Moslem Ghomashlouyan: Contraband Commerce across the Iranian Border (EN)

It’s a blazing hot afternoon in late 2021. Moslem Ghomashlouyan
is standing in a crisply air-conditioned sports apparel store in
an upscale mall, looking at rows upon rows of Nikes, Adidas, and
New Balances. Nothing unusual – except for one
detail: 
The mall was in Northern Tehran – And Iran has been under strict
US-led sanctions for decades.


Martin Ritzmann sat down with the social anthropologist to learn
more about the remarkable journey Western brand-name apparel
undertake across the Iraqi-Iranian border.


NOTE: This episode was recorded on 27 March, 2026 – 4 weeks after
the onset of the 2026 Iran war.



Links:


Moslem Ghomashlouyan's profile on UniBE



Further Reading:


Erami, Narges, and Arang Keshavarzian. 2015. “When Ties Don’t
Bind: Smuggling Effects, Bazaars and Regulatory Regimes in
Postrevolutionary Iran.” Economy and Society 44 (1):
110–139. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2014.909986

Yıldız, Emrah. 2024a. “Guaranteed Contraband’: A Cultural
Biography of Kaçak Tea in Gaziantep’s Iranian Bazaar.”
Journal of Cultural Economy 17 (2): 178–196.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2024.2323691

Zinati, Peyman. 2024. “Escaping isn’t for everyone”: Kurdish
smugglers’ navigational tactics at checkpoints in
Iran. Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies
(DIIS)

Bozçalı, Fırat. 2025. Smuggling Law: Unsettled
Sovereignties in Turkey’s Kurdish Borderlands. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press.



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