When Israeli airstrikes began hitting Iranian territory, the explosions did not just crater military installations — they tore open hospitals already running on empty. Across Tehran and several provincial cities, medical facilities that had been limping through years of sanctions-driven shortages suddenly faced the kind of mass-casualty demand they had no capacity to meet.
Iran's population of roughly 90 million people — more than 40 percent of whom live in urban centres dependent on public healthcare — now confronts a system that humanitarian monitors describe as critically depleted. Essential medicines, from insulin to chemotherapy drugs, had already been rationed before a single bomb fell. Field reports from The New Humanitarian, published on 27 June 2025, document shortages of anaesthetics, surgical supplies, and blood products in hospitals across at least five provinces, with patients in the country's poorer eastern and southeastern regions — including Sistan-Baluchestan — facing near-total collapse in access to specialist care.
The crisis did not begin with the strikes. More than four decades of U.S.-led economic sanctions have systematically severed Iran from global pharmaceutical supply chains, forcing the country into costly and unreliable domestic substitution programmes. Chronic inflation — which topped 40 percent in recent years — has gutted hospital budgets. Medical professionals have emigrated in large numbers, with estimates suggesting Iran has lost tens of thousands of trained doctors and nurses to the diaspora over the past decade alone.
What the Israeli campaign has done is accelerate a deterioration that was already terminal in places. Power outages caused by strikes on energy infrastructure have disabled dialysis machines and refrigeration units storing vaccines and blood supplies. Ambulance fleets grounded by fuel shortages cannot reach the wounded in time. In a healthcare system that was already triage-ing ordinary patients, the arrival of war casualties has pushed emergency wards beyond any functional limit.
Iranian health officials acknowledged the scale of the crisis in carefully worded statements that stopped short of blaming the government's own structural failures. Health Minister Mohammad Reza Zafarqandi pointed to sanctions as the primary cause of medicine shortages and called on international bodies to facilitate humanitarian corridors for medical supplies. The International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed it has been in contact with both Iranian authorities and regional partners to explore emergency medical access, though no formal agreement had been announced as of the time of reporting.
The weeks ahead will test whether international humanitarian law can hold any practical weight in a conflict that has already shown little regard for civilian infrastructure. Observers will watch whether the United Nations Security Council moves to demand protected medical corridors, whether neighbouring countries — Iraq, Turkey, and the Gulf states among them — step in with emergency pharmaceutical and medical equipment transfers, and whether Iran's government allows international health organisations unfettered access to the worst-affected regions. Any prolonged interruption to insulin and dialysis supply alone could prove fatal for hundreds of thousands of patients managing chronic conditions.
