Firsthand reports from contributors inside Iran
One morning your phone simply stops working. There is no warning, no explanation and often no piece of paper telling you what you have done. Welcome to the Islamic Republic of Iran v.3.1.
I have been hearing versions of this story with disturbing frequency lately, from a doctor, a software engineer, an artist, a journalist and others, men and women ranging from their early twenties to their mid-forties.
Some are politically active, others barely so. What many appear to have in common is that at some point they said something online that somebody in authority did not like.
One woman in her thirties described discovering that the mobile line registered in her name had been blocked. When she tried to buy another SIM card, she learned that her national ID had also been restricted, preventing her from simply starting again with a new number.
It sounds like an inconvenience until you begin listing everything in Iran that now requires a phone number registered in your own name. Government portals routinely require text-message verification. So do university and banking services, even ride-hailing and food-delivery apps.
This is what makes the punishment so effective. The mobile phone is one of the keys to modern life here, and someone can apparently take that key away without ever coming to your door.
Life in Iran is difficult enough without inventing new ways to make it harder. People are still recovering from a brutal crackdown and war while living with the possibility of another round. Prices rise between visits to the supermarket, rent eats into salaries that were inadequate to begin with, power cuts are frequent and the internet remains unreliable.
Most people spend an extraordinary amount of mental energy simply working out how to get through another month. Now imagine trying to do all that without a functioning phone number.
A journalist in her late twenties told me she was preparing a report on SIM blocking when her own number suddenly stopped working. She knew immediately that it was not a technical glitch or an administrative accident.
"It feels as though I've ceased to exist administratively in my own country," she told me.
Others disappear even more quietly. They are not prominent activists whose names people will recognise. They are doctors, programmers, students and artists, or simply people with a few hundred followers who wrote something angry or shared something at the wrong moment.
Their phone goes dead and perhaps a handful of friends know. There is no campaign for them, and often nobody beyond their immediate circle even knows that they have been punished.
One software engineer told me that after his SIM was blocked, he began looking online for people in the same position. In about a week, he says, he came across almost 100 accounts that appeared similar to his own.
There is something particularly cruel about a punishment with no clear beginning or end. If you are charged with an offence, at least there is an accusation to confront. Here, most people are not told about the red line they crossed or how long they should suffer for it.
One person I spoke to had their SIM blocked for months after intervention by Revolutionary Guards intelligence. To have it restored, they say, they were required to delete their Twitter account and promise not to get themselves into further trouble online.
Many watching Iran from afar look at the social changes visible on Tehran's streets and conclude that the state has loosened its grip. Women now walk around without hijab in numbers that would have been difficult to imagine only a few years ago. Young men and women mix openly, and the cafés are full of people who can afford them.
None of this happened because the authorities graciously granted people more freedom of course. They fought these changes and continue to fight them, but society pushed ahead anyway and, on some fronts at least, the state appears for now to have lost.
But political dissent is a different story. There seems to be far less willingness to retreat when people challenge power itself, and the methods do not always have to be spectacular.
Repression can be something as mundane as discovering that the little device in your hand, around which so much of your life has been organised, no longer connects you to anything.
This is the latest version of the Islamic Republic: punishment hidden in plain sight, no dramatic image for the outside world to share, no prison gate for relatives to gather outside and often no official decision that can be challenged.
You can see a young woman walking down a Tehran street with her hair uncovered. What you cannot see is whether her phone still works.
Students and language teachers described cancelled exams, disrupted preparation and growing reliance on overseas testing in interviews with Iranian newspaper Etemad.
TOEFL and GRE testing inside Iran stopped after the US Treasury Department suspended an authorization covering certain educational services involving Iran on August 24. Applicants have also faced restrictions affecting PTE and Duolingo, although the rules differ between providers.
“The morning she arrived at the center, they told her the test would not be held because of sanctions,” Homa, a language teacher identified only by her first name, said of a student who travelled from Gilan province in northern Iran. “That Saturday, all I could hear was students crying, some of whom had only a few weeks until their test date.”
Some candidates had already paid for transportation and accommodation before learning their exams would not take place. Others were approaching university deadlines with little time to find alternatives.
Exam trips become a new expense
Applicants are increasingly looking to Armenia, Turkey and other nearby countries, feeding an informal business offering what Homa described as “exam tours.”
Intermediaries arrange appointments, foreign-currency payments, transportation and accommodation, sometimes allowing applicants to leave Iran, sit an exam and return within 24 or 48 hours.
