Iran International
High school students in several Iranian cities gathered outside education offices on Monday, demanding that final exams be postponed after a compressed testing schedule left them with too little time to prepare.
Videos and reports received by Iran International showed 11th- and 12th-grade students protesting in multiple cities on Monday, calling on authorities to revise the timetable for final examinations.
The students say the short gaps between exams, combined with the proximity of final tests to the national university entrance exam, have increased pressure and reduced opportunities for study.
"We do not have enough time to prepare for both the final exams and the university entrance exam," one protesting student told Iran International.
The final exams were originally scheduled to begin in late May but were postponed following disruptions linked to recent events and the aftermath of the conflict between the Islamic Republic and the United States.
The dispute comes after education officials said the exam calendar had been arranged to conclude before Arbaeen, the annual Shiite pilgrimage marking 40 days after the killing of the third Shiite Imam.
On June 6, Hossein Sadeghi, head of the Education Ministry's information center and public relations office, said final exams were scheduled to end before the event so students could benefit from what he described as Arbaeen's "spiritual and educational opportunity."
The controversy touches on a longstanding debate in Iran over the role of religious ideology in education. Critics of the Islamic Republic's policies argue that authorities frequently align academic and civic programs with religious events as part of broader efforts to promote the state's ideological and religious narrative.
Some students, however, have objected to the timetable and are calling for exams to be postponed until after Arbaeen, arguing that the compressed schedule has reduced the time available for preparation.
Students seek timetable revision
Students had circulated calls in recent days urging classmates to join demonstrations and press officials to change the exam schedule.
In some provinces, including Lorestan, parents joined the gatherings and discussed the students' demands with education officials.
Several students also criticized what they described as efforts to prevent the protests from gaining visibility.
A student in Mashhad told Iran International that officials warned participants that city surveillance cameras would record their presence and that they could later be questioned about attending the gathering.
Another student said demonstrations outside education offices in Tehran and Karaj were quickly dispersed and participants were not allowed to continue protesting. Some students later gathered outside the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution building, according to the same account.
Education policies draw repeated criticism
The latest protests follow earlier demonstrations over education policies, including the weighting of 11th-grade final exam scores in university admissions and the format of final examinations.
On June 2, groups of 11th- and 12th-grade students gathered outside the Education Ministry in Tehran, calling for the cancellation of a policy that gives 11th-grade scores a decisive role in university entrance results, or at least changing it to a positive weighting system.
Students have repeatedly complained about changes to exam schedules, testing procedures and university admission regulations, warning that frequent policy shifts have disrupted educational planning and increased psychological pressure.
The issue has also spread beyond secondary education. On Sunday, graduate and doctoral students at Tehran's Islamic Azad University protested outside the university's central offices against the decision to hold exams in person while the whole term courses were held online.
The warnings point to a new phase in Iran’s long-running drug crisis. The problem is no longer only that medicines are expensive or hard to find. The formal supply chain itself is weakening, while the black market grows around patients who cannot obtain medicine through pharmacies.
Haleh Hamedifar, head of the Association of Medical Biotechnology Product Manufacturers, told the semi-official ISNA news agency that the main challenge facing Iran’s pharmaceutical industry is not simply a shortage of foreign currency, but “instability in decision-making and lack of coordination in implementation.”
“The pharmaceutical industry cannot be managed with daily decisions, changing circulars and unpredictable processes,” she said.
Hamedifar warned that sudden policy changes disrupt the supply of raw materials, production and distribution, with effects that appear months later “in pharmacies, hospitals and ultimately at the patient’s bedside.”
Iran says it produces most of the medicines consumed in the country, but domestic production still depends on imported raw materials, equipment, packaging, machinery and spare parts. That leaves even locally made drugs exposed to banking restrictions, currency decisions and import delays.
Hamedifar said recent shifts in currency rules have forced some raw materials out of preferential currency categories and into exchange-rate systems that are not reliably funded. Alternative routes, including the use of export proceeds or privately held foreign currency, were introduced before the administrative infrastructure was ready, she said.
Companies have been forced to amend files, repeat import registrations and restart procedures they had already completed, she said.
“The problem in many cases is not the decision itself, but how it is implemented,” Hamedifar said.
