Iran International
Social media users in Iran say their phone lines have been cut off after posting political content or liking posts on Instagram, extending a practice previously reported among political activists and journalists.
Messages received by Iran International describe SIM cards being blocked without warning, demands for written pledges and difficulty finding out which authority can restore service.
The reports include a 70-year-old woman in Tehran who said she was summoned several times after posting a WhatsApp story supporting the Pahlavi dynasty. Her SIM card was blocked, and she was eventually required to sign a pledge not to publish similar content again.
The woman said she does not have an Instagram account and is not otherwise active on social media.
The use of SIM card blocking to pressure social media users has been reported before. On September 12, Iran International reported that political and civil activists in several cities had lost access to their phone lines without prior notice and had been unable to resolve the restrictions.
Phone lines blocked without warning
Other citizens said their phone lines were disconnected after they liked political posts on Instagram. Many said they received no explanation or advance notice.
One person told Iran International that his sister and brother-in-law had moved to Finland about three years ago, but his sister’s Hamrah-e Aval SIM card, which he had kept in Iran, was deactivated “by order of the cyber police.”
Another Iranian wrote to Iran International that all his phone lines had been blocked for two months.
“I went to the telecommunications office, and they said it was on the prosecutor’s orders. No matter which authority I approach, they won’t tell me what I’m supposed to do,” he wrote.
He said he was directed to call a number that he later learned belonged to the Revolutionary Guards’ Intelligence Organization.
“I’ve called many times, and no one answers. My entire life has been paralyzed,” he added.
A Tehran resident responding to his account said his SIM card had also been blocked in February or March and that he had gone to a prosecutor’s office in the capital to seek its restoration.
Written pledges
Iran International has previously reported that some citizens had their SIM cards blocked after publishing content critical of the Islamic Republic online.
Some were referred to the prosecutor’s office’s cyberspace division or Gerdab to seek restoration of service. In certain cases, they said they were required to sign written pledges to refrain from further critical activity.
Several families of people killed in the January 2026 crackdown in Iran have also said their SIM cards were blocked in recent weeks without notice after they shared information about their loved ones.
Daily life disrupted
Reports received by Iran International describe how SIM card blocking has disrupted citizens’ daily lives.
Many said mobile phones and phone lines are essential for everyday activities and that losing access can disrupt banking, ride-hailing and other online services.
Citizens also said they had received no clear explanation for why their lines were blocked or how to have them restored.
They described confusion and severe disruption to their lives, saying the restrictions had been imposed without judicial proceedings.
Speaking at the 81st General Assembly on Wednesday, the president said Tehran was ready for dialogue but rejected "the language of force," called Donald Trump's words a sign of "the character of a bully and the logic of force," and held up photographs of the late Ali Khamenei and of schoolchildren killed in the strike on Minab in the war's first hours.
Three things drew the messages: the gap between the president's posture abroad and the state's conduct at home; the crackdown of January that he did not name; and the way he spoke.
'Only brave in front of us'
The most frequent reaction set the president's words in New York beside the state's words in Iran.
"The Islamic Republic wants dialogue with anyone stronger than itself," one wrote, "and bullies its own defenseless people."
Another pointed to Pezeshkian's repeated use of the word force: inside Iran the state threatens America, he wrote, and in New York it asks "why are you bullying us."
The president's own language on the January protests was not far from writers' minds. In August he called the protests a "riot" and described those who reported the killings as "cowards and traitors," remarks that had drawn an earlier wave of messages. On January 11, days after the killings, he had called the protesters "terrorists" and demanded a "decisive" response from the security forces.
One writer put it in a single line: for 47 years the Islamic Republic has been busy with terror, and now Pezeshkian comes to play the victim.
Another watched the delivery rather than the text. "People like Pezeshkian only claim power and swagger in front of us," he wrote. "From the trembling voice, the stumbles and the level of stress in his speech, it was clear how brave he is in front of real superpowers."
What he left out
Pezeshkian never used the word protests. The Iranians he described in the streets these past seven months were the crowds at the state's own rallies, organized by the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij, out at night, in his telling, to defend the country against people "America and Israel had incited and put guns in the hands of."
