Medicine shortages and rising prices in Iran are fueling widespread anxiety according to testimonials received by Iran International, as the reimposition of UN sanctions last month deepens economic pain for ordinary citizens.
Iranian respondents to a bulletin requesting input on their experiences seeking medicine submitted audio, video and text messages detailing daily struggles.
Several messages said the prices of both basic and specialized medicines have multiplied in recent weeks, forcing many to visit multiple pharmacies to find affordable essential drugs.
Some reported that even common cold and allergy medications are in short supply, adding that there appeared to be a near-immediate change after the sanctions' return.
Iran's Supreme National Security Council had previously ordered domestic media to limit coverage of the UN sanctions and portray their consequences as minimal.
While Iranian officials have sought to downplay the impact, the complaints from the public suggest otherwise.
Prices triple, quality falls
Some said drug prices have tripled or quadrupled while quality has declined. One consumer said the price of a five-tablet pack of antihistamines rose from 250,000 rials (about $2.16) to 1.2 million rials (about $10.37) in a month.
Others described searching multiple pharmacies only to find a lone remaining box of medicine sold at inflated prices.
“Previously, the medications we needed were available, and with approval from the Hemophilia Center and the Food and Drug Organization, we could obtain them from pharmacies. But now these drugs have become scarce, and we have to pay 20 million rials ($173) for each one,” one audio message said.
Iran’s minimum wage for 2025 is 104 million rials per month, equivalent to about $94.
Some messages indicated that people have had to ration medicines, skip meals, or make other sacrifices to afford treatment.
“My medicines were already expensive before the war and before sanctions, but now they are rationed. I have to skip meals because after every meal I need a pill, and I can’t afford more," A diabetic respondent said.
Another respondent said he had reduced his family’s food intake to pay for his wife’s medication. A homemaker reported spending over 60 million rials (about $518) on gastrointestinal drugs despite not earning an income.
Blame and frustration
Many Iranians blamed government policies for the crisis.
“The medicines were already scarce and expensive, but after the UN sanctions they became worse. Officials are not suffering; it’s the middle class and workers,” one respondent said.
Officials in Iran routinely attribute shortages to foreign pressure, while critics and dissidents cite mismanagement and corruption.
“Lawful permanent residence was always considered secure — almost unassailable,” Nia said. “To see people who have lived and worked here for years suddenly detained or deported with little to no process is alarming. ICE appears to be acting unlawfully in many of these cases, without proper judicial oversight."
US media reported this week that two Iranian green card holders were arrested in recent months by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in cases apparently involving minor crimes.
The administration of US President Donald Trump has stepped up efforts to detain and deport some green card holders citing past crimes or political activity at odds with its values. Most of the cases are being contested in courts.
Under US immigration law, green-card holders can only be deported in limited circumstances, such as when they commit certain crimes, falsify immigration documents, or remain outside the country for extended periods.
Nia said what is happening now goes far exceeds those bounds.
“Deporting Iranians who fled repression — or sending them to third countries like Sudan, Rwanda or Somalia — violates both international law and America’s own treaty obligations,” she said.
“This normalization of lawlessness should concern every American.”
In Los Angeles, NBC News reported that Sharareh Moghaddam, a small-business owner who had already passed her citizenship exam, was detained after attending what she thought was a routine immigration appointment. Her husband, Hooshang Aghdassi, said she had entered the country legally and had no record of wrongdoing.
“She had green card and passed exam for citizenship and was waiting for the ceremony,” Aghdassi told NBC. “She is not a bank robber or thief or criminal.”
ICE rejected that account, telling NBC Los Angeles in a written statement that reports claiming Moghaddam had no criminal history were “completely FALSE.” The agency described her as “an Iranian native and citizen with a documented criminal history dating back to 2015,” citing two theft convictions between 2015 and 2019, and concluded that she was “subject to removal under US immigration law.”
Newseek reported last month Reza Zavvar, a 52-year-old green card holder in Maryland who has lived in the United States for four decades, was detained for seventy-seven days by ICE in a case related to a marijuana charge in the nineties.
Zavvar, who first came to the country as a child, described his treatment as “unnecessary, inhumane, corrupt.”
“Saying that you can stay here as long as you don’t get in trouble, that you stay clean and just stay here, work, pay taxes — and that’s what I was doing,” Zavvar told the news outlet.
Iranians sent back from US without consent, lawyer says
More recently, 120 Iranians — including political dissidents and Christian converts — were deported to Tehran.
This comes after The New York Times reported that the operation followed “months of negotiations” between Washington and Iranian officials, and that the deportees were flown aboard US-chartered aircraft that left from a military airport in Louisiana, stopped in Puerto Rico to collect more passengers, and continued to Doha before their transfer to Iran.
Immigration attorney Ali Herischi, of Herischi & Associates in Maryland, told Iran International that two of his clients were among those deported against their will. “Their belongings — including their files, evidence and cell phones — have been handed to Iranian authorities. That’s very dangerous,” Herischi said.
He added that some detainees were given a stark choice: “ICE would say, ‘either you consent to deportation to Iran, or we send you to Somalia or Sudan.’ It was, ‘pick your poison.’ In the case of my clients, they didn’t even get that. They just said, ‘you’re done, let’s go.’”
Another Iranian national, Erfan Qaneifard, a political activist and writer, has been held for six months at the Prairieland Detention Center in Texas.
His lawyer, Masoud Peyma, told Iran International that ICE contacted Iran’s Interests Section in Washington seeking travel papers to deport him. “The risk is real. If he is sent back, his life will be in danger,” Peyma said. “There is no reason for him to remain in detention after six months.”
For Nia, these cases expose a broader collapse of process and accountability within the immigration system.
“It’s the normalization of a lack of process — the idea that even a green card, or eventually citizenship, could become conditional on political speech,” she said. “That’s authoritarianism creeping into the system.”
Civil-rights groups echoed those concerns, warning that forced returns could endanger vulnerable Iranians.
“Asylum seekers now face the possibility of being returned to a country where they have a well-founded fear of persecution,” the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, Pars Equality Center, and the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans said in a joint statement.
“This runs against core American values as a nation based on hope, freedom, and liberty that has long welcomed people facing oppression who, in turn, have contributed mightily to America," the statement read.
ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to Iran International requests for comment on these cases.
The court sentenced the six — Nasser Rajab, Mahindokht Sa’adatmand Menashadi, Naghmeh Mirza Agha, Samar Masoudi, Mahshid Safidi Miyandoab, and Mona Zakaei — to five months in prison, a two-year travel ban, and a ban on social activities.
They were previously handed 10-month prison terms and the same restrictions by a lower court.
In seperate case, an Iranian court sentenced Keyvan Dehghani, a Baha’i citizen from the central city of Isfahan, to six years in prison, two years of exile, and a fine of 1.2 billion rials (about $1,040), according to information received by Iran International.
Authorities also confiscated mobile phones, laptops, and cash, and destroyed the family’s photo albums and personal photographs during a raid on his home.
Baha'is constitute the largest religious minority in Iran and have faced systematic harassment and persecution since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
The Islamic Republic does not recognize the Baha’i faith as an official religion, unlike Christianity, Judaism or Zoroastrianism.
The Iranian Baha’i community has faced nearly 1,500 years in prison sentences over the past five years, according to a report by HRANA in August this year.
