About a quarter of cafés in parts of Iran have shut down in the past three months, according to a senior industry official who says protests, legal pressure and economic strain have severely affected the sector.
Ali Za’fari, deputy head of the coffee shop owners’ union, said cafés have faced waves of closures, legal cases and official sealing orders since protests began earlier this year.
“From the beginning of the protests, there were lots of reports about cafés – from sealing to judicial cases and the closure of many of them,” he was cited as saying by the website Kafenevesht.
He said business activity has not recovered despite some customers returning. “Customers more or less came back to cafés, but the situation is not like before,” Za’fari said, adding that many venues are still closing in silence or operating only partially.
“In the past three months, 25 percent of cafés have shut down,” he said. Za’fari added that conditions worsened during the protests and that the union’s efforts to defend café owners “barely” produce results.
The difficulties facing cafés reflect broader challenges for small businesses, particularly those dependent on daily customer traffic.
The crackdown on protests and the prolonged internet blackout have aggravated an already strained economy, leaving businesses facing uncertainty as Iran remains in a prolonged economic and political limbo.
The disruption has coincided with continued tensions and diplomatic talks unfolding under the shadow of potential military escalation, further complicating the outlook for investment and employment.
Job marker on ‘red alert’
Separate data based on figures from the online recruitment platform IranTalent indicate that hiring demand across the economy has also fallen sharply since internet restrictions were imposed last month.
According to the analysis, overall hiring demand has dropped by 57 percent since nationwide internet disruptions began. The decline has been especially severe among small and medium-sized companies.
In the first three weeks of the international internet blackout, demand for new hires at these firms fell by 74 percent compared with the period before the restrictions, according to the same data.
IranTalent’s chief executive, Asiyeh Hatami, described the job market as being in a “red alert” state and warned of a wave of employment contracts that may not be renewed at the end of the year.
The figures indicate a broad slowdown in hiring activity, particularly among smaller employers.
Za’fari said the pressure on cafés has continued even after the most visible enforcement actions subsided, with many businesses shutting down without public announcements.
While some cafés remain open, he said, the sector continues to face legal, economic and operational challenges following the unrest and related restrictions.
Human rights investigators say evidence indicates Sam Afshari was alive when security forces detained him in the city of Karaj, but was later killed by a gunshot wound to the head consistent with an execution carried out after his arrest.
“The bullet entered through the back of his head and exited through his face," Shahin Milani, IHRDC Executive Director told Iran International.
"The injury he sustained during the protests was not the shot that killed him,” Milani said.
Before leaving to join the protests, Sam sent a final message to his father on Jan 7.
“Dad, don’t tell mom anything. I’m going to fight for my rights. Iran is in danger. Please don’t tell my mother.”
His father, Parviz Afshari, who lives in Germany, would spend days searching for answers after his son disappeared.
According to Milani, testimony gathered from the family indicates that Sam’s initial injury during the protests was not fatal.
Residents living nearby Taleghani Square in Karaj saw that Sam had been wounded and attempted to bring him inside to help. Before they could do so, security forces arrived and dragged him away while he was still alive, according to his father’s account.
"The inhuman repressive forces dragged my son," Parviz told IRHDC in a video recording.
After that, he vanished.
“When his family eventually recovered his body, it was clear he had been shot again,” Milani said.
Where the fatal shooting occurred remains unclear. Sam’s father received conflicting accounts — one suggesting it may have happened at a medical facility and another claiming detainees were shot while being transported. Investigators say those details cannot yet be independently confirmed, but the available evidence indicates he was killed after arrest.
Sam's father described him as an exceptionally talented teenager — a computer science prodigy, a competitive swimming champion and fluent in multiple languages.
Milani said interviewing the father was deeply personal, underscoring how the profile of victims in Iran has changed over time.
“The father is nearly my age,” Milani said. “It forces you to realize that the young people being killed today are children who could have been our own.”
Sam Afshari’s case is part of a broader pattern emerging from Iran’s January crackdown, during which students and minors were among those killed. An Iranian teachers’ union has published the names of roughly 200 students killed during the protests, describing the list as both a record of loss and a demand for accountability.
At least 24 children, including a three-year-old, were killed by direct fire from security forces during Iran’s nationwide protests, according to the HANA Human Rights Organization. The group said it confirmed the identities of the children through on-the-ground research and cross-checking multiple sources.
HANA said the shooting of children was not an isolated incident but part of a systematic pattern, with gunfire in many documented cases directed at vital parts of the body.
For Sam's father - the loss is already painfully clear — a teenager who left home believing he was fighting for his future and never returned.
Sam had been preparing to join him in Germany later this year — a plan that ended before it could begin.
The trials were presided over by Judge Abolghasem Salavati, head of Branch 15 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, who is widely known for handing down severe sentences in protest-related and political cases, the sources said.
Salavati has been holding simultaneous virtual hearings in which detainees are tried in groups of 14, according to the sources.
Among those sentenced is Abolfazl Karimi, a detained protester who the sources said had told his family in a phone call that he had been subjected to forced confessions under beatings and torture.
Karimi is the father of a young child and previously worked as a motorcycle courier in eastern Tehran.
He was arrested on January 6 while returning from work in Tehran’s Hengam neighborhood, where he encountered two injured women whose legs had been hit by gunfire from security forces, the sources said.
When he went to assist them, officers shot his leg with pellet rounds and arrested him along with the two wounded women, the sources added.
After about a month in detention in Greater Tehran Prison, he was recently transferred along with around 50 other protesters to Ghezel Hesar Prison, the sources said.
In a later phone call, Karimi told his family he had been tortured without medical treatment for his wounds and, while blindfolded, was forced to sign papers containing confessions against himself, according to the sources.
In recent days, Iran’s judiciary has intensified the process of trying protesters detained during the nationwide protests and issuing death sentences, the sources said.
On Monday Tehran Revolutionary Court, also presided over by Salavati, sentenced 19-year-old Mohammadamin Biglari to death on the charge of “enmity against God,” and the case has been referred to the Supreme Court, the sources said.
Biglari was arrested on January 8 on Tehran’s Damavand Street.
His mother is deceased, and his father was unaware of his fate for weeks, searching for him among bodies in Kahrizak before authorities informed him after three weeks that his son had been detained, the sources said.
Separately, on Sunday, the judiciary announced the first hearing session for three detained protesters—Ehsan Hosseinipour Hesarloo, Matin Mohammadi and Erfan Amiri—on charges including allegedly setting fire to Seyed al-Shohada Mosque in Pakdasht and alleged participation in murder.
Other charges against the three were announced as “assembly and collusion to appear and act against the country’s internal security following calls on hostile social media, particularly the US president and the Zionist regime (Israel)…” according to the judiciary-affiliated Mizan News Agency.
Norway-based rights group Hengaw said the case against the three was marred by due process violations.
"The hearing was held despite reports that the detainees have been denied basic rights since their arrest, including access to a lawyer of their choice and contact with their families. They were subjected to intense pressure and torture during detention and compelled to provide forced confessions," Hengaw said.
Tens of thousands of people have been arrested during the nationwide protests, many facing heavy charges, the sources said.
Some families have reported being pressured by security bodies to refrain from speaking to media or publicly discussing the cases of detained relatives, the sources added.
