Iranians protest outside German consulate over frozen visas since June war

The café’s Instagram page had advertised a Friday gathering with a DJ and cash prizes for participants. But it later posted an image of a police closure notice and urged followers not to attend.

Despite extensive legal restrictions, more women have taken up motorcycles in Iranian cities in recent years, particularly since the protests over Mahsa Amini’s death in morality police custody. The trend has spread beyond Tehran to places such as Yazd and other provinces, according to officials.

Under current law, women are barred from obtaining motorcycle licenses. The traffic code amendment passed in 2010 specifies men only, leaving women who ride in a legal vacuum. Driving without a license is an offense, yet enforcement against women riders has been uneven, with police issuing warnings or seizing bikes at their discretion.

Kazem Delkhosh, deputy in the parliamentary affairs office of President Masoud Pezeshkian, said in August the government is considering changes. “We are preparing legislation for women who want to ride and the women’s affairs office is also working on a bill,” Delkhosh told the state-run Iran newspaper.

Lack of licensing carries wider consequences, he added. “If a female rider is injured or causes damage, there is no license to hold her accountable or for insurance to cover losses,” Delkhosh said.

Senior police officials maintain the current ban is binding. “According to existing law, licenses for female motorcyclists cannot be issued,” the deputy head of the traffic police said last month.

Religious ban

Clerics often argue that women riding motorcycles (or bicycles) in public settings may attract male attention, threaten societal morality, and undermine women’s chastity—even if they're fully covered.

Others, however, argue the restrictions are inconsistent. “If a woman can drive a bus or truck and earn people’s trust, why not a motorcycle?” sociologist Maryam Yousefi asked in an interview with Iran newspaper.

Rights groups have repeatedly called for change. On International Women’s Day this year, 30 organizations demanded an end to gender-based discrimination.

The sealing of the café has once more underscored the clash between social realities and restrictions, leaving women riders caught between growing public visibility and an unresolved legal void.

In the hardline Kayhan daily, columnist Jafar Bolouri described the country’s situation as “extraordinary,” cautioning that a new war could erupt at any moment alongside worsening economic and social pressure. He said the government’s priorities “do not match the situation,” accusing it of focusing on secondary issues instead of inflation, which “creates openings for enemies to exploit.”

The IRGC-linked Javan wrote that Western powers, unable to achieve their goals in the June 12-day war, are now using the snapback process as part of a “cognitive war” to inflame the economy and provoke unrest. “Supporters of the Zionist regime…exploit the snapback and hostile media to stir inflation, currency volatility and social unrest,” the paper said, warning that “domestic infiltrators” amplify these pressures.

The reformist Ham Mihan criticized what it called complacency among officials. “Snapback leads to the return of Security Council resolutions and gives sanctions a binding legal character. Evading them will be very difficult and costly,” the paper said. It added: “Some believe snapback adds little to existing sanctions. Such an interpretation is completely wrong.”

Snapback countdown

On August 28, Britain, France and Germany triggered the UN snapback mechanism, demanding that Tehran return to talks, grant inspectors wider access and account for its uranium stockpile. Under Resolution 2231, sanctions will automatically return after 30 days unless the Security Council votes otherwise.

Tehran has rejected the step. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas in Doha on Thursday that the decision was “illegal and unjustifiable,” and insisted that the EU should “play its role in fulfilling its responsibilities to neutralize moves against diplomacy.”

IAEA report raises alarm

A confidential report by the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 60% remains “a matter of serious concern” after inspectors lost visibility following Israeli and US strikes in June. The report noted Iran had 440.9 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium as of June 13, a short step from weapons-grade levels.

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi told Reuters: “It would be ideal to reach an agreement before next week. It’s not something that can drag on for months.”

Officials downplay risks

Not all voices share the newspapers’ sense of alarm. IRGC political deputy Yadollah Javani called snapback talk a “psychological operation” to mask Western defeat in the June war. Babak Negahdari, head of parliament’s research center, argued that “the real pressure on Iran has come from US secondary sanctions,” and said any UN measures could be blunted by Russia and China, though he acknowledged “psychological and economic side effects if not handled carefully.”

Former presidential chief of staff Mahmoud Vaezi stressed that “some individuals do not understand the sensitivity of this moment” and warned against rhetoric that fuels division. He said the 12-day war had proved “national cohesion has completely overturned the enemy’s calculations,” and urged leaders to focus on preserving unity.

Ali Akbar Velayati, a top foreign policy adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Friday Trump’s actions resembled the aggressive policies of Nazi Germany before the Second World War.

“Political experts believe that Trump pursued a path once tested by the head of Nazi Germany, who managed to terrify the Western world by starting World War II in September 1939. In practice, Hitler’s bullying tactics were repeated by Trump,” he told the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News.

Velayati said Western powers today are acquiescing to Trump just as Britain, France and Italy once fell under Hitler’s sway.