The millions who came out against the state, and the tens of thousands killed, did not appear in the speech at all.
A writer from Qeshm, the island in the Strait of Hormuz, said the president had repeated the state's version of the protests instead of speaking about Iran's own victims, including those killed on January 8 and 9 and in earlier crackdowns.
Others treated the speech as an occasion to list what it omitted: the protests of December 2017 and January 2018, Bloody November in 2019, the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising of 2022, the January 2026 uprising, and the poisoning of girls' schools in 2022 and 2023.
The messages came days after the UN fact-finding mission on Iran presented its latest report. Its chair, Sara Hossain, said the January crackdown had met protests with an "extremely violent" response, and that many of the violations, including killings and imprisonment, amounted to crimes against humanity.
Several writers said that Iranians themselves had been pushed to the margins of the speech. "Pezeshkian was more a defender of the Revolutionary Guards and of Palestine," one wrote, "than someone who wanted to say anything about the people of his own country."
How he said it
The third and most personal thread was the president's manner: his walk, his delivery, his command of his own text.
Many described his bearing as a street tough's swagger and compared him to Shaban Bi-Mokh, the Tehran strongman whose mobs helped bring down the government in the 1953 coup and whose nickname means "the brainless." Writers said his grip on the speech was so weak that a passerby pulled off the street and put at the UN lectern would have spoken more fluently and said more.
A writer from Tehran said he had been ashamed to watch Pezeshkian represent Iran, in a speech he found empty of manners, culture or "any diplomatic decorum."
"Why can't he speak properly?" another asked. "He talked as if someone had a gun to his head."
One writer compared the speech to those of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi and said the level of language from the president of the Islamic Republic had left him astonished.
Several concluded that the delivery reflected the office. Pezeshkian, they wrote, has no authority of his own; he reads what is written for him and handed to him.
"That is why they made him president," one wrote. "The text they write for him usually has a fixed structure, and it is on file at the foreign ministry and the presidency."
The one voice that could settle what Tehran wants from the diplomacy under way in New York has not been heard at all. Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has said nothing publicly about the contacts with Washington, the attacks on his foreign minister, or the speech itself.
He did not receive the president before the trip. And this is the first UN General Assembly in 37 years at which his father was not Iran's supreme leader.
What changed, and what did not
Before the speech, the hardline press was hostile to the trip itself. Kayhan warned that "New York is not a place for smiles and negotiations" and that the General Assembly should be turned into "a court for US crimes." Fars, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, wrote that Pezeshkian should not have gone at all.
Moderates pushed the other way: the daily Etemad recalled the meetings Iranian presidents failed to hold with Bill Clinton in 2000 and Barack Obama in 2013, and the reformist Mehdi Karroubi urged Pezeshkian to meet Donald Trump.
Pezeshkian did neither. After Trump used the UN podium to threaten to "annihilate" Iran, the president said he had rewritten his speech. He held up photographs of children killed in the strike on a school in Minab in the war's first hours alongside a portrait of the late Ali Khamenei, said Iran had defended itself "powerfully," said it remained open to negotiation, and said it would not accept "the language of coercion."
There was no offer in it, no gesture toward a meeting, nothing a hardliner could call weakness.
The praise followed within hours, and it praised the defiance.
Revolutionary Guards spokesman Hossein Mohebbi said the president had "at the heart of the system of arrogance, reproduced the message of power, pride, dignity and hope of a nation," in a statement carried by IRNA.
Iran would rely on unity "from the country's highest executive official to the brave fighters in the field and the people in the streets," he said.
Mohammad Mokhber, an adviser to the supreme leader, called Pezeshkian "a worthy representative and the voice of all Iranians" who had been "decisive, reasoned and logical."
The message, he wrote on X, was clear: "we will not bow our heads before a bully, we will not forget our martyrs and we will make the aggressors regret their actions."
Ali Abdollahi, chief of staff of the armed forces and commander of the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, Iran's wartime command, said the people "through Dr. Pezeshkian, slapped the criminal president of the United States before the eyes of the world," and that the armed forces stood "in harmony and in one voice with the people and the respected president."
