Poverty pushes Iranian children into hazardous border work

“The fact that a teenager sets out on a route where there is a risk of being shot, a mine explosion or an accident, either to help their family or cover school and living expenses, should be a serious warning to society,” labor activist Abdollah Belvasi told ILNA. “A child should be sitting at a school desk, not on a kolbari route.”

Poverty and unstable household incomes are increasingly affecting children in families living along Iran’s borders, Belvasi said.

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  Kurdish border couriers face snow, heavy loads, and death for $10

A shortage of jobs has also left many young people, including university graduates and accomplished athletes, facing a choice between kolbari, with its risk of death, or migration away from their homes and families, according to Belvasi.

Unemployment and a lack of prospects have prompted many young people in Kordestan to consider leaving their cities or even Iran, Belvasi added.

Economic pressures deepen

Iran has faced years of high inflation, a weakening currency and unemployment, eroding purchasing power and making basic living costs increasingly difficult for many households.

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Residents of some border communities have turned to kolbari to earn a living. Kolbars typically carry heavy loads on foot across difficult mountainous terrain, and some have been killed in shootings by Iranian security forces or died in accidents and mine explosions.

The growing gap between wages and living costs, reduced working hours and skilled workers moving into informal employment have highlighted the depth of Iran’s employment problems in recent weeks.

Hormozgan Workers’ House said on Friday that around 20,000 workers had lost their jobs because of an economic slowdown and business closures.

Kolbar deaths risk becoming routine

Deaths among kolbars are gradually being treated as routine news, receiving attention and prompting protests for several days before fading from public discussion, Belvasi warned.

“When a kolbar is killed, a family suffers,” he said. “A breadwinner may be lost, children may be left without a father, or a family may have to contend with medical expenses and disability. If we see kolbari only in terms of numbers and statistics, we ignore the human dimension of the tragedy.”

Government promises have failed to address the underlying conditions driving people into the work, Belvasi went on to say.

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  Deadly Toll Rises For Kolbars In Iran's Western Border Regions

“The issue of kolbari cannot be solved simply by confronting the kolbar,” Belvasi added. “If the main causes – poverty, unemployment and the lack of stable job opportunities –are not addressed, the issue will emerge again. The root causes must be addressed.”

Discrimination, uneven development and a lack of employment opportunities remain fundamental problems in Iran’s border regions despite their economic, human and natural resources, according to Belvasi.

The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, indefinitely suspended General License G on August 24 as part of the Trump administration’s latest campaign to intensify economic pressure on the Islamic Republic.

The license had since 2014 provided the legal basis for US universities, testing companies and other American entities to offer a range of educational services to Iranian people.

OFAC has allowed transactions necessary to wind down activities previously covered by the license until September 8. After that, services that are otherwise prohibited under US sanctions would require another applicable authorization or a specific license from the Treasury Department.

The change does not in itself mean that every international examination will immediately disappear for Iranian applicants. But its first effects are already becoming visible, while uncertainty is growing over tests widely used for university admissions and professional qualifications.

A broad education exemption

General License G, issued under the Obama administration on March 20, 2014, covered far more than university exchange programs. It allowed US institutions to process applications from people in Iran, accept application fees and tuition, establish student exchange agreements with Iranian universities and offer certain online courses.

One provision specifically authorized US persons anywhere in the world to administer professional certification and university entrance examinations, including standardized multiple-choice tests, to people in Iran and to people abroad who were “ordinarily resident in Iran.” It also covered services required for admission to US universities.

That wording gave American testing organizations a broad sanctions exemption for services potentially including exams such as TOEFL and GRE.

Its suspension was part of a much larger package launched under what the Treasury Department calls Operation Economic Outcast. OFAC indefinitely suspended five authorizations in total, covering General License G, US-Iran sporting activities, some educational activities in third countries, certain personal remittances and services connected with conferences.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the broader campaign as an “economic onslaught” against Iran’s international financial connections, saying Washington aimed to “sever every economic lifeline” sustaining the Islamic Republic.

Duolingo becomes the first clear casualty

The clearest immediate impact has come from the Duolingo English Test, an online English-language examination accepted by thousands of universities.

Duolingo’s official support page now states that its English test is “unavailable in Iran and for users with Iranian IDs.”

The wording is significant because the restriction is not limited to people physically inside Iran. Someone who travels from Tehran to Istanbul, Dubai or Yerevan but relies on an Iranian identity document would still fall under the policy.

That has fueled frustration among Iranian students, many of whom already face significant obstacles in applying to universities abroad.

Persian-language social media users responded with anger and dark humor. One user whose post was republished by the Telegram channel University of Tehran Twitter wrote: “It really feels like they’re competing over who wants us less.”

Another, reacting to reports about both TOEFL and Duolingo, wrote that Iranians were effectively being “excluded from the human species.”

A third mocked repeated assertions that US pressure is aimed at the Iranian government rather than ordinary citizens: “They canceled TOEFL because people were making hypersonic missile origami out of the test papers. Otherwise, of course, they have no problem with the Iranian people.”

A Duolingo-focused Telegram channel went further, jokingly announcing a “funeral for the late Duolingo” in a fictional cemetery next to the “TOEFL and GRE section.”