Applicants travelling overland and sharing accommodation can spend around 300 million rials, about $130 at an open-market rate of roughly 2.3 million rials to the dollar. More expensive trips can reach 1 billion to 1.5 billion rials, or about $435 to $650, Homa estimated.
Those sums compare with a government-set minimum base wage of about 166 million rials, or $72, a month. With standard allowances, the minimum monthly package for a single worker is around 218 million rials, or $95.
Telegram groups have become information hubs for testing centers, accommodation and foreign payments. Homa said some operators also offer to manipulate internet or computer settings to make applicants inside Iran appear to be abroad, potentially exposing them to cancelled scores or blocked accounts.
Few alternatives without travel
Switching exams can mean losing months of specialized preparation and does not necessarily eliminate the need to travel.
IELTS is in a different position because it is jointly owned by the British Council, Australia's IDP and Cambridge University Press & Assessment rather than a US testing organization. The suspension of General License G therefore does not directly apply to it.
IELTS testing inside Iran, however, had already ended on January 31, 2026, after IDP cited separate “financial and regulatory factors” outside its control. Iranian applicants seeking the test must therefore also travel abroad.
Tabassom, identified only by her first name, had spent nine months preparing for PTE as part of plans to obtain an Australian work visa. She now expects to switch to IELTS.
“I spent an average of 150 million rials ($65) a month on language training,” Tabassom said. “Over nine months, I spent nearly one billion rials ($435) just on classes and training. I had reached the point where I was going to take the exam in another month and a half, but now I have to switch to IELTS and start preparing again.”
Domestic problems compound the disruption
The testing restrictions have landed on applicants already dealing with economic and infrastructure problems inside Iran.
Tabassom said internet outages had already disrupted contact with her immigration lawyer before the problems surrounding PTE forced her to change plans.
Applicants with sufficient resources can respond by travelling abroad or paying for additional preparation. Others may have to borrow money or delay their plans. Homa said some students had sold gold or household belongings or taken loans to continue pursuing testing and migration.
For Iranians seeking to study or work abroad, the challenge is no longer only achieving the required score, but finding an affordable way to reach the examination room.
One advertisement offered eight frozen embryos for one billion rials (about $4400), although it was unclear whether the price applied to each embryo or the entire group, Jahan-e Sanat newspaper reported on Monday.
Another seller advertised 18 frozen embryos and asked prospective buyers to suggest a price. Similar advertisements for embryos, eggs, sperm and surrogacy services have appeared on Instagram and Telegram.
The advertisements directed prospective buyers away from the original platform to continue discussions elsewhere, with little information about the people offering the embryos or how any transfer would take place.
Iranian law provides for donation, not direct sales
Iranian legislation passed in 2003 permits embryo donation to infertile married couples under specified conditions, with implementing regulations adopted the following year also covering frozen embryos.
Under those regulations, embryo donation is defined as the voluntary and free transfer of one or more embryos to authorized infertility treatment centers. Written consent from the couple providing the embryo is required, and transfers must take place through authorized specialist centers.
Prospective recipients must apply jointly as a married couple to a court and meet requirements covering infertility, legal capacity, health, drug use and Iranian citizenship.
The regulations therefore provide a formal route for donating frozen embryos but do not define them as commodities that can be sold directly between individuals.
Sociologist points to poverty and intermediaries
The online advertisements could reflect a combination of financial hardship among potential sellers and the desperation of couples struggling with infertility, sociologist Alireza Sharifi-Yazdi told Jahan-e Sanat.
“Behind this are a number of digital intermediaries who operate on Instagram, Telegram, and similar platforms and exploit the poverty and financial vulnerability of families, particularly women, as well as the desperation and confusion of infertile couples,” Sharifi-Yazdi said.
He distinguished regulated infertility treatment from an informal market in which intermediaries seek to profit from reproductive services.
Some infertile couples may turn to such channels after unsuccessful treatments including intrauterine insemination, or IUI, and in vitro fertilization, or IVF, he said.
Lengthy adoption procedures and the cost and waiting times associated with infertility treatment can also make unofficial alternatives appear easier, Sharifi-Yazdi added.
The financial circumstances of people offering embryos, he said, are another part of the picture, with worsening poverty potentially making them more susceptible to intermediaries seeking to profit from their situation.
Questions over oversight and identity
Sharifi-Yazdi also raised concerns about the possible consequences for children born following informal embryo transactions, including questions about their genetic parentage and legal status.
Modern DNA testing could allow children conceived through such arrangements to discover that the people raising them are not their genetic parents, potentially creating psychological and legal complications later in life, he argued.
Iran also lacks a transparent centralized national system through which people seeking to donate embryos without payment can readily register and navigate the legal process.