She said outages and errors in government platforms, including disconnects between trade, drug-regulation and banking systems, should not be treated as technical glitches because each delay can postpone the arrival of raw materials and later disrupt drug supply.
Interior Ministry spokesman Ali Zeynivand separately acknowledged that high medicine prices are real and said the government does not deny that internal failures may be part of the problem.
“Part of the problems are caused by the imposed war, another part by the sanctions that already existed, and part may be due to our shortcomings or lack of precision,” he told the Dideban Iran news website. “We do not reject any of these.”
Zeynivand said President Masoud Pezeshkian, himself a physician, is personally sensitive to the issue and that the Health Ministry, Plan and Budget Organization and Central Bank are working on measures to contain the situation. But he cautioned that Iran’s economic problems would not be solved simply by signing a memorandum.
For patients, the consequences are already visible in higher out-of-pocket costs, incomplete prescriptions, empty pharmacy shelves and growing reliance on unofficial sellers.
Mehdi Sanei, an investigator at Iran’s medical crimes prosecutor’s office, told the Iranian daily Shargh that Iran has only one legal medicine market: the official network supervised by the Health Ministry and Food and Drug Administration. Any medicine sold outside that chain is illegal, he said.
“In the field of medicine, there is no such thing as a legal free market,” Sanei said.
He said shortages are the starting point for much of the illegal trade. When patients cannot find medicine in pharmacies, they turn to dealers, Telegram channels, middlemen and informal networks.
“As long as medicine shortages exist, the smuggling market will exist,” he said.
Sanei warned that the illegal drug market is unusually profitable because patients cannot postpone treatment. Families dealing with cancer or chronic illness may sell savings, jewelry, cars or even homes to obtain scarce medicine.
“I do not know of a commodity whose profit is as guaranteed as smuggled medicine,” he said.
He said some black-market medicines are official Iranian-made drugs diverted from the legal system through fake prescriptions, distribution violations or other routes. But he described an even more dangerous trend: the growing presence of counterfeit or unauthorized medicines made inside Iran.
Sanei estimated that more than 80 percent of medicines in the illegal market are now unauthorized domestic products rather than genuine imported drugs.
Those products may be made in illegal workshops with unknown or ineffective materials and fake packaging, he said. Some may contain no active ingredient, contamination or harmful substances.
“People pay heavy costs, and there is no guarantee that what they receive is really medicine,” he said.
The result is a self-reinforcing cycle: shortages weaken the legal market, patients move toward illegal sellers, the black market becomes more profitable, and the official system loses more ground.
“The smaller the legal market becomes, the larger the illegal market becomes,” Sanei said.
Parisa Valentina Pouyan, director of the Pouya Helpers of Child Workers Institute, told Iran’s labor-focused ILNA news agency that baby-selling is a hidden and complex phenomenon driven not only by poverty but also by addiction, cultural pressures, weak oversight, lack of parenting education and failures in state protection systems.
“Buying and selling children is one of the most horrifying forms of social harm and one of the most damaging acts committed against children,” Pouyan said.
Her remarks followed renewed attention in Iranian media to the case of a mother accused of selling several of her newborns over different years for small sums, reviving concerns about underground markets for infants and the future awaiting children transferred outside legal adoption channels.
A recent analytical report by Iran’s State Welfare Organization, known as Behzisti, found that illegal adoption remains a serious challenge for the country’s child-protection and judicial systems.
According to the report, 18,240 adoption cases were registered from 2013 to 2024, of which 13,020, or 71 percent, were legal, while 5,224, or 29 percent, were recorded as illegal.
Behzisti is the main state body responsible for welfare and child-protection cases in Iran, including formal adoption procedures. Illegal adoptions take place outside that system, often through private arrangements, brokers or concealed transfers of newborns.
Pouyan said official and precise statistics on baby-selling do not exist because the practice is hidden. But she said poverty creates fertile ground for such cases, especially during wider social and economic crises.
Still, she warned against reducing the issue to poverty alone.
“Would every poor family sell its child?” she said. “If parents have sold a child once and their living conditions improve a little, does that mean they will never do it again?”
Pouyan said global experience shows baby-selling has become a lucrative trade in some places, and that poverty is only one driver. She cited addiction, sex work, cultural pressures and the possibility that a mother herself may have been a victim of child-selling as factors that can feed the trade.
