MaryamJoon

Iranian cartoonist are starting to strike back at more than thirty years of Israeli sponsored Iranophobia, but what are the implications beyond the cartoon wars?    

Ultimately the results will be devastating for any company or person supporting creators of Iranophobic content, and will permanently impact the US economy, resulting in loss of market share for US companies, which also translates into a loss of jobs.    

Iranians will avoid paying for anything coming out of Hollywood, and they will simply watch pirated versions of the same content.  That's the easy part.  But they may also flood the market in other countries with free versions of copyrighted content to avoid revenues making their way back to Los Angeles.  

And brands advertised by anyone even remotely connected to Iranophobic content will be permanently barred in their entirety from the Iranian market.  

What does this mean in practice?  It means that if a couple of guys sitting in Tel Aviv or LA put together an Iranophobic film, and an American candy company advertises that film in Sweden, not only will the food-product be barred from the Iranian market, but all of the products of the advertiser and its subsidiaries will be banned from the Iranian market, and perhaps even its distributor or secondary companies that employ any of the same managers will be banned from selling in Iran.

Iran will not bother chasing around a couple of film-makers, it will look for the slightest evidence that they received some financial support and oust any related products from the Iranian market.

Ultimately, this will result in wholesale brand substitution that shifts away from Western brands not only in Iran, but also in the countries of the region.  This is something that has been underway for at least 30 years.  

These types of counter-measures will make it very difficult for western brands to obtain a significant share of the Iranian market again: If 80 million people refuse to buy a $1 product, that's a loss of $80 million dollars per year.  If Iran creates substitute brands and sells those brands to regional countries, then you add to the loss of revenue suffered by western brands from competitors.  Now add what the effects are over a lifetime.  We are talking big money.  

This phenomenon will not be limited to Iran, but may gain regional and even world-wide acceptance, and in some ways is already starting to.  

This will be devastating to the U.S. economy.  Think of it this way:

The world adopts a new economic motto: "Never buy American goods again."  Now do the math.