union reports startups have lost between 25 and 70 percent of revenue since the war started. DigiKala, Iran’s closest analogue to Amazon, recently laid off more than 2,000 employees, replacing them with artificial intelligence. One startup manager predicted that one in five digital-economy jobs would vanish within weeks.

A decade to rebuild

Senior economic officials have reportedly warned President Masoud Pezeshkian that rebuilding the economy could take more than a decade. Central bank governor Abdolnaser Hemmati has urged the president to restore internet access and pursue a peace deal, according to Iranian local media cited by CNBC.

In New Delhi, Araghchi insisted the Strait of Hormuz “is open for all” commercial vessels that “cooperate” with Iran’s navy. But BRICS consensus looked unlikely. Iran’s own deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, acknowledged that “one member country” had pushed for language condemning Iran, complicating efforts at unity.

Saman, the startup CEO, saw it more plainly.

”[…] if we don’t get out of this limbo very soon, there will be another huge protest caused by hunger,” he said. “Everyone I know around me is using their savings to eat and pay the bills. These savings are not endless […]”

Sources