Iran says $270bn war losses must be compensated before U.S. talks

By Maziar MotamediWednesday April 15, 2026

Photographs displayed in Tajrish Square place particular focus on the eyes of children who lost their lives in the Minab attack, as part of the ‘Eyes of Minab’ exhibition organised to commemorate the victims, in Tehran, on April 14, 2026 [Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu]

Iran is pressing its case for compensation for the destruction wrought by the United States and Israel, even as it maintains a defiant stance and regional actors scramble to broker a way out of the conflict.

Tehran’s envoy to the United Nations said on Tuesday that five regional countries must pay compensation, arguing that their territory was used to launch attacks on Iran.

Iran has also raised the idea of compensation for damages to come through a Strait of Hormuz protocol, which would include a tax on ships passing through the waterway.

An early estimate indicates that Iran has suffered about $270bn in direct and indirect damages since the start of the US-Israel war on February 28, Iranian government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said during an interview with Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency, published on Tuesday.

She did not provide further information, such as a breakdown of the damages, but said the issue of compensation was discussed in last week’s negotiations between Tehran and Washington in Pakistan, and will be raised in any potential future talks with the US and mediators.

The government says it is still taking stock of the widespread damage to Iran’s critical infrastructure, after oil and gas facilities, petrochemical companies, steel plants, and aluminium factories were repeatedly struck, along with military sites. Officials say reconstruction will take years.

Bridges, ports and railway networks, universities and research centres, and several power plants and water desalination plants were also directly hit, while a large number of hospitals, schools and civilian homes were damaged or destroyed.

‘Economic realities’

Spokeswoman Mohajerani told Iranian state media earlier this week that “existing economic realities” mean the government lacks the resources to compensate civilians whose homes were damaged or destroyed by US-Israeli attacks.

Meanwhile, the secretary of the Association of Iranian Airlines, Maghsoud Asadi Samani, told Iranian media that 60 civilian aircraft had been put out of commission, with 20 completely destroyed by the US and Israel.

The official said that Iran only has about 160 passenger aircraft still in operation, most of them decades old and kept in the air through maintenance work that has been difficult due to the shortage of parts and services as a result of stringent US sanctions.

Samani said airlines also lost much of the revenue they had expected to come in during the Nowruz or Persian New Year holidays in late March, and that their accumulated losses exceeded 300 trillion rials (about $190 million at the current exchange rate) in 40 days of war.

Several of the country’s international airports, including in Tehran, Tabriz, Urmia and Khorramabad, were significantly damaged after numerous attacks hit their runways, control towers and hangars.

Despite the scale of the destruction, and despite the US naval blockade on Iranian ports that began on Monday, Iranian authorities are signalling that they do not plan to make major concessions in talks with Washington, including over nuclear enrichment.

Ebrahim Rezaei, the spokesman for the hardline-dominated parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said in a social media post that the two-week ceasefire announced last week must not be extended, arguing that it would give the US and Israel time to restock their arsenals and improve their positions for another attack.

“They must either recognise Iran’s rights, including our control over the Strait of Hormuz, or return to war,” he wrote.

Iran dedicated close to $8bn for military spending in 2024, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) think tank, and officials pledged to triple that budget after missile exchanges with Israel in October that year. But the government has also faced years of a budget crunch, linked with local mismanagement and corruption, and paired with US sanctions.

Internet shutdown deals damage

The near-total internet shutdown imposed by the state against more than 90 million Iranians has been deepening the country’s economic pain and aggravating public frustration for a seventh week.

After huge waves of layoffs and lost business opportunities as a result of the blackout, the government has said that it holds no authority over the matter, instead pinning the blame on the Supreme National Security Council.

Afshin Kolahi, the head of an Iran Chamber of Commerce commission, told a video conference with state-affiliated and private executives on Monday that the shutdown was causing as much as $80m a day in direct and indirect economic damage.

“We are losing [the equivalent of] four B1 bridges every day. We are losing two medium-capacity power plants every day, and we are doing this ourselves,” he said about the cost of the internet shutdown, and in reference to the US-Israeli bombing of a major bridge near Tehran earlier this month.

The Information and Communications Technology Ministry reposted the video of the comments on its social media account. In January, when the state imposed a 20-day near-total internet shutdown as thousands were killed during nationwide anti-establishment protests, the ministry had said that many online businesses could not last without the internet for more than three weeks.

Now, with no sign of a full reconnection, the ministry is moving ahead with plans for a tiered internet system.

This week, it announced that several business representatives nominated through their communities have signed up to get access to a global internet connection, while the rest of the population remains bound to a limited local intranet.

Telecommunications companies are offering select customers deemed eligible by the state a new service called “Internet Pro”, which costs more than regular data packs but offers less filtered access to the internet. Some users have reported that they have made payments and are waiting for the service to be activated.

But even in the comments section of state-linked sites, which are one of the few places Iranians can currently express themselves online, the internet is the main talk of the day. On the website of the Fars news agency, affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the main hashtags demand “internet freedom”.

On Monday, security authorities ordered Digiato, a prominent technology-focused media outlet, to remove a countdown clock from its website, which was documenting how long Iran has been plunged into digital darkness.

A profitable black market continues to exist for those selling virtual private networks (VPNs) and any other method potentially offering a link to the outside world.