She said the hidden nature of illegal transfers means the child’s future is often irrelevant to the transaction.
“In this kind of trade, parents who sell their baby or child do not care whether the buyers have the conditions and qualifications needed to become parents,” she said, adding that in illegal transfers “money comes first.”
Pouyan said she had personally been approached several years ago by someone seeking a child for a couple living abroad, both doctors, who wanted to adopt by finding a parent willing to sell a child. She said she rejected the request and warned she would report any such case.
According to Pouyan, the darker danger is that not all buyers are seeking parenthood.
In some cases, she said, children are bought or taken through illegal adoption channels for domestic labor or other forms of exploitation.
“I have seen a case in which a child was illegally adopted and, a few years later, became the family’s servant,” she said.
Pouyan said Iran’s response to baby-selling and illegal adoption is weakened by poor oversight, ineffective intervention by responsible agencies and possible misconduct inside institutions meant to protect children.
The messages, sent to Iran International on Thursday, reflect grief, suspicion and political anger after details emerged of the memorandum between Tehran and Washington.
The agreement outlines a halt to the war, a 60-day negotiation period, steps toward reopening the Strait of Hormuz, possible oil waivers and discussions over frozen assets and sanctions relief.
But for many Iranians who responded, the central question was not what the Islamic Republic might receive, or whether Washington would enforce the terms. It was why ordinary Iranians appeared absent from the agreement.
“We gave our fallen, we endured more hunger and poverty, there was war, we moved further away from our dreams, we were hurt, we were killed unjustly, but uranium was the main issue,” one message said. “In these several clauses of the agreement, there was no word about the people of Iran.”
Another message described the memorandum as an agreement signed “over the bodies of Iran’s children,” referring to what the sender said were 42,000 lives lost.
The message reflected a broader anger among several respondents who saw the deal as a bargain made after months of bloodshed and repression.
Some directed their anger at US President Donald Trump, saying they had hoped Washington would side more clearly with the Iranian people. “Trump is a businessman who first sees his own profit and his country’s interests, and it does not matter to him what has happened or what will happen,” one message said.
Another sender wrote: “Tell Trump that your betrayal has remained so deeply in our hearts and minds that if one day America and Europe need the help of the people of Iran, not a single person will come toward you.”
Others focused on Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the lead Iranian negotiator expected to sign the memorandum in Switzerland on Friday. Ghalibaf has defended the document and urged officials to focus on improving the economy, but one message accused him of speaking more about Lebanon than about Iranians.
“Mr. Ghalibaf, in the same speech where you said we should fix people’s economy, you spoke several times more about Lebanon than about the people of Iran, and said the first clause of the agreement is also Lebanon,” the message said.
The 14-point memorandum includes a provision on ending military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon, and ensuring Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. It also includes provisions on the Strait of Hormuz, oil exports, frozen assets, sanctions and Iran’s nuclear program.
US officials have since sought to limit expectations, saying the memorandum does not provide Tehran with automatic access to frozen assets, immediate sanctions relief or direct US funding.
They said any economic benefit would depend on Iranian compliance and progress toward a final deal, particularly on nuclear issues.
Inside Iran, however, the messages show that many are judging the agreement less by its financial mechanisms than by what it signals politically.
Some saw it as proof that the Islamic Republic’s long confrontation with the United States had ended in failure. “We are not fooled by the regime’s propaganda,” one message said. “The current memorandum between Iran and America was a definite defeat for the Islamic Republic’s 47-year policy.”
Another urged patience and unity, framing the deal as part of a longer process of weakening the system. “Be patient, regime change is happening, although at a gentle speed,” the message said. “Just stay united and give each other hope.”
But several messages were more despairing than hopeful. One sender compared the moment to a scene in a war film where a soldier, after fighting through chaos, suddenly stands still in shock and cries.
“That is how we, the people of Iran, feel with the news of the negotiations,” the message said.
Another asked why no country had insisted that Iranians themselves had rights that should be part of any settlement. “Why was there no one anywhere in the world to say that we, the people of Iran, had the right to live?” the message said. “Why should the human rights of all people in the world be respected except those of Iranians?”
