Iran blackout cripples freelancer, small business incomes

A letter issued by a senior official at the National Petrochemical Company instructed producers to stop exports and redirect supply to domestic industries.

The directive said the move aims to support downstream industries and consumers following damage caused by recent attacks and to ensure adequate supply in the domestic market, the report said.

Attacks, curbs hit sector

Domestic prices for petrochemical and related products have been held at pre-conflict levels despite rising global prices, officials said, adding the measures would remain in place to support local industry and consumers.

Companies were also told to return export cargoes that have not yet cleared customs, with associated costs to be reported for possible adjustments to domestic pricing.

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  Iran petrochemical workers face layoffs as industrial crisis deepens

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  Hope and anger in Iran as fragile ceasefire persists

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  War damage amounts to $3,000 per Iranian, with blockade set to add to losses

Key petrochemical hubs in Asaluyeh and Mahshahr have been hit in recent weeks, including strikes on utilities supplying feedstock to plants, disrupting production.

The US military has also begun blocking shipping traffic in and out of Iran’s ports this week, a move aimed at reducing Iran’s export revenues as Tehran and Washington consider a second round of talks.

Economic strain deepens

The measures come as Iran faces mounting economic pressure, with reports sent by citizens to Iran International describing factory closures and layoffs in industrial hubs due to shortages of raw materials and weak demand.

Residents said businesses have struggled with disrupted supply chains and an ongoing internet shutdown, which has further strained operations and added to rising prices.

Officials in Washington and Tehran are now considering extending the truce, raising new questions about whether the pause could evolve into a broader settlement or simply delay further confrontation.

The roughly 3,500 messages received and reviewed since April 8 show a wide array of emotions, with no single voice or issue dominating.

More than a quarter of the messages expressed hope about what might come next, often framing the ceasefire as a temporary pause rather than a turning point.

Some said they believed the truce was merely a tactical step that would ultimately weaken the Islamic Republic.

“Don’t lose hope. This ceasefire means another surprise is coming. Be patient,” one viewer from Rasht wrote.

Others expressed confidence that outside pressure on the government would continue.

“Trump knows what he’s doing. Don’t worry—there’s a plan behind this ceasefire,” a viewer from Tabriz wrote.

Many messages referred to Prince Reza Pahlavi as a potential focal point for opposition hopes, with some writers saying they were waiting for a “final call” to action.

About 18 percent of the messages focused less on politics and more on daily hardship.

Writers described worsening economic conditions, rising prices for food and medicine, job losses and the effects of the country’s internet shutdown.

A viewer from Karaj said he had paid the equivalent of nearly $20 for a single gigabyte of internet access through unofficial services.

“My business is destroyed,” he wrote.

Another viewer from Mashhad said cancer medicines had become scarce and far more expensive. “People are not well,” the message read.

Nearly 17 percent of the messages expressed deep despair, describing the ceasefire as the collapse of hopes that the conflict might bring fundamental political change.

“The world collapsed on my head,” one message from Tehran read. “We didn’t endure all this hardship just for a ceasefire.”

Others expressed anger at foreign leaders, accusing them of abandoning the Iranian people after raising expectations during the conflict.

Some messages directly criticized President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, using words such as “betrayal” and “deception.”

“Mr. Trump, a ceasefire means betrayal of the blood of thousands of fallen heroes,” one viewer wrote.

Another message addressed the United States more broadly: “We asked you to help free Iran. Instead you left us with a worse situation.”

The messages, sent mainly from cities including Tehran, Mashhad, Karaj, Shiraz, Rasht, Isfahan, Tabriz, Ahvaz, Bandar Abbas and Kermanshah, offer a rare glimpse of public sentiment inside Iran at a time of near-total internet blackout.

Most messages were sent by users who managed to reach the global internet through workarounds. Some may have come from individuals with access to government-authorized “white SIM cards,” which allow limited connectivity.

Taken together, the messages portray a society that is exhausted yet resilient.

Many said they opposed any agreement that would leave the Islamic Republic in place. Some said they were prepared to endure further hardship rather than see what they called the “blood of the fallen” go unavenged.

The strongest refrain running through the messages echoed a familiar Persian expression: “Light will prevail over darkness.”

They portray control over Hormuz—much like uranium enrichment—as a “red line” that Iranian negotiators must not compromise in any future talks.

Amir-Hossein Sabeti, a member of parliament, recently declared that Iran could soon gain “a third source of income called the Strait of Hormuz.”

Mehdi Mohammadi, a strategic analyst and adviser to the parliament speaker, went further, claiming Iran could earn as much as $800 billion annually from the waterway.

“We have only just discovered this treasure,” he wrote.

