Paper short abstract:

The isolating sanctions regime against Iran is examined ethnographically in Mahshahr Petro-harbour. I explore how this pervasive sense of "standing alone" nurtures a necropolitics, prompting that as we are excluded from the world, we possess the exclusive right to pollute the planet.

Paper long abstract:

“Having been through the highs and lows of the Iran-Iraq war, let me be clear, coping with US sanctions today feels way more challenging than those eight years of conflict … No country willingly sacrifices itself by subjecting to the threat of buying oil from us... we stand alone.” remarked, Bijan Zangeneh, the old technocrat and the former Iranian minister of petroleum, In a 2019 interview.

This study delves into how the temporal urgency created by sanctions in Iran has played a role in sea pollution in Mahshahr, a petrochemical harbour along the Persian Gulf. Over the last two decades, substantial streams of industrial waste have been discharged into the aquatic environment of this area, profoundly impacting both the marine life and the local population. Official authorities have either concealed this issue or made public promises to address it. However, behind closed doors, there is a belief, expressed by the CEO of one petrochemical plant, that “we are not luxurious enough to think about the sea. Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

The sanctions regime aimed at isolating Iran from the global economy and community is examined in this study. I explore how this pervasive sense of "standing alone" nurtures a necropolitics, invoking the sense that as we are excluded from the world, we possess the exclusive right to pollute the planet. My focus centres on industrial technocrats, exploring how they interpret sanctions as a justification for this perceived right and examining their responses to public protests.