Army commander Amir Hatami followed on Thursday. "Mr. President, well done. We sincerely thank you," he said, calling the address "a manifestation of the unity and coordination of all Iran against the bullying enemy."
Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote that Pezeshkian "spoke not just for a government, but for a 3,000-year-old civilization."
Every one of those statements praised the speech for what it refused. None mentioned the talks.
The missing voice
In previous years, state media made a point of showing the president meeting the supreme leader before a major trip, including before the General Assembly. The meeting was the signal: the president traveled with the leader's mandate, and everyone in Tehran knew it. No such meeting was announced this year. Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen or heard in public since he was named to succeed his father in March, and he has issued nothing on New York.
The closest anyone has come to speaking for him was Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, one of his military advisers, on Wednesday. "If the Supreme Leader has deemed it expedient and left the government's hands open in the negotiations, that is an important act of prudence," Safavi said on state television. Even the adviser spoke in the conditional.
That leaves the generals' applause doing a job the leader's meeting used to do. Their statements told Tehran that the speech was approved. What they did not tell anyone is whether the contacts around it are.
The fight that did not stop
The argument over those contacts continued through the praise, and it is an argument about authorization, not about whether to talk.
Ebrahim Rezaei, of parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, challenged Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Wednesday over his meeting in New York with US envoy Steve Witkoff. "
On the basis of which authorization and policy did the foreign minister meet the representative of the aggressor enemy?" he wrote on X. Iran's seven conditions had already been conveyed to Washington, he said, and "nothing comes from such an illegal meeting except a sign of weakness."
Tasnim, also affiliated with the Guards, called Araghchi's explanation "childish and vile" and, citing Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, said the approved plan had been to pass the conditions through mediators, not to meet Witkoff. It called the meeting "a major error." Fars argued the contact had eased pressure on Washington without securing anything.
On Thursday Ali Khezrian, another member of the Committee, said Araghchi had not been authorized to hold direct talks and that MPs had registered a motion to impeach him. "Araghchi must, after returning from his trip, answer in parliament on what basis this conversation with the American side took place," he said.
The foreign minister had defenders. MP Mojtaba Zarei said his own inquiries showed Araghchi had been authorized to meet Witkoff. "There was and is no negotiation," he wrote; the seven conditions had been delivered directly to Trump's envoy. Mohebbi, for the Guards, had already set the terms: "We don't reject diplomacy, but we impose our own conditions. Our defensive power will be proven in the field."
The man who stayed in his seat
A second row concerned Nasser Asadi, a member of Iran's UN mission who remained in the hall during Trump's address. Hossein Ali Haji-Deligani, deputy head of parliament's Article 90 Committee, which handles public complaints against state bodies, called it "a source of shame and regret" and said MPs would use "all supervisory tools, including the impeachment of Araghchi." Hardline accounts contrasted Asadi with delegations that walked out.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei defended him. "Iran's seat in a place such as the United Nations General Assembly is our trench," he said. "If we are supposed to leave this trench because of the harsh words, hostility and insults of others, then we certainly have not done our duty."
As President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived for the UN General Assembly, the messages came in with a phrase that recurred until it became the story's own name: the "killers in suits." The demand attached to it was the same almost every time. Arrest them.
Voices from Iran draws on messages sent to Iran International by people inside the country. Names are withheld for their safety.
The demand
A writer from Fardis, on the western edge of Karaj, pointed to the latest human rights reports and asked why officials responsible for crushing 40,000 protesters in January were not being detained in New York.
Another wrote simply that now they were there, this was a good chance to arrest Pezeshkian and Araghchi.
The UN fact-finding mission on Iran said in its new report that many of the violations committed in the crackdown on the January 2026 protests, including murder, imprisonment and severe deprivation of liberty, amounted to crimes against humanity. Its chair, Sara Hossain, said the true number of victims could be "significantly" higher than the government's own figure.
One writer suggested that while the officials were at the United Nations, footage and documents of the killings should be handed to the same body. Others addressed Donald Trump directly, asking him to act on the crackdown rather than host or negotiate with the delegation.