Energy analyst Ehsan Hosseini said Iran increasingly sees the strait as its main deterrent—likening it to an “atomic bomb”—and is unwilling to trade this existing leverage for uncertain promises of sanctions relief.

Yet experts and critics say the idea of a “Hormuz toll” is economically unrealistic, legally problematic and potentially damaging to Iran’s long-term interests.

“Some want to take us back, to turn the Strait of Hormuz into a bargaining chip and give it away just to have sanctions lifted,” international affairs expert and university professor Naser Torabi said. “This is a disaster. This means defeat,” he added.

Economic commentator Abdollah Babakhani also warned against inflated expectations.

“Experts have a responsibility to stand against exaggerated narratives—such as claims of $50 to $60 billion in revenue from the Strait of Hormuz—so that unrealistic expectations do not form or persist in society,” he wrote on X.

The United States is enforcing a maritime blockade on vessels entering or leaving Iranian ports, part of a broader effort to pressure Tehran after talks failed to produce a breakthrough.

Shipping data from the firm Kpler shows a sharp drop in traffic through the strait, with only six vessels transiting on April 13 compared with 14 the previous day.

Within Iran, some hardliners initially dismissed the blockade as a bluff. Iran’s top joint military command warned that its armed forces could move to prevent the continuation of trade flows across regional waters if the blockade persists.

Yet more than two days into the blockade, Tehran has yet to take direct military action, as both sides explore diplomatic routes to ending the war.

President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the Strait of Hormuz would soon be open again to maritime traffic, even as US forces continue enforcing the blockade around Iranian ports.

Some moderates and experts in Tehran have warned that aggressively leveraging the strait could ultimately weaken Iran’s position, especially given that regional producers have invested in pipelines and export routes designed to bypass Hormuz.

Ebrahim Gholamzadeh-Zanganeh, head of the Iran-Kuwait Chamber of Commerce, argued that even if a toll were possible, any financial benefit would pale against the opportunity cost of Iran’s isolation.

“The reality is that our losses from sanctions have been—and continue to be—many times these figures each year,” he said.

The connection runs deep enough that the region has long been nicknamed Irani Sagir (or Mini Iran.)

Across towns and villages, portraits of Khamenei appeared at donation events where residents contributed whatever they could spare: banknotes, gold jewellery and even copper utensils.

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The collection drives, held in late March in cities including Budgam and Srinagar, allowed proceeds to be wired directly to the Iranian embassy in New Delhi. Iran’s embassy in India has also posted a QR code for donations on X since March 23.

In just one week, nearly ₹18 crore (about $2 million) was collected across Kashmir, excluding amounts deposited directly into the embassy’s account, according to local media reports.

One contribution seen by Iran International was ₹26 lakh (around $28,000).

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The fundraising came weeks after widespread protests erupted across Kashmir following the US-Israeli airstrike that killed Khamenei on Feb. 28.

Demonstrations in Srinagar turned violent in places, leaving at least 12 people injured, including five police officers. Authorities responded with tear gas and batons, shut schools, throttled mobile internet for five days and arrested at least 50 people.

Among the outpouring of grief were calls for revenge from some protesters.“Those who oppress Muslims—we will kill them,” one unnamed demonstrator in Srinagar told Reuters on March 1.

The unrest prompted authorities to investigate several political figures accused of spreading inflammatory content online. Among them was Srinagar MP Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi, an influential Shia cleric with a cross-sectarian following.

“Some fools in J&K Police and administration think that by withdrawing/downgrading my security detail and suspending my Facebook account will stop me from calling out their atrocities. It is laughable,” Mehdi wrote on Facebook.

Former Srinagar mayor Junaid Azim Mattu also had his security withdrawn after condemning Khamenei’s killing on X.

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Citrinowicz, Danny Citrinowicz, a fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv and former head of the Iran branch in Israeli military intelligence, warned that the donations were a possible indication that a post-Ali Khamenei Islamic Republic, likely dominated by the IRGC, would prove more operationally aggressive, not less.

"Those who think it will stay only at the level of donations are totally mistaken," he said.

For scholars of South Asian Islam, the reactions in Kashmir reflect a longstanding—though often misunderstood—connection between the region and Iran.

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Justin Jones, a specialist in modern Islam in South Asia at Oxford University, said that for most Indian Shias the Islamic Republic functions primarily as a political symbol rather than a direct religious authority.

“The actual political thought of Velayat-e Faqih doesn’t cut very deep in much of India,” he said, referencing the Islamic Republic’s central doctrine of the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist, founded by Ruhollah Khomeini after Iran’s 1979 revolution.

“It’s simply a kind of imaginary of Shia power, which has some psychological effect, but maybe not a political one.”

Kashmir, however, is different.

“Kashmir is one of the places that has been most receptive to Iranian influence,” Jones said, citing both themes of political justice that resonate with local Shia communities and ideological currents linked to Iran’s doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih.

