The Iran war is choking supply of the world’s most expensive spice.
Foreign Policy
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Mohammad Altaf Dar arranges tiny glass vials on a wooden shelf inside his shop at Lal Chowk, a city square in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir. Each vial contains crimson threads of saffron, worth more than their weight in silver.
For three decades, this shop has supplied Srinagar’s households and tourist hotels with the world’s most expensive spice. Now Dar faces an unprecedented predicament.
Iran produces more than 90 percent of the world’s saffron in the vast fields of Khorasan. It has long been a quiet backbone of supply for traders across South Asia. In Kashmir, where local saffron harvests have declined in recent years, many retailers have increasingly relied on Iranian imports to keep their businesses afloat and meet demand from tourists and export buyers.
Dar’s last shipment of Iranian saffron sits delayed at a port in Dubai, caught in the crossfire of a conflict that exploded across the Middle East two months ago. The Strait of Hormuz has become a dangerous chokepoint, and Iranian exports have slowed down.
Meanwhile, Kashmir’s own saffron harvest all but collapsed this past autumn, yielding barely 20 percent of normal output, according to farmers in Pampore, the saffron bowl south of Srinagar.
Two people kneel in a vast field of purple flowers, picking blossoms and placing them into woven baskets under a bright, cloudy sky with mountains in the background.
Kashmiri farmers collect saffron from their fields on the outskirts of Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, on Oct. 19, 2006.Irshad Khan/AFP via Getty Images
Official figures paint a grim picture: Production slipped to 19.58 metric tons in 2024-25, down from 23.53 metric tons the previous year. Some growers say the reality was far worse, with many fields producing almost nothing during the October-November flowering season. The Karewa plateaus, where purple saffron crocus blooms have colored the autumn landscape for centuries, offered only bare soil last fall.
Kashmir contributes less than 1 percent of the global market by volume, but commands respect among connoisseurs for an entirely different reason. Kashmiri saffron contains higher concentrations of crocin, the carotenoid pigment responsible for the spice’s distinctive color, measuring 8.72 percent compared to the Iranian variety’s 6.82 percent.
The local Mongra grade displays a dark maroon-purple hue that indicates potent flavor and aroma. Iranian saffron is drier, more commercially available, and historically much cheaper than the Kashmiri variant.
A row of people wearing headscarves, face masks, and gloves work at a long industrial table, carefully sorting through large piles of bright red saffron threads.
Workers sort and clean saffron filaments during processing at a Novin Saffron factory in Iran’s Khorasan province on Nov. 12, 2018. Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images
This quality distinction matters enormously in Kashmiri kitchens, where saffron functions as an essential foundation of culinary identity.
The spice threads through the region’s most celebrated dishes. It imparts both golden color and earthy sweetness to rogan josh, the crimson lamb curry that anchors any proper wazwan feast. Cooks soak threads in warm water to release their essence into yakhni, the delicate yogurt-based mutton stew flavored with fennel and cardamom.
During Ramadan, the spice sweetens modur pulao, a rice dish studded with dried fruits and nuts that breaks the daily fast. Phirni, the creamy rice pudding served at weddings, would appear pallid and incomplete without the threads scattered across its surface.
And without saffron, gushtaba—pounded meatballs simmered in creamy yogurt sauce—would lose their royal status as the traditional finale to Kashmiri banquets.
Even the morning ritual of kahwa depends entirely on those crimson strands. This traditional green tea, brewed with cinnamon, cardamom, and crushed almonds, receives its medicinal reputation from saffron. Families measure their hospitality by the strength of saffron they add to the teapot.
Shahnawaz Khan understands this cultural weight intimately. The 28-year-old agricultural entrepreneur left a corporate procurement job in Mumbai four years ago to return to his family’s three-acre plot in Pampore. He now works with 50 farming families to supply authentic Kashmiri saffron directly to consumers, bypassing the middlemen who have long exploited growers.
Khan spent November 2025 watching helplessly as his network harvested meager quantities from parched fields. The rainfall deficit reached 29 percent last year, with October temperatures soaring above seasonal norms.
“The flowers bloomed for barely two hours each morning, instead of lasting through the day,” Khan said while seated in his store at Lethapora, once a thriving saffron marketplace along a Kashmir highway. “By 9, the heat had already withered them. Our total collection came to barely 6 kilograms, whereas in my childhood, we gathered nearly 100 kilograms each day.”
The shortage has pushed local prices toward 500,000 rupees per kilogram, equivalent to roughly 35 grams of gold.
Dar, the Srinagar trader, confirms that retail prices have jumped 20 percent since February, with some grades commanding even higher premiums.
The irony cuts deep for farmers who have watched Iranian imports undercut their market for two decades. India consumes approximately 100 metric tons of saffron annually, while Kashmir produces approximately 20 metric tons. The gap has traditionally been filled by Iranian saffron entering through Delhi or Mumbai, often mixed with Kashmiri product or repackaged entirely as local goods.
A person in a patterned dark robe holds a large bunch of freshly picked purple crocus flowers in their hands, while others harvest flowers in the background field.
