Amid Bombs and Bellicosity, Iranians Face New Threat: a Shortage of Tea

Iranians face a new threat five months into the war between their nation’s rulers, the United States and Israel — not in the form of bombs, bellicosity from President Trump or economic damage, but a looming tea crisis that could have cafes and cups running dry in just three months.An unexpected casualty of the war in Iran has been tea prices, which have spiked as much as 400 percent in the Islamic Republic and elsewhere due to disrupted shipping routes. At the same time, tea producers and farmers in nations like Kenya and Sri Lanka are losing profits by the bushel, with massive quantities of tea stranded on docks and costing exporters millions.It’s part of a spillover of issues inside Iran that includes not just the war and effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, but declining domestic tea production, increasing labor costs, and an April 2025 explosion at Iran’s largest port which killed 57 people and left lasting damage at a crucial import site.“It seems that in the absence of appropriate solutions, tea stocks in warehouses will reach zero within the next three months,” Abbas Mellatkhah, head of the Khorasan Razavi Tea and Tea Importers and Producers Union, told the regime-affiliated newspaper Quds, “which could lead to a serious shortage and a sharp increase in prices again; because the entry of fresh tea into the market has practically stopped and most companies are facing import problems.”The Quds newspaper is published by a cultural institute connected to Astan Quds Razavi, one of the world’s largest religious charitable trusts. The head of the trust is appointed by Iran’s supreme leader. According to Reporters Without Borders, freedom of the press is virtually nonexistent in Iran, “one of the world’s most repressive countries in terms of press freedom.”Mr. Mellatkhah told the newspaper that tea prices from domestic Iranian companies are twice what they were this time last year. And Iranian domestic tea production covers only about one-fifth of the demand for tea in the country, he said.The virtual shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz due to the war has meant importers need to go around it. But importing Indian tea via the port of Mersin in Turkey has increased costs six-fold, even before the tea is transported to buyers inside Iran.“In addition, import problems have also increased, and it can almost be said that tea imports have stopped and its reserves in the country have decreased sharply,” Mr. Mellatkhah said. “Many companies have either stopped their activities or reduced production due to their inability to import.”Iran has banned tea imports from Kenya, the Quds newspapers said, due to “differences that arose between the Iranian and Kenyan governments” after a 2023 tea smuggling scandal.In Kenya, tea growers are hurting from the disruption in sales to one of their top clients. Nearly $33 million worth of Kenyan tea was shipped to Iran in 2024, according to Christianity Today, and small farmers are worried about bankruptcy due to the war’s trade disruptions.Tea is Kenya’s leading export and “a cornerstone of the national economy,” the United States Department of Agriculture said in a 2025 report. Every year, Kenya produces more than 2 million metric tons of tea in an industry that 7 million Kenyans rely upon for their livelihood.The country’s 680,000 small tea farmers already faced a downturn in 2025, when production was projected to decline due to dry weather in the first six months of the year.As the war began in early April, Kenya’s Standard newspaper reported that tea exporters had lost $24 million per week over the previous three weeks. Up to 8,800 tons of tea was stranded in a Mombasa warehouse alongside rotting cut flowers.In Sri Lanka, the tea industry provides a living for 10 percent of its people — many of whom are agricultural workers earning less than $5 per day, German broadcaster DW reported. The Sri Lankan economy is already teetering due to surging fuel costs that led to the government declaring every Wednesday a public holiday to cut down on gas consumption.“The sum of these conditions has not provided a favorable situation for the supply of a beverage that people need and depend on a lot,” Mr. Mellatkhah told the Quds newspaper, “a beverage that is considered the second most consumed beverage in the country after water and at various ceremonies. From mourning to joy, it has a special place.”

Amid Bombs and Bellicosity, Iranians Face New Threat: a Shortage of Tea

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