And several turned to Zohran Mamdani, who as a candidate for mayor of New York said he would have Benjamin Netanyahu arrested if the Israeli prime minister set foot in the city, citing the International Criminal Court warrant against him.
"The mayor of New York who wanted to arrest Netanyahu," one wrote, "does he by any chance not intend to arrest the criminals in suits who sit on the Supreme National Security Council and whose signatures are on the massacre of January 8 and 9?"
The visas
A second thread was anger at what writers called the West's double standard: condemning the repression while receiving the men accused of it.
"My question is this," one wrote. "Didn't Mr. Trump always talk about the January massacre? So why has he given visas to the ringleaders of the killers of Iran's children?"
The State Department has said that admitting the core members of the Iranian delegation was an obligation Washington carries as host of the United Nations, and that the delegation's movements were restricted. The US government also agreed to Araghchi's request for a security detail during his stay.
"Bodies attached to the United Nations say the leaders of the Islamic Republic have committed crimes against humanity," another writer addressed the president. "Why are they now freely, and even under your escort, in America and at the UN?"
Not everyone expected an arrest. One writer said it was probably beyond the West to detain the officials, and proposed instead that Iranians abroad gather outside UN headquarters.
'A puppet'
The other constant in the messages was that Pezeshkian does not decide anything, and that his presence at the UN is a performance of the system that does.
Writers called him a marionette, a wind-up doll, and the tea boy of the power mafia, and called the trip a circus staged for legitimacy.
Some pointed to how little it achieved. One wrote that for years the Islamic Republic's only gain from attending the UN had been shopping in New York, and that Trump had taken even that away.
Last September the State Department restricted the Iranian delegation's access to wholesale and luxury stores during its stay.
Beneath the mockery ran a fear. Several writers worried that a deal might be struck, and that the file on the killings would be pushed aside for it.
Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi said Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s decision to leave the government’s “hands open” in negotiations reflected significant strategic judgment.
“If the Supreme Leader has deemed it expedient and left the government’s hands open in the negotiations, that is an important act of prudence,” Safavi said in a televised interview.
He also pointed to coordination between Iran’s military and political leadership and said he hoped decisions by the Supreme National Security Council would help prevent another war.
The remarks provided rare public confirmation from a senior military figure that Pezeshkian’s government has the leadership’s approval to pursue negotiations. They followed a day of indirect exchanges between Iranian and US delegations in New York, though major differences remain over Washington’s naval blockade and Tehran’s conditions for ending the conflict.
The prospect of diplomacy also exposed competing views inside Iran over how far Pezeshkian should go.
Lawmaker Ebrahim Rezaei and the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim and Fars news agencies criticized Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s meeting with US envoy Steve Witkoff. Rezaei questioned its authorization and called it a “sign of weakness,” while the outlets argued that it rewarded Washington and eased pressure on the United States.
Reformist politician Gholamhossein Karbaschi, meanwhile, said the president should meet Trump to help resolve the country’s problems, echoing a similar appeal from senior reformist figure Mehdi Karroubi.
Lawmaker Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani went further, predicting that a Pezeshkian-Trump meeting would take place in New York.
“In my view, the meeting between Pezeshkian and Trump will take place,” he said. “Last year, Pezeshkian decided to meet, but the Americans did not show up.”
Bakhshayesh Ardestani, a member of parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, also advocated acquiring a nuclear weapon before leaving the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
“Buy or build the atomic bomb, then say you are withdrawing from the NPT,” he said, while acknowledging that senior officials were not currently seeking withdrawal.
The competing statements illustrated the political constraints surrounding the New York diplomacy: Pezeshkian is said to have received apparent backing to negotiate, but officials and political factions remain divided over direct contact with Trump and the concessions Iran should seek or offer.
Those talks are unfolding as US economic pressure begins to narrow Iran’s international connections. Iranian airlines continued operating some foreign services Wednesday after a US deadline aimed at grounding the country’s fleet by threatening sanctions against companies providing fuel, ground handling, ticketing and other services.
Bloomberg cited flight-tracking data showing at least six flights leaving Iran for destinations including Bangkok, Phuket, Shanghai and Kabul after the restrictions took effect.
