Firsthand reports from contributors inside Iran
For years, young women from smaller cities and conservative families came to Tehran to study, to work, to breathe. Now, one by one, many are being forced to leave.
Tehran was supposed to be the place they came to become themselves. They got into top universities, found jobs, rented apartments with friends. They built lives of their own.
A year of protests, crackdown, war and economic freefall has pushed many to the edge. Rent has become unbearable. Prices rise by the week. Incomes shrink or disappear.
They are moving back to Ahvaz, Shiraz or smaller towns to live with family because they can no longer afford Tehran. Some are selling gold, burning through savings or taking on debt to survive one more month.
The economic shock is everywhere. Layoffs are spreading. Inflation has become so absurd that people joke shops are still full of staples only because no one can afford to buy them.
And now, as if rent and inflation were not enough, officials say metro, bus and taxi fares in Tehran will rise next month. Even getting to work is becoming more expensive.
But for many, the deepest blow has come from the collapse of the digital economy.
In Iran, Instagram was more than an app. It was a shopfront, a beauty salon, a classroom, an office. Women sold clothes and cosmetics, baked cakes, offered beauty services, taught languages, designed logos and built small businesses from their bedrooms.
Now much of that is gone.
After two months of severe internet disruption, many online businesses are collapsing. Orders have dried up. Customers cannot browse. Payments are delayed. Messages do not go through.
Sima, 29, runs a small online clothing business. For two months, she says, almost no orders have come in. What once brought in modest but steady income has become little more than an empty storefront.
Baran, 34, says she feels herself “going crazy” thinking about how quickly life is unraveling. The online business she spent years building is collapsing. Payments are not arriving. Debts are piling up.
“Everything we built with blood and tears is going up in smoke,” she says.
What makes it worse is the silence. No explanation. No accountability. Just the slow erasure of livelihoods.
Layoffs in offices and shops appear to hit women especially hard. There are no official figures, but many suspect employers assume men are more likely to be breadwinners. A woman, they think, may have a husband or father to fall back on. But many do not—or do not want to.
For many women here, losing a job is not just losing income. It can mean losing a home, a city and a life they fought hard to build.
And so Tehran is losing its daughters.
The city that once offered escape is beginning to send them back. Back to smaller cities. Back to family homes. Back to dependence—often to the lives they thought they had escaped for good.
The disruption began on February 28, when connectivity dropped to a fraction of normal levels, according to internet monitor NetBlocks, and has since stretched beyond 1,400 hours with most users still cut off from global networks.
“Exactly two months ago … Iran was thrown into digital darkness,” NetBlocks said, adding that the blackout persists despite limited access for privileged users.
Economic toll runs into billions
The prolonged shutdown has transformed internet access into a central economic constraint, with losses mounting daily across multiple sectors.
Estimates from Iran’s Chamber of Commerce put direct daily losses at $30 million to $40 million, rising to as much as $70 million to $80 million when indirect damage is included.
Communications Minister Sattar Hashemi said the disruption threatens the livelihoods of around 10 million people, pointing to the limited resilience of small and medium-sized businesses.
Zahra Behrouz-Azar, the vice president for women’s affairs, said women have been disproportionately affected, with many home-based businesses collapsing under the restrictions.
“The situation has been imposed like a war, and the damages should not be denied,” Behrouz-Azar said.
Export industries have also struggled to maintain international ties. Mohsen Ehtesham, the head of the National Saffron Council, said exporters had been unable to communicate with overseas clients or verify deliveries.
“Exporters … did not have direct contact with international customers, and could not even confirm whether goods had reached them,” Ehtesham said.
He added the disruption had weakened Iran’s position in global markets and created openings for competitors such as Afghanistan to rebrand Iranian saffron.
Social divide deepens
Beyond the economic toll, the blackout has disrupted daily life and created a two-tier digital reality, with limited access granted to select groups while most Iranians remain cut off.
For younger Iranians, internet access is closely tied to education, identity and social life, making the prolonged shutdown especially disruptive.
The divide has become more visible as officials and connected groups retain access to platforms blocked for ordinary users, while much of the population remains limited to a heavily restricted domestic network.
Human rights groups say such shutdowns restrict access to information, make abuses harder to document and leave crises with less public scrutiny.
‘Internet Pro’ plan fuels backlash
Authorities have sought to manage the fallout by advancing a plan known as “Internet Pro,” which would restore global access for selected businesses and institutions while most users remain restricted.
Under the proposal, approved by the Supreme National Security Council, commercial entities and later industrial sectors would receive connectivity, with officials presenting the measure as a form of economic management.
Government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said the plan aims to preserve business operations during crisis conditions.
“Internet Pro has been approved … to preserve business connections under current conditions,” Mohajerani said, adding that access could change once authorities declare conditions normal.
The plan has drawn criticism for formalizing unequal access. Reports show some connections have been sold at high prices, prompting judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei to order an investigation, describing the practice as discriminatory and potentially corrupt.
Civil society pushes back
Professional groups and users have rejected the proposal, describing it as institutionalizing digital inequality.
The Iranian Graphic Designers Guild said it would not submit a collective request for the service, calling it an insult and reaffirming the need for open and affordable access for all.
Public reaction has echoed that stance, with users criticizing the idea of restricting connectivity in an era where digital access underpins economic survival and social participation.
At the same time, authorities are accelerating development of domestic infrastructure aimed at reducing reliance on the global internet, a move critics view as enabling longer-term isolation.
