A sweeping government-imposed internet blackout has slashed sales, frozen online trade and pushed thousands of small businesses to the brink, according to business owners and industry groups, exposing deep vulnerabilities in Iran’s digital economy.
Iranian bank branches are facing growing shortages of cash as demand for banknotes rises sharply, prompting informal daily withdrawal caps of 30 million to 50 million rials per customer (about $18 to $30), Iranian media reported.
The possibility of US military action against Iran is eroding Iranians’ purchasing power and deepening their sense of insecurity, according to Iranian economic news outlets which provide a rare window into economic behavior amid an internet blackout.
President Donald Trump’s response to Iran’s recent unrest appears to reflect a strategy of gunboat diplomacy: the use of military pressure, rhetorical escalation, and economic coercion to extract concessions without committing to war or formal regime change.
Mojtaba Khamenei, the 56-year-old son of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, directs a significant overseas real estate network through intermediaries, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday citing a year-long investigation.
Iran’s internet, throttled for 20 days amid the mass killing of protesters, began to partially resume on Wednesday, according to monitoring groups and users inside the country, who said access remains heavily restricted and unstable.
Amirhossein (Iman) Seyrafi, a former political prisoner and digital security expert previously accused of spying for the United States, has been arrested amid Iran’s sweeping crackdown on dissent, sources familiar with the matter told Iran International.
Many Iranians on social media have been referring to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as ‘Moush-Ali’ (Rat-Ali), a nickname rooted in reports that he has repeatedly gone into underground seclusion and now echoed at rallies inside Iran and in diaspora protests.
Iranians’ chants against the Islamic Republic—muted for now by brute force—are viewed in Turkey not as a struggle for freedom but as a geopolitical risk from migration and militancy.
Iran International
Host of nightly show The Program
Iran International
Iran International
Iran International
Iran International
Iran International
Iran International
Iran International
I am writing this from Tehran after three days of trying to find a way to send it: things may get a lot worse before they get any better.
There is a cruel ritual in Iranian opposition politics: some voices abroad constantly interrogate the “purity” of activists inside—why they did not speak more sharply or endorse maximalist slogans, why survival itself looks insufficiently heroic.
