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KUALA LUMPUR – After upending global supply chains that move critical fuels and fertilisers, the war in Iran has pushed prices of a popular nut grown in the country - pistachios - to an eight-year high.

Iran is the world’s second-largest producer of pistachios, which are eaten by themselves and are also a common ingredient in ice cream, chocolate and beverages. The conflict is crunching supplies in an already constrained market at a time when consumer appetite is surging.

The country’s pistachio trade was already complicated by sanctions and geopolitical frictions prior to the war, said Nick Moss, a nut market analyst at Expana Markets. A smaller-than-expected 2025 crop and communications blackouts in January during a government crackdown on civil unrest, which limited export coordination, further crimped supply. 

The outbreak of war in late February made matters worse, “compounding an already constrained situation” and resulting in a shrinking pool of pistachios that’s increasingly difficult to deliver to global markets, Mr Moss said.

Consumption has surged globally since pistachio-filled “Dubai chocolate” bars went viral on TikTok and Instagram in late 2023, supercharging demand across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Major food brands like Häagen-Daz and Táche added the nut to ice cream and plant-based milk ranges, and Starbucks popularized pistachio-flavoured coffee. Prices climbed about 30 per cent in the two years from the end of 2023, according to Expana’s benchmark prices for US pistachios.