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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