But the pressure appeared to be uneven rather than ineffective. Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization said flights to Baghdad and Muscat had been canceled, while Azerbaijan suspended Iranian airline services and Turkish Airlines halted its flights to Iran until at least March 2027.
The restrictions add urgency to Tehran’s diplomacy by extending the economic confrontation beyond shipping and oil into civilian aviation. At home, however, authorities sought to show that wartime damage was being repaired.
An Oil Ministry official said around half of the damaged capacity at the South Pars gas field had returned to service and that the remaining planned restoration work would be completed before winter.
At the same time, a report of a deeper Iranian military role in Yemen showed how the conflict continues to extend across the region. IRGC personnel were on the ground helping the Houthis seize Yemen’s Red Sea coast from pro-government forces, the Associated Press reported, citing 10 officials and soldiers.
The report said Iranian personnel helped direct a rapid 115-kilometer offensive, marking Tehran’s most direct intervention on behalf of the Houthis since Yemen’s civil war began in 2014. Houthi forces also penetrated the communications of the National Resistance, allowing them to monitor movements and sow confusion.
That reported intervention could complicate efforts to contain the conflict while Tehran and Washington negotiate. Iran is signaling that its government has authority to pursue an agreement, but its regional military posture and the expanding sanctions campaign continue to generate pressure that could either drive diplomacy forward or deepen the confrontation.
Tar balls have been reported in several parts of Hormozgan province, including Soro and Golshahr in Bandar Abbas, with additional sightings reported in Hormuz and Minab, ISNA said.
Habib Masihi Taziani, head of Hormozgan’s environmental protection department, told ISNA that the amount found in Sirik was substantial and that experts were still assessing the extent of the contamination.
“The volume of tar balls in Sirik is significant,” he said, adding that authorities had begun work to manage the pollution with fisheries officials, port authorities, the Sirik governor’s office and the provincial crisis management agency.
Pollution reaches shrimp farming channels
The spread to the entrances of shrimp farming channels in Sirik has raised concern because aquaculture facilities there are directly connected to coastal waters.
Masihi Taziani told ISNA that conventional suction equipment was not effective for removing the tar balls.
“Collecting these oil masses with suction equipment is difficult,” he said. “Efforts are continuing to contain them and collect them using absorbent pads and other equipment.”
Tar balls are weathered remnants of petroleum products that can travel across the sea before washing ashore.
Officials warn pollution could persist for years
Ahmadreza Lahijanzadeh, deputy head of Iran’s Department of Environment for marine affairs, told ISNA the tar balls could cause significant damage to coastal and marine ecosystems.
“These oil masses can cause considerable environmental damage, and the resulting pollution can affect coastal and marine ecosystems,” he said.
Lahijanzadeh said organic compounds and heavy metals contained in the material could gradually enter the water and spread through the marine environment.
“The effects of this type of pollution are not limited to the period when the tar balls are visible on the coast,” he told ISNA.
“The entry and accumulation of these materials can cause pollution to remain in the sea for a long time, even for years,” he added, calling for continued monitoring and measures to identify and contain it.
The latest sightings follow several oil pollution incidents along Iran’s southern coastline in recent weeks.
In August, Iranian state news agency IRNA reported that oil had reached mangrove forests on Qeshm island after slicks appeared near Suza and Shib Deraz. Authorities said at the time that the source had not been determined.
Mehr news agency reported that the pollution had initially been detected along about one kilometer of coast near Suza before spreading toward Shib Deraz.
TankerTrackers.com later said the Qeshm pollution appeared to have come from an Iranian attack on the bulk carrier Minoan Pioneer off Oman on August 3, with the spill drifting across the Strait of Hormuz toward Iran. Iranian authorities did not confirm that assessment.
Tanker spills add to pollution concerns
A separate spill was reported off Oman after the tanker Caroline Bezengi, carrying Russian crude, ran aground.
The UN’s International Maritime Organization said oil from the vessel had begun reaching Oman’s mainland, while Oman’s Environment Authority said the slick covered about 150 square miles near the Hallaniyat Islands.
Reuters, citing maritime security sources, reported that the vessel’s crew had first reported difficulties off Yemen in June and that initial assessments pointed to an onboard blast.