A woman holds freshly picked saffron flowers on a farm in Shahn Abad village, near the town of Torbat-e Heydarieh, Iran, on Oct. 31, 2006. Behrouz Mehri/AFP via Getty Images
Traders could purchase Iranian saffron for roughly 200 rupees per gram wholesale, while Kashmiri saffron commanded 400 rupees or more. Many Srinagar shops sold the imported variety to tourists seeking “authentic Kashmiri saffron,” pocketing the difference while degrading the region’s reputation.
Mushtaq Mir, who heads a Srinagar-based saffron seller group, has fought this practice for years. The 45-year-old farmer owns five kanals of land outside Pampore (equivalent to a bit more than half an acre), land his family has cultivated for four generations. He describes the Iranian presence as an organized deception that harms genuine growers.
“Large quantities arrive through Dubai, get processed locally, and enter markets under our name,” Mir said. “This mafia has destroyed price structures. Now the conflict has turned that dependency upside down.”
A person in a colorful floral garment carries a woven basket filled with purple flowers through a field, while two other people work in the background under a hazy sky.
Kashmiri farmers pluck flowers during saffron harvest in a field in Pampore on the outskirts of Srinagar on Nov. 5, 2022. Tauseef Mustafa/AFP via Getty Images
The dependency extends beyond economics into agricultural infrastructure.
The National Mission on Saffron, launched by the Indian government in 2010 with a budget of 400 crores (roughly $42 million), promised bore wells and sprinkler irrigation to combat increasingly erratic rainfall. Sixteen years later, 77 of the 124 planned bore wells remain largely non-functional, according to government data from February.
Farmers cite disputes over land rights, stolen pipes, and absent maintenance. Without reliable irrigation, the crop remains hostage to weather patterns that have grown increasingly hostile.
Ghulam Nabi, a 60-year-old farmer from Lethapora, has abandoned two of his three saffron plots, converting the land to high-density apple orchards that promise more reliable returns. He remembers harvesting 20 tolas (roughly 230 grams) of saffron annually from those fields, but this past season yielded barely one.
“The corms have grown thin and exhausted,” he said, referring to saffron crocus bulbs. “Replacing them requires investment we cannot afford, especially when Iranian imports keep retail prices depressed.”
The Geographical Indication tag awarded to Kashmiri saffron in 2020 was supposed to solve this authentication problem. The certification verifies origin and quality through laboratory testing at the India International Kashmir Saffron Trading Centre in Pampore. GI-certified saffron fetches premium prices, up to 220,000 rupees per kilogram at government auctions compared to 80,000 rupees for non-certified product.
But only 87-odd kilograms of GI-certified saffron moved through the facility last year, a fraction of total production. Most farmers lack awareness of the certification process or cannot afford the associated costs.
A close-up shot of an elderly man’s hands as he carefully pinches a bundle of deep red saffron threads and drops them into a small red lid.
Noor Mohammad Bhat, a Kashmiri saffron seller, shows saffron petals at his shop in Pampore on Nov. 9, 2025. Firdous Nazir/NurPhoto via Getty Images
At his shop in Lal Chowk, Dar now faces a dilemma that would have seemed absurd 12 months ago. His regular customers, including hotels preparing wazwan feasts for tourists, bakeries making saffron-infused pastries, and families stocking up for cultural celebrations, demand volumes he cannot source locally. On March 3, following escalating conflict with Israel and the United States, Iran banned the export of all food and agricultural products, which has severed his traditional supply line. Iranian saffron now sits in warehouses in Tehran, blocked by a government prioritizing domestic food security during wartime.
Some traders who stockpiled Iranian saffron before the conflict have begun releasing their stashes at inflated prices, creating windfall profits for a few while squeezing legitimate businesses.
Dar refuses to participate in this speculation, instead rationing his remaining inventory and advising customers to reduce portion sizes. “We tell housewives to use five threads instead of 10,” he said, measuring out precious strands into paper packets. “The flavor remains, even if the color proves lighter.”
The crisis has exposed vulnerabilities that extend beyond economics into cultural preservation.
Saleha Rashid, a fourth-generation farmer completing her PhD in agricultural sciences, researches the phytochemical compounds that make Kashmiri saffron distinctive. She explained that crocin provides the color, picrocrocin the bitter flavor, and safranal the honeyed aroma—compounds developed through specific soil chemistry and altitude conditions found only in the Karewa plateaus.
“When you lose the crop, you lose centuries of selective cultivation,” Rashid warned. “The corms adapt to this specific terroir. Move them to Himachal Pradesh or elsewhere, and within two generations the chemical profile changes.”
Rashid’s own family harvested 6 kilograms of flowers this past season, down from 20-odd kilograms the previous year and 100 kilograms during her childhood. She documented the failure with scientific precision, noting how unseasonal warmth caused flowers to wither before releasing their stigmas.
The data confirmed what she said her grandmother had intuited while staring at empty fields: The land is changing faster than the crop can adapt.
At sunset in Srinagar, Dar locks his shop, leaving behind questions without answers and a spice that has no substitute.
He walks home carrying a heritage that grows lighter with every harvest.
