Iran sees mass redundancies from war with US and Israel

The first-order shock is not just labor destruction; it is a classic wartime collapse in working capital turnover. When factories lose inputs, logistics degrade, and consumer confidence snaps, the hit propagates from industrials into services faster than headline unemployment suggests, so the economic damage should keep compounding even if active combat pauses. In that setting, the most vulnerable assets are domestic cyclicals and any firm with high inventory days, imported feedstock exposure, or reliance on discretionary domestic demand.

The second-order winner is not an Iranian equity long — there is no clean public-market expression — but regional substitution across supply chains. Gulf logistics, port operators, and non-Iranian petrochemical exporters can gain share if Iranian export reliability stays impaired for quarters, while container and insurance markets can reprice the Strait of Hormuz risk premium in bursts rather than steadily. The internet blackout also matters beyond tech: it kneecaps informal commerce and small-business distribution, which tends to accelerate cash leakage into hard assets, foreign currency demand, and black-market pricing before official CPI fully catches up.

From a macro perspective, the market is likely underestimating the lagged inflation impulse. A labor market shock paired with shortages is stagflationary, not simply recessionary, and that usually forces the regime into either more repression or more administrative rationing rather than a clean policy stabilization. The tail risk is a renewed strike cycle that converts a slow-burn demand shock into a hard supply shock for energy and petrochemicals, but the near-term base case is persistent dysfunction that worsens over 1-3 months even without further escalation.