Firsthand reports from contributors inside Iran
My sister sent me a satirical video last night: someone joking that instead of adjusting the clocks for daylight saving, Iran's government is dragging 85 million people back and forth. It hit a nerve.
She and her husband both work in the public sector. They now have to work from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. as the government forces offices to shut down during peak heat hours to curb electricity use.“The people making these decisions think everyone owns a car or can afford rideshare every day,” she said. “Most of us rely on buses. Not everyone lives within 30 minutes of work. For us, the commute is at least an hour. It’s exhausting.”
To be at work by 6, they wake at 4:30. The metro is too far, so they rely on buses, which now begin service only slightly earlier—at 5:30 a.m. Their children’s school hasn’t changed its start time to match, and nurseries don’t open before 7:30, leaving working parents stuck in the dark—literally and figuratively.
From 1991 to 2022, Iran observed daylight saving time. But then the conservative-led parliament repealed the law, claiming it caused confusion and disrupted the economy. The government tried to reverse course with an urgent bill, but parliament blocked it.So we are stuck with fixed clocks—just as we are with the incompetent bunch ruling, and ruining, our country.
Blackouts are now a daily affair. They’ve hit businesses, factories, homes—even as the Supreme Leader declared this the “Year of Investment for Production.”Images of producers burning heaps of spoiled eggs due to outages have gone viral, along with photos of diesel generators lined up outside homes and shops.
“You cry if you don’t laugh,” my sister says. “Most people who post or see these images on social media are raging inside.”
The minor schedule tweaks in cities like Tehran haven’t helped much, and conditions are even worse in smaller towns. Many schools still refuse to shift their hours, creating logistical nightmares for parents juggling long commutes and childcare.
Then there’s the water crisis.We live in a four-story building where water pressure has dropped so much that the upper floors barely receive any.Officials now warn that by summer 2025, apartments above the second floor will face complete water cuts unless they install electric pumps. But with power outages so frequent, even that solution is flawed.
In practice, this means residents on lower floors get by, while those higher up are left dry. Once again, the burden has shifted to the public.
More than 40 cities across Iran are under water stress, according to official figures. Millions are affected—and occasionally insulted by clerics pontificating about the link between drought and sin.
“The government can’t be blamed for lack of rain,” my brother-in-law interjects as he walks past the sofa my sister and I are slumped on.
“To be fair, it can’t be blamed for worn-out infrastructure either, or for sanctions, or the failure to coordinate and communicate basic schedules. It has just one job: to make your lives miserable. And that it’s performed to perfection if your faces lit by your phones’ glow are any measure.”
On messaging apps like Telegram, channels advertise “Islamic marriage services.”
The language is coded—halal sigheh, “marriage under sharia supervision,” or “regulated Islamic companionship” — but the business model is simple: pick, pay and meet.
Under Iran's Shi'ite Muslim legal code, men are legally permitted to enter into temporary marriages for a fixed period—ranging from minutes to years—without court approval or official registration.
These marriages automatically dissolve when the agreed-upon time expires.
Iran International encountered a functioning industry of religiously sanctioned pimping, one that exploits the legal ambiguity of sigheh to facilitate sex work. Many users are conned. But some are not.
While screenshots were translated from Farsi, no photos—even blurred ones—have been included in this report, as we could not verify whether the women pictured were genuinely behind the profiles used in these exchanges.
Iran International contacted several channels and in half the cases, different women responded from different numbers. One sent audio replies. Another agreed to meet in person—for a cash exchange, if a deposit was paid.
In another case, a woman offered options for a short-term arrangement and said she was working “with the support of a governmental office,” insisting that payment be made to their account first.
To obtain a woman’s contact information alone, clients are typically asked to pay between 3 million to 5 million rials (roughly $3.50 to $6 at current exchange rates). Full service arrangements labeled as “monthly sigheh contracts” range from 70 to 400 million rials ($83 to $476), with rates varying based on location, age or even height.
In one case in Iran International's investigation, a woman arranged to meet at a metro station in west Tehran after initial negotiations, with two rounds of fees—labeled as 'identification' and 'dowry'—required as conditions to be paid after the meeting.
“Bring the balance in cash,” she instructed. “After we talk, if you’re satisfied, we go somewhere.” Her tone was direct and businesslike. The transaction mirrored sex work in every way—except it was presented as a religious contract.
'Virginity guaranteed'
The channels involved do not describe sigheh as a sexual service. Instead, they variously frame it as a “pious alternative to sinful behavior”—“a way to support chaste women,” one wrote.
Listings often include physical traits, education level and place of residence. Some promise “virginity guaranteed.” Longer-term packages come with varying price tags—often higher for women labeled as educated or Tehran-based.
“We only use women who are under the protection of the Islamic Republic. No funny business. Everything is legal under sharia,” wrote another channel.
Behind that language lies a structured operation. Clients are matched. Money is transferred through intermediary accounts—typically under male names.
Some users told Iran International that they had even received handwritten contracts and met women after paying.
Yet scams still exist. Some men are strung along with fake profiles and asked for repeated payments—dowries, insurance fees, “pregnancy contingencies”—only to have contact cut off once the money is sent.
One man in Karaj who spoke on condition of anonymity told Iran International: “I sent money three times. Each time there was a new excuse. The last time, they asked for an abortion deposit. Then she vanished.”
The online platforms are not licensed or regulated by the state but are not shut down either. Their visibility on domestic platforms points to at least a passive tolerance from authorities.
Even Fars News, which is close to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, wrote on the phenomenon on Wednesday but mostly sought to discredit the platforms as a scam aiming to defraud credulous men.
But it also implicitly acknowledged the existence of real actors within the system.
“Our field investigation shows that many of these pages lack any official or legal license and are mostly created for purposes such as fraud, extortion, and even the dissemination of users' personal information,” the outlet wrote.
The use of “many” rather than “all” leaves room for exceptions—an implicit admission that not every channel is fake and that some do involve actual individuals, transactions, and encounters.
An apparent official tolerance of sigheh as a moral buffer against paid sex appears to have opened the door to commodifying women under theological cover. Prostitution is criminalized and punished, yet sigheh remains legal and broadly interpreted—creating a religiously sanctioned loophole.
“Pimping is illegal,” said a Tehran-based legal expert who requested anonymity for security reasons. “But sigheh offers a loophole. If the woman agrees, there’s a contract, and it’s framed as religious—who’s going to prosecute it?”
The line between religiously permitted marriage and outright sexual commerce is not just blurred—it has become a business model. For the Islamic Republic, it is one that hides in plain sight, cloaked in doctrine and fueled by tanking standards of living and deepening poverty.
Far from being limited to scams, the sigheh economy has become a channel for monetizing sexual access under the guise of religious propriety.
