In Iran, Cooperatives Became a Lifeline When Everything Else Went Quiet

When war disrupted daily life in Iran this year, phone lines grew unreliable and planning gave way to simply getting through the day. Across the country’s 31 provinces, the cooperative movement rearranged itself around one question: who needs help right now, and who is close enough to give it.

That is the story Mr. Alireza Banaeifar tells in a new interview for ICA-AP’s Bridge-Builders campaign. Mr. Banaeifar is the Deputy of International Affairs at the Iran Chamber of Cooperatives (ICC), the apex body for a movement reaching some 18 million members across agriculture, industry, housing and healthcare. He spoke with Ms. Shivali Sarna, ICA-AP’s Head of Communications and Membership Development, for a series marking this year’s International Day of Cooperatives theme, cooperatives for a peaceful world.

One image stays with him: cooperative managers across the country calling each other daily, not about business, just to ask if the other was safe. It convinced him that a cooperative is never purely an economic thing, but something held together by ordinary care. That instinct carried real weight. With communication difficult, ICC leaned on trust that provinces had already built over years, moving goods to wherever they were needed most, often decided by nothing more than one manager calling another. Messages of support from cooperators abroad, he says, mattered more than expected, proof that the silence wasn’t total.

Reflecting on peace, Mr. Banaeifar says it isn’t only the absence of war. It’s dignity, and a community held together by trust rather than suspicion, something he believes cooperatives were built for long before any crisis made it urgent. Real solidarity, he adds, isn’t sympathy from a distance. It’s staying in dialogue with people whose circumstances you don’t share, so that nothing can fully cut the line between you.

This is a summary of a longer conversation. Watch the full interview here to hear Mr. Alireza Banaeifar’s complete reflections on trust, solidarity and peace in Iran’s cooperative movement.