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“Iran is perceived as the representative of the Muslim world,” human rights activist Javed Beigh told Iran International.

“There was no other Muslim leader perceived as strongly against the United States and its allies as Seyyed Ali Khamenei,” said Beigh, who is a Shia Muslim based in Budgam.

That perception, he added, has also resonated with some Sunni Muslims across the subcontinent, particularly amid Israel’s war in Gaza.

A Kashmiri law student who asked not to be identified described two different responses among younger Shias.

One group, he said, views the Islamic Republic as a political system that must survive — and would find its collapse “almost existentially shattering”. The other sees Iran’s 1979 revolution as a historical process that may endure even if the current regime falls.

“They think of it as something in evolution,” he said. “It might fail temporarily, but they have a strong belief in the possible resurgence and resurrection of the system in the future.”

Simon Wolfgang Fuchs, an associate professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who studies Shia Islam in South Asia and the Middle East, said the Islamic Republic’s influence in the region extends beyond politics.

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“For them, Iran is very much a religious landscape—an enchanted place where you have a Shia-run state,” he said.

“The symbolic capital of Iran has not weakened… for South Asian Shia, Iran has been perceived as someone who stands by them and protects them.”

That connection has deepened as Iranian-trained clerics return to South Asia and pilgrims travel through Iran to reach holy sites in Iraq, experiencing the country as part of a broader sacred geography.

The Kashmiri student said many Shias in the region view that geography, stretching from Iran to Iraq, as central to the future of Shia political movements.

“Iran and Iraq are seen to inhabit the symbols of the sacred geography of the Shiite tradition,” he said. “If such a movement is going to be reborn, it must be around that geography—not outside it.”

He estimated that roughly 60 to 70 percent of Kashmiri Shias hold that view: that any future resurgence of the ideology would belong in the Middle East rather than South Asia.

Those ties are reinforced by institutions that operate independently of Tehran.

The Imam Khomeini Memorial Trust, an Iranian-linked organisation active in Kashmir, trains local clerics and funds religious education, according to research by the Middle East Forum.

Al-Mustafa International University, headquartered in Qom and funded directly by Iran’s Supreme Leader, operates affiliated seminaries across India and Pakistan whose graduates return to run religious institutions, according to research by United Against Nuclear Iran.

“Many people, even from my village, are still in Iran — living there, doing business, studying,” Beigh said. “That’s how you actually develop a strong bond between two communities.”

For some security analysts, however, those connections raise concerns about political radicalisation.

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Sajid Yousuf Shah, a political analyst in Jammu and Kashmir with India's ruling Hindu nationalist BJP party, said ideological loyalty to the Islamic Republic runs deep within the region’s Shia community.

“They don’t want modernisation. They don’t want westernisation. They don’t want any regime change in Iran,” he said, arguing that many supporters hope for the Islamic Republic’s survival rather than its replication elsewhere.

Abhinav Pandya, CEO of the Usanas Foundation, a geopolitical think tank in India, said Tehran’s ideological outreach has fostered what he described as “extraterritorial loyalties”.

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“Increasingly, the Shia Muslims in India have come under the influence of the Iranian regime,” he said. “That is very problematic.”

Pandya also pointed to contacts between Iran-aligned militant groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah and anti-India militant networks in the region, citing Indian media reports linking such groups to militant activity in Kashmir.

It was a similar concern voiced by Citrinowicz, who said Iran’s student and religious networks in India could potentially serve as recruitment channels.

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“The platform they are able to build—through control of religious centres, through academia, through social media—has transformed these places into fertile ground for recruitment,” he said.

Citrinowicz points to the Islamic Republic’s history of retaliating globally following the killing of its senior figures, with plots disrupted across Africa, Europe and Asia after the assassinations of Qasem Soleimani and Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in 2020.

"Nobody should be surprised if you'll see in the next couple of weeks or months (Iran) again tries to do something against India.”

Indian officials familiar with the issue, however, say such fears may be overstated.

A former official at India’s National Security Council Secretariat said the solidarity expressed after Khamenei’s killing reflected religious sentiment more than political mobilisation.

“The reverence is more on the religious side than on a struggle side,” he said, describing the protests as a form of collective mourning typical of Shia communities.

While authorities were monitoring the donation drives, he said they did not consider them significant enough to warrant intervention. The donations themselves also reveal a more complex picture.

Local media reported that some Hindu donors sympathetic to Iran’s historical ties with the subcontinent also contributed to the fundraising drive.

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Fabrizio Speziale, a Professor of Indo-Persian history at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, said the cultural connections between Iran and South Asia have long crossed religious boundaries.

