Nested (In)Securities: Commodity and Currency Circuits in an Iran under Sanctions

This essay uses a conversation with an Iranian interlocutor to explore the political economy of Iranian sanctions and the creative improvisations they produce on dynamic economic grounds—characterized by an increasingly soft and devaluing national currency, the Iranian rial. It reveals how various (in)securities tied to monetary transactions, particularly those conducted with the “outside world,” come to nest within one another in an Iran under sanctions.