After Sri Lanka, Rising Food Prices Lead to Violent Riots in Iran

By Romegas

Following the orgy of violence witnessed in Sri Lanka caused by rising food and energy prices, where we witness street lynchings that led to several deaths, we are now witnessing hunger riots and mass looting of grocery stores begin in Iran.

There, the population is robbing stores in panic after food prices soared up to 300%, depending on the product. Iranian protesters took to the streets, smashing shops and food warehouses. In an attempt to deal with the unrest, the government shut down the internet in some regions.

The Iranian authorities tried to keep prices down with subsidies, but government money did not last long – as soon as the subsidies were canceled, prices soared, putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk of starvation.

The citizens of the country are demanding the restoration of the old prices for products and the elimination of unemployment. However, since government money does not fall like manna from heaven – there is always a limit to subsidies without inviting stagflation. Moreover, the threat of famine for the authorities did not come as a surprise – for several weeks now it is becoming increasingly clear that on top of the stresses brought about COVID-19, the war on Ukraine and the subsequent Western sanctions on Russia have led to ever-rising prices of energy and commodities including grain and fertilizer.

We can expect this violence to keep spreading across the world as staple items necessary to sustain the world’s population, much of which already live at a subsistence level become either more scarce or unaffordable. For starters we will witness a wave of unprecedented migration that will make the ones before it look like  a picnic.

Hence, people living in the West are not immune to the possibility of violence spreading in our countries. Already, over a million brits face immediate destitution, while in Italy mass layoffs are anticipated numbering in the hundreds of thousands while Germany risks the collapse of her industry.   

The leaders of our countries, should put aside their pride, and act with wisdom, instead of doubling down in Ukraine, prolonging the war over there by sending ever more arms paid for by our taxes to prolong the conflict – they should offer what Russia was always after – which was something we should have done anyhow when the USSR collapsed, namely offer a security architecture which respects both its interest and ours – and as consequence ensuring that of the Ukraine too. Failing that, the consequences will be dire, not only is the EU increasingly being shown as inept and subservient to US interests but the rifts within it will become such that they will ultimately bring the European Project down.

I fear, however, that this opportunity has effectively been missed, because we have now painted ourselves into a corner where everything has become a zero-sum game in which none of the great powers can afford to be seen to lose, without dire consequences. As a result, unless one of the parties can bring the war to a decisive close soon (unlikely), unfortunately, the situation can only escalate and get worse.

History teaches us that starving human beings will not die quietly and that unemployed men especially will not sit idly by while their families starve. Our elite, like those in Sri Lanka will be the first to be targeted. Pitchforks are not metaphorically a relic of the past.

We truly live in apocalyptic times.