Persian culture historically served as a shared intellectual language across the region, linking Sunni, Shia, Hindu and even European scholars.

That legacy, he said, differs significantly from the modern political ideology of Velayat-e Faqih.

For Beigh, however, the bond between Kashmir’s Shia community and Iran transcends politics. “We have more than 90 percent of things we do in our daily lives similar to what you do in Iran,” he said.

Even if the Islamic Republic were to collapse, he believes the connection would endure. “They will have to embrace any change in Iran,” he said. “But the bond will remain.”

In the first 24 hours after the blockade took effect at 10 a.m. ET on April 13, US Central Command said “no ships made it past the US blockade” and that “6 merchant vessels complied with direction from US forces to turn around to re-enter an Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman.”

But shipping data, satellite imagery and industry monitoring suggest the real contest may be unfolding more quietly — and more ambiguously.

Maritime analysts have observed early shifts in tanker behavior near the Strait of Hormuz, with some vessels reversing course shortly after the blockade began.

Mike Schuler, managing editor of gCaptain, wrote on X that “Tankers may already be turning away from Hormuz,” citing AIS data showing “two vessels reversing course minutes after the US blockade began.”

Other vessels appear to be adapting more creatively.

TankerTrackers reported spotting a tanker departing Kharg Island while spoofing its AIS signal to suggest it had left Saudi Arabia instead.

AIS, or Automatic Identification System, is designed to broadcast a ship’s identity, location and route. But the practice of manipulating these signals has become a hallmark of so-called “dark fleet” operations, allowing sanctioned vessels to obscure their origins and evade scrutiny.

TankerTrackers noted separately that “Dark Fleet tankers in particular may change names and flags,” urging journalists to rely on IMO numbers to track vessels more reliably.

Taken together, these patterns suggest the blockade’s early phase is being defined less by visible interdictions and more by a cat-and-mouse dynamic at sea, with tankers probing the limits of surveillance and compliance.

Enforcement gaps and shadow fleet

At the same time, enforcement itself remains uneven.

Reuters reported that a sanctioned, Chinese-owned tanker — identified as Rich Starry — transited the Strait of Hormuz during the blockade period, alongside other vessels including Murlikishan and Peace Gulf.

According to TankerTrackers, Rich Starry is “a serial AIS spoofer and a designated sanctions violator with a history of transporting Iranian refined products.”

The vessel later turned back after reaching the Gulf of Oman, while other ships stopped transmitting AIS signals altogether after entering international waters, according to ship tracking data.

These movements underscore a central challenge for US enforcement: vessels can spoof tracking data, switch flags, change names and operate in legal gray zones that complicate interdiction.

Even as Washington signals control over access to Iranian ports, the persistence of such activity suggests enforcement may be partial, contested and dependent on constant monitoring.

Buyer hesitation

Beyond shipping itself, early signs indicate the blockade may be influencing buyer behavior — potentially a more decisive factor.

TankerTrackers reported that “two million barrels of Iranian crude turned up unannounced today in India,” adding later that “India won't be accepting this oil.”

That hesitation points to a broader risk for Tehran: even if cargoes can leave Iranian waters, they may struggle to find willing buyers.

Jason Brodsky, policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, said Washington is “trying to flip the script on Iran” after Tehran sought to tighten control over Hormuz traffic earlier this month.

By signaling it can restrict Iranian access to the same waterway, he said, the United States is effectively telling Tehran, “not so fast, we have the ability to prevent you and your vessels from using the Strait of Hormuz.”

Why this may be different from sanctions

Some analysts say the blockade could alter the underlying economics of Iran’s oil trade in ways sanctions did not.

“The blockade is doing something that 20 years of sanctions couldn't actually do,” said Mohammad Machine-Chian, a senior journalist covering economic affairs at Iran International.

He said sanctions often created opportunities for regime-connected middlemen and black-market networks to profit.

By contrast, “blockade is making that business model unfeasible,” he said, suggesting pressure may now fall more directly on the networks that previously benefited from sanctions evasion.

Pressure builds over time

Still, experts caution against expecting immediate economic collapse.

Former Royal Navy commander Tom Sharpe described the blockade as “a lever of persuasion of coercion” designed to “make Iran more susceptible to negotiations.”

“The blockade on the blockade is a strong-arm tactic to make Iran more susceptible,” he said. “In other words, as a lever, this might be a good one.”

Brodsky also said the effects are likely to build over “weeks and months,” rather than producing an instant shock.

Miad Maleki, a former US Treasury official, estimated the blockade could inflict roughly $435 million in daily economic damage, underscoring the potential scale of pressure even as its early effects remain uneven.

For now, the blockade’s first real test may be less about whether ships can pass through Hormuz, and more about whether they can do so undetected — and whether buyers are still willing to take the risk once they arrive.