Two people were stabbed outside a synagogue in Golders Green, London, on Wednesday, and a suspect was arrested, emergency responders said.
Shomrim, a Jewish community patrol group, said its volunteers detained a man seen running with a knife before police arrived, used a Taser and took him into custody.
The victims were being treated by the Hatzola ambulance service, it said.
The US dollar passed 1.81 million rials on Iran’s open market on Wednesday, rising nearly 8% in a single day as the country’s economic crisis worsened under the strain of maritime blockade, stalled diplomacy and mounting pressure on households.
The euro and pound also rose sharply, passing 2.11 million rials and 2.44 million rials respectively.
Gold prices also climbed, with the benchmark Emami coin rising about 6.5% to 2.08 billion rials, reflecting the role of gold as a common store of value for Iranians trying to protect savings from the rial’s decline.
The surge comes as the US blockade of Iranian ports and the Strait of Hormuz remains in place despite President Donald Trump’s extension of a temporary ceasefire with Tehran earlier this month.
Uncertainty over talks between the United States and the Islamic Republic, Tehran’s insistence on continuing its nuclear and missile programs and support for regional proxy groups, and the broader “neither war nor peace” situation have pushed Iran’s economy into deeper instability.
On April 28, Trump said the Islamic Republic had informed Washington it was in a “state of collapse” and wanted the Strait of Hormuz blockade lifted.
The Wall Street Journal later reported, citing US officials, that Trump had instructed aides to prepare for a prolonged maritime blockade of Iran.
Cost of living crisis
The currency jump follows weeks of worsening economic conditions inside Iran.
On February 25, the final working day before the war began, the dollar stood at 1.65 million rials, while the euro was 1.95 million rials and the pound 2.24 million rials on the open market.
Messages sent to Iran International in recent days point to a rapidly worsening cost-of-living crisis, with viewers reporting mass layoffs, sharp increases in basic goods, medicine shortages, food insecurity and inability to pay rent.
The internet blackout, now stretching into its third month, has added to the pressure by cutting off online work, e-commerce and freelance income for millions of Iranians.
One doctor told Iran International that many patients could no longer afford their medicines, citing seizure medication whose price had more than tripled even though some patients need two or three packs each month.
A former worker at the Marvdasht petrochemical complex in Fars province said he had been laid off two months ago and had reduced his household’s food consumption to one meal a day.
“I have an elderly mother and I am ashamed before her,” he said. “We have reduced our food consumption to one meal a day, and even that is barely manageable. I have not paid rent either. The situation is terrible.”
On Tuesday, Mohsen Zanganeh, a member of parliament’s planning and budget committee, said in a post on X that during a meeting on Iran’s postwar economic situation, one participant warned that the country was nearing “economic collapse.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Wednesday his relationship with US President Donald Trump remained good, after Trump criticized him over comments on the war in Iran.
“From my perspective, my personal relationship with the US President remains good,” Merz said, adding he had expressed doubts from the start about the war in Iran.
Trump said in a social media post on Tuesday that Merz did not know what he was talking about after the German leader voiced criticism of the conflict.
At least 21 people have been executed and more than 4,000 arrested in Iran since the start of the war two months ago, UN human rights chief Volker Türk said on Wednesday.
Türk said those executed included people linked to the January 2026 protests, alleged members of opposition groups and individuals accused of espionage, with many others detained on national security-related charges.
“I am appalled that the rights of the Iranian people continue to be stripped from them,” Türk said, urging authorities to halt executions and release those arbitrarily detained.
“In times of war, threats to human rights increase exponentially,” he said, adding that fundamental rights such as fair trial guarantees must be respected at all times.
For years, young women from smaller cities and conservative families came to Tehran to study, to work, to breathe. Now, one by one, many are being forced to leave.
Tehran was supposed to be the place they came to become themselves. They got into top universities, found jobs, rented apartments with friends. They built lives of their own.
A year of protests, crackdown, war and economic freefall has pushed many to the edge. Rent has become unbearable. Prices rise by the week. Incomes shrink or disappear.
They are moving back to Ahvaz, Shiraz or smaller towns to live with family because they can no longer afford Tehran. Some are selling gold, burning through savings or taking on debt to survive one more month.
The economic shock is everywhere. Layoffs are spreading. Inflation has become so absurd that people joke shops are still full of staples only because no one can afford to buy them.
And now, as if rent and inflation were not enough, officials say metro, bus and taxi fares in Tehran will rise next month. Even getting to work is becoming more expensive.
But for many, the deepest blow has come from the collapse of the digital economy.
In Iran, Instagram was more than an app. It was a shopfront, a beauty salon, a classroom, an office. Women sold clothes and cosmetics, baked cakes, offered beauty services, taught languages, designed logos and built small businesses from their bedrooms.
Now much of that is gone.
After two months of severe internet disruption, many online businesses are collapsing. Orders have dried up. Customers cannot browse. Payments are delayed. Messages do not go through.
Sima, 29, runs a small online clothing business. For two months, she says, almost no orders have come in. What once brought in modest but steady income has become little more than an empty storefront.
Baran, 34, says she feels herself “going crazy” thinking about how quickly life is unraveling. The online business she spent years building is collapsing. Payments are not arriving. Debts are piling up.
“Everything we built with blood and tears is going up in smoke,” she says.
What makes it worse is the silence. No explanation. No accountability. Just the slow erasure of livelihoods.
Layoffs in offices and shops appear to hit women especially hard. There are no official figures, but many suspect employers assume men are more likely to be breadwinners. A woman, they think, may have a husband or father to fall back on. But many do not—or do not want to.
For many women here, losing a job is not just losing income. It can mean losing a home, a city and a life they fought hard to build.
And so Tehran is losing its daughters.
The city that once offered escape is beginning to send them back. Back to smaller cities. Back to family homes. Back to dependence—often to the lives they thought they had escaped for good.
President Donald Trump met with oil and gas executives at the White House on Tuesday to discuss the impact of the Iran conflict on energy markets, Axios reported.
The meeting included senior officials and industry leaders such as Chevron CEO Mike Wirth, and focused on issues including domestic production, oil prices and supply disruptions linked to the standoff with Iran, the report said.
Axios said the talks come as the crisis in the Middle East disrupts supply and pushes up global oil prices, raising concerns about economic and political fallout in the United States.