Can the Israeli and Iranian economies survive a war?
As Israel and Iran carry out strikes against each other for a seventh straight day, the region is anxiously bracing for a potentially wider conflict. But question marks remain over the two sides' ability to finance a sustained war effort.
On Friday, Israel killed several of Iran's top military commanders and nuclear scientists and damaged some of its nuclear sites. It has since damaged parts of Iran's fossil fuel sector. In response, Iran has launched missile attacks at government buildings and metropolitan areas in Israel.
As of Thursday, the Israeli attacks have killed 240 people while Iranian strikes have killed at least 24 people.
But the conflict is also costing both nations billions of dollars and could choke their economic growth and trigger concerns over long-term fiscal planning.
Israel's prolonged military operations in Gaza since October 2023 and the recent escalation with Iran have plunged the country into the most expensive period of conflict in its history.
According to a January report by the Israeli business newspaper Calcalist, the cumulative cost of the Gaza war alone had reached 250 billion shekels ($67.5bn) by the end of 2024.
A June 15 report by the Israeli news outlet Ynet News, quoting a former financial adviser to the Israeli military's chief of staff, estimated that the first two days of fighting with Iran alone cost Israel 5.5 billion shekels (roughly $1.45bn). At that rate, a prolonged conflict with Iran could see Israel surpass the end-2024 Gaza war expenses within seven weeks.
Even before the current escalation with Iran, Israel had dramatically increased its defence budget amid its multiple regional conflicts and the war on Gaza. From 60 billion shekels ($17bn) in 2023, it grew to 99 billion ($28bn) in 2024. Projections for 2025 suggest it could reach 118 billion shekels ($34bn).
The Ministry of Finance set a deficit ceiling of 4.9 percent of Israel's gross domestic product (GDP) for this fiscal year, equating to 105 billion shekels ($27.6bn). Higher military spending would put that to the test.
Despite a recent increase in projected tax revenues – from 517 billion to 539 billion shekels ($148bn to $154bn) – Israel's 2025 growth forecast has been revised down from 4.3 to 3.6 percent.
According to the business survey company CofaceBDI, roughly 60,000 Israeli companies closed in 2024 due to manpower shortages, logistics disruptions and subdued business sentiment. In addition, tourist arrivals continue to fall short of pre-October 2023 levels.
Those trends could be aggravated in the event of a full-fledged war with Iran.
S&P Global Ratings issued a stark warning about the vulnerability of the Israeli economy on Tuesday.
The agency stated that a continued Israeli war campaign, particularly if met with a sustained and strategic Iranian response, could lead to a downgrade of Israel's credit rating from A to A-. Were that to happen, it would likely raise borrowing costs and soften investor confidence in the Israeli economy.
In recent days, Iran's oil exports appear to have fallen dramatically. Total Iranian crude and condensate oil exports are forecast to reach 102,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the week ending on Sunday. That's less than half the 242,000 bpd it was averaging in exports this year, according to data from the analytics firm Kpler.
Critically, exports from Kharg Island, from which Iran exports more than 90 percent of its oil, appear to have completely halted since Friday. No tankers were anchored at Kharg Island on Monday, according to LSEG satellite ship tracking data.
In 2025, Iran has produced an average of 3.4 million bpd of crude, according to the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA), with China appearing to be the main foreign buyer. Most of the oil Iran produces is for domestic consumption.
On Saturday, Iran partially suspended gas production at the South Pars gasfield in the Gulf after it was hit by Israeli missiles. South Pars, which Iran shares with Qatar, is the world's biggest gasfield. It produces about 80 percent of Iran's total gas output.
For now, the extent of the damage to the South Pars field is unknown. In addition, Israel has targeted the Shahr Rey refinery outside Tehran as well as fuel depots around the capital. The full impact of these strikes on production is unknown.
Iran has faced economic sanctions from the US after the Islamic Revolution and the US embassy hostage crisis in 1979 and then over its nuclear programme.
In a bid to pressure Tehran to agree to a deal on its nuclear programme, the administration of then-US President Barack Obama coaxed multiple major economies around the world to cut down or stop their oil purchases from Iran, using a wave of additional sanctions.
Those sanctions were relaxed after Iran struck the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal in 2015 with the US, Russia, China, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the European Union.
The following year, Iran exported 2.8 million bpd of petroleum products.
But US President Donald Trump reimposed the sanctions in 2018 during his first term as president and added more, again pressuring most other nations to stop buying Iranian crude. The result, according to the EIA, was that Tehran generated only $50bn in oil export revenue in 2022 and 2023, which amounts to roughly 200,000 bpd of crude exports, less than 10 percent of 2016 levels.
The upshot is that sanctions have gutted Iran's foreign exchange earnings.
Iran has staved off economic collapse in part thanks to China, the main buyer of its oil and one of the few nations still trading with Tehran.
Still, the loss of revenue because of the sanctions has deprived the country of long-term economic development and has hit Tehran's ability to fix dilapidated infrastructure.
President Masoud Pezeshkian has repeatedly highlighted the severity of the economic situation facing the country, stating that Tehran's situation is more challenging than during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.
In March, he openly criticised the latest round of US sanctions targeting tankers carrying Iranian oil.
Iran also faces a string of other constraints – energy and water shortages, a collapsing currency and military setbacks among its regional allies – all amplified by the sanctions.
A lack of investment, declining natural gas production and inefficient irrigation are all leading to power blackouts and water shortages.
Meanwhile, the rial, Iran's currency, has shed more than 90 percent of its value against the dollar since the sanctions were reimposed in 2018, according to foreign exchange websites.
And while the official inflation rate hovers around 40 percent, some Iranian experts said it is actually running at more than 50 percent. 'Precise numbers are hard to come by,' said Hamzeh Al Gaaod, an economic analyst at TS Lombard, a political research firm.
'But what we can say is that years of sanctions have triggered inflationary pressure, including through devaluations of the rial. In turn, that makes goods imports from abroad more expensive,' Al Gaaod told Al Jazeera.
In January, the Tasnim news agency quoted the head of Iran's Institute of Labor and Social Welfare, Ebrahim Sadeghifar, as saying 22 to 27 percent of Iranians were now below the poverty line.
Unemployment is running at 9.2 percent. However, Iran's Supreme Assembly of Workers' Representatives, which represents labour interests, estimated the true figure of people without access to subsistence-level work is far higher.
According to Al Gaaod, Tehran has a 'relatively small budget for military purposes'. He estimated that anywhere from 3 to 5 percent of Iran's GDP is spent on defence, which amounts to roughly $12bn.
Tehran does have $33bn in foreign exchange reserves it could theoretically draw on. But Al Gaaod said: 'This is where Iran is on the backfoot. To use reserves for short-term military conflict would cripple them over the longer term.'
'We've seen a 'rally under the flag' sentiment in recent days. But if Iran experiences more strikes and civilian evacuations, that could easily unwind,' he said.
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