“At that time Britain was at the peak of its power, France had been strong since Napoleon, and Italy rose after Garibaldi. These three were intimidated by Hitler, and now history has repeated itself."

"Mr. Trump, without learning from the past, is walking the same path — a path that will not be favorable to him,” he added.

China-led bloc to decide word's fate in future

Earlier this week, China hosted the leaders of Russia, India, North Korea, and Iran at a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin. The gathering, along with a Chinese military parade on its sidelines, was widely seen as a show of strength directed at archrival America.

“Mr. Xi Jinping, after years of successful governance, was able at this summit to reap the fruits of the important and measured efforts he had pursued based on Chinese wisdom, and even brought his longtime rival, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to Beijing," Velayati said.

He also cited Trump’s recent Alaska pact concerning Ukraine, signed “without consulting his Western counterparts,” and said the Shanghai summit showed the move had quickly backfired.

China has shown “patience and composure in silencing Trump’s footsteps,” Velayati said, adding that Beijing is calmly countering US pressure.

The policy of relying on Asia or the East, particularly China and Russia, was promulgated by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in 2018, with the catchphrase, “Looking East”.

"We should look East, not West. Pinning our hope on the West or Europe would belittle us as we will have to beg them for favors and they will do nothing," Khamenei said in a speech in October 2018.

In one video, a woman with a broken leg, filmed in a hospital, pleads with officials to step aside if they cannot provide basic services.

“Why in the 21st century should we have power outages?” she asks. “If you can’t run the country properly, you better get lost.”

She explains that her diabetes requires overnight monitoring before surgery.

Another clip shows a woman describing repeated falls in the dark. Pointing to a cane on the floor, she says: “Now I have to move around with this. I swear to God I don’t even have a single rial to go to the doctor and get an X-ray.”

Other footage shows a man trapped in an elevator after a sudden outage, urging that buildings be equipped with emergency systems to prevent such dangers.

Daily disruptions

From Sari to Mashhad, residents describe routine blackouts at night and during business hours.

A young man in Sari says the power cuts every evening from 9 to 11 p.m., while a merchant in Mashhad films a bazaar left in darkness.

“Look at the bazaar,” he says. “How can these people make a living and pay their rent?”

In Tehran, a customer records shoppers enduring stifling heat in a hypermarket after air conditioning and lighting failed.

“This place used to be cool and comfortable, but now everything is off,” he says. “People are forced to shop in this unbearable heat.”

Official response

Energy Minister Abbas Ali Abadi has promised improvements.

“Soon the water situation will improve, the gas situation will improve, and weather conditions will also cooperate,” he said this week, before adding the telling qualification: “God willing.”

But Iran’s reliance on decades-old thermal power plants—still providing over 80% of electricity—alongside shrinking hydroelectric capacity due to prolonged droughts has left the grid deeply vulnerable.

Spring hydro output has collapsed from about 6,500–7,000 megawatts to only 2,500.

Public embarrassment

The crisis has also spilled onto national television.

One widely shared clip shows a state broadcast plunging into darkness shortly after a lawmaker claimed an alleged Israeli pilot’s “confession” would soon air.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry mocked the scene on X, posting in Persian: “Just make sure the power doesn’t go out in the middle of broadcasting the confession.”

The Daily Express said men of Middle Eastern and Eastern European origin living in the UK have been approached to form informal networks of sleeper cells and lone-wolf actors.

“An arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has used the internet and social media to put in place an informal but complex mosaic of sleeper cells and lone-wolf operatives across the country, ready to act at the behest of the regime," the report added.

The Daily Express said their main roles involve spying, intimidation, and harassment, but claimed MI5 agents had uncovered at least one bomb plot that “could have been as devastating as the 7/7 London bombings," the suicide attacks in central London on 7 July 2005 that killed 56 people and injured 784 others.

On Thursday, the British government said it "has long recognized there is a persistent and growing physical threat to people posed by Iran to the UK."

"Direct action against UK targets has substantially increased over recent years," the government wrote, vowing to counter Iran's escalating attacks on the UK soil.

"We have taken significant steps to ensure the safety of UK citizens and ensure our
world-leading law enforcement and intelligence agencies have the tools they need to
disrupt and degrade the threats that we face from Iran," the government added.

The government report came in the form of point-by-point responses to a July 10 Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee on Iran which said Iran poses one of the gravest state-based threats to British national security, on par those from Russia and China.

The government confirmed parliament's findings that Iranian intelligence has developed close ties with criminal gangs "to expand the capability of its networks and obscure their involvement in malign activity."

The parliamentary report concluded Iran is increasingly willing to carry out assassinations, espionage and cyber attacks within the United Kingdom

Tehran's embassy in London at the time rejected the allegations as "baseless, politically motivated and hostile claims."