In Iran, as elsewhere, GLP-1 agonists such as semaglutide and tirzepatide offer a chance to address obesity, improve organ functioning and treat various chronic health conditions. The drugs are also popular with those who simply want to lose weight. Sales have been robust, even in the face of US and Israeli military strikes and a worsening economic crisis. Over a recent four-month period, national sales of tirzepatide reached 150 billion rials, or about £8.2 million.
Most of the GLP-1 agonists used in Iran are made domestically. The market leader is CinnaGen; another company, Cobel Darou, launched its GLP-1 agonist in February, just a few days before the US and Israel attacked. Novo Nordisk, the Danish company that developed semaglutide (and sells it under the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy), also has a factory in Iran. The facility, which opened in 2020, produces insulin and other diabetes drugs.
Iran’s pharmaceutical industry has not been spared during the recent war, any more than the ordinary people who rely on the medicines it produces. In the early weeks of the fighting, Israeli forces deliberately targeted and destroyed a facility belonging to the pharmaceutical manufacturer Tofigh Darou. A few days later, an airstrike damaged the Pasteur Institute of Iran, which had been a leading centre of medical research and vaccine production for more than a century. The same day, the US secretary of defence, Pete Hegseth, posted a curt taunt on social media: ‘Back to the Stone Age.’
As attacks on civilian facilities and infrastructure mounted, the stakes of the war became clearer. The American and Israeli bombing campaign was targeting not only the bastions of the Islamic Republic, but the foundations of Iran’s economic development. Oil depots, petrochemical plants, steel factories and airports were all being hit. Not even schools, universities or healthcare facilities were off limits. As American officials gloated over how far Iran would be set back, Iranians came to recognise how far they had come.
Today, with the war still unresolved, Iran is suspended between a past that was meant to be a future and a future that the Trump administration wants to look like the past. Iran has the dubious distinction of being the first nation to produce a pharmaceutical grade appetite suppressant while undergoing a general crisis of food affordability.
Between May 2018, when Trump reimposed sweeping sanctions on Iran following his withdrawal from the nuclear deal, and December 2025, food prices in the country rose twentyfold, outpacing general inflation. Though technically exempt from sanctions, imports of soft commodities, including wheat and animal feed, were frequently affected by banking restrictions and logistical hurdles, leading to higher prices for bread, meat and eggs.
Most of Iran’s food is produced domestically, but the general economic malaise brought on by sanctions has made everything less affordable. Persistent inflation, spurred by the government’s decision to monetise the deficit from the drop in oil exports, drives prices higher and undermines ordinary people’s purchasing power. It also undercuts the food subsidies and cash transfers offered to poorer households. A weak labour market contributes to a decline in real wages. The impact on the welfare and diet of ordinary Iranians has been profound. Families that could once comfortably afford meat, eggs and packaged foods have been forced to cut back, while the poorest make do with little more than bread.
Trump’s war and the naval blockade are making everything worse. Only the wealthiest 3 per cent of households can now comfortably afford the full food basket recommended by Iran’s Ministry of Health. In a recent video shared on social media, an Iranian man riding a motorcycle says: ‘That bastard Trump said he wanted regime change. The only regime he’s changed is our diet.’ (Persian uses the French loanword régime to mean both ‘regime’ and ‘diet’.) ‘We can’t even eat shit with these prices,’ the man jokes.
Against a backdrop of growing hunger, the popularity of weight-loss drugs among Iran’s affluent seems especially dissonant. But this isn’t just another instance of widening inequality, with the 1 per cent continuing to enjoy every luxury as the country lurches from crisis to crisis. In Iran, medicines such as semaglutide were never meant to be for the rich alone, as the investment in their domestic production demonstrates.
A recent essay in the Journal of Medical Ethicsexamines the ethical arguments over prescribing semaglutide for weight loss: ‘In a way, semaglutide enables a person to choose their own desires. This realises freedom and autonomy, on a higher order account of autonomy as desiring to desire’ – especially perhaps in a country such as Iran, where so many desires are restricted by draconian laws. Whether semaglutide will continue to be produced there for much longer is hard to say. In any case, the average Iranian will not be able to afford it. Iran was once a country where most people were striving for what they desired. It is now a country where most people are struggling for what they need.
