Sanctions, and Subordinate Financialization: The Internal Spatial Fix in Iran

This article examines how sanctions and subordinate financialization have transformed Iran’s economy over the past decade through the lens of the internal spatial fix. Constrained by global economic isolation, Iran has redirected financial capital from industrial manufacturing to speculative and extractive sectors, resulting in deindustrialization, heightened resource dependency, and a bifurcated labor regime marked by precarity and inequality. Adapting David Harvey’s concept of the spatial fix to internal dynamics, this article situates Iran’s trajectory within broader debates on financialization in peripheral economies, offering a novel lens toexamine the interplay between sanctions, resource dependency, and economic precarity.Grounded in dissertation research, this article draws on two case studies—the decline of HEPCO and the rise of CMIC—to illustrate the mechanisms and consequences of this internal reallocation of capital. These findings reveal how sanctions and financialization intersect to prioritize short-term accumulation over long-term development, deepening economic instability and labor commodification. By integrating the overlapping effects of sanctions and financialization, this article offers a novel theoretical framework for understanding resource dependency and developmental stagnation in the Global South.