A Change.org petition launched on August 27 calls on Duolingo to restore a legal route for Iranian applicants, arguing that students should be assessed on their abilities rather than their nationality and urging the company to seek an educational exemption or alternative compliance mechanism.

What happens to TOEFL and GRE?

The future of other major US-administered tests remains less clear.

As of August 29, Educational Testing Service, the US organization behind TOEFL and GRE, had not issued a public announcement saying the exams would no longer be available to Iranians. Iran also remained on ETS’s official list of countries where the TOEFL iBT is offered.

There are, however, signs that availability may already be changing.

Two major Iranian test centers said Saturday that TOEFL iBT and GRE exams had been suspended across Iran, with one saying all ETS tests scheduled for the week had been canceled without prior notice to testing centers and another saying new registrations were unavailable until further notice.

TOEFL Resources, an unofficial specialist website that tracks ETS testing appointments, reported on Saturday that TOEFL slots in Iran had been visible through January just a day earlier. It said only September 5 appointments at two centers outside Tehran were subsequently showing, with later dates no longer available.

That does not yet establish that ETS has permanently withdrawn from Iran. The company could potentially rely on another authorization, seek a specific OFAC license or alter how it provides services.

OFAC itself says companies wishing to continue activities previously covered by the suspended licenses may apply for specific authorization.

For Iranian students, that leaves the immediate picture unsettled. Duolingo access has already been restricted, while the fate of TOEFL, GRE and other academic and professional examinations may depend on decisions by individual testing providers — and on whether the US Treasury grants them a new legal route to continue serving Iranian applicants.

IELTS, which now appears to be one of the few remaining major options for Iranian applicants, is in a different position because it is jointly owned by the British Council, Australia’s IDP and Cambridge University Press & Assessment, rather than a US testing organization.

However, while the suspension of General License G does not directly apply to it, IELTS testing inside Iran had already ended on January 31, 2026, after IDP cited separate “financial and regulatory factors” outside its control, requiring Iranian applicants who want to take the test to travel to neighboring countries.

The significance of closer US-Venezuela energy cooperation lies not only in the scale of Venezuela’s oil reserves, but also in the complementary qualities of the two countries’ crude — and in what international capital, technology and access to Western markets could mean for an oil industry weakened by years of isolation.

Most US shale crude is light and sweet, while Venezuela’s Merey 16 is an extra-heavy, high-sulfur grade. A technical estimate suggests that a blend of roughly 60% light US crude and 40% Venezuelan Merey 16 could produce a crude with an API gravity of around 31 to 32 degrees and sulfur content of roughly 1.5%, depending on the specific US grade used.

Those characteristics are close to Russia’s Urals, a medium-sour crude with an API gravity of around 31 degrees and sulfur content of about 1.4%. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Urals was one of the main feedstocks for European refineries.

The United States could therefore potentially offer European refiners three options: its own light crude, Venezuelan heavy crude for plants capable of processing it, and tailored blends suited to refineries that previously relied heavily on Russian medium-sour crude. Complex US Gulf Coast refineries could also process Venezuela’s heavy oil and export diesel, jet fuel and other refined products needed by Europe.

The United States is already the European Union’s largest supplier of petroleum oil, accounting for 17.8% of EU petroleum-oil imports in the first quarter of 2026.

It is still too early, however, to speak of US-Venezuelan dominance of the European market. Venezuela currently produces around 1.25 million barrels per day, while rebuilding its electricity network, pipelines, processing facilities, refineries and ports will require tens of billions of dollars in investment and several years.

In the short term, the agreement is therefore more significant as a political and psychological signal to the market. In the medium term, if it results in substantially higher Venezuelan production, it could increase Atlantic Basin oil supplies, further reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian and some Middle Eastern crude, redirect some Venezuelan oil from China toward Western markets, and put additional pressure on OPEC+’s ability to manage the market.

A potential model for Iran

For Iranians, however, Venezuela may carry a broader message. Like Venezuela, Iran possesses enormous oil and gas reserves, but its energy industry faces deep problems after years of sanctions, insufficient investment, aging infrastructure, limited access to advanced technology, declining pressure in some mature fields and the constraints under which many projects were developed during the sanctions era.

If the Islamic Republic were to fall, followed by a stable political transition and the establishment of a government capable of maintaining normal and constructive relations with the United States, Europe and the global economy, Iran’s oil and gas industry could become one of the main engines of the country’s economic reconstruction.

Under such conditions, the entry of major international companies, including US oil producers and oilfield-services firms, could provide the capital, technology and managerial expertise needed to rehabilitate wells, pipelines, processing facilities, refineries, ports and Iran’s export infrastructure.

American companies have extensive experience in advanced drilling, reservoir management, enhanced oil recovery, rehabilitating low-output wells, processing heavy and sour crude and designing crude blends tailored to refinery requirements. The same basic logic that makes light US crude a useful complement to Venezuela’s extra-heavy oil could also be applied to the marketing and optimization of some Iranian crude grades.

Iran, of course, has its own broad range of light, medium and heavy crudes as well as condensates. The main opportunity would therefore not simply be to import US light crude for blending, but to use Western technology, capital and commercial networks to develop competitive export blends and regain access to global markets.

The return of established American and European companies could also create an opportunity for an independent assessment of projects carried out during the sanctions era, including those undertaken by domestic and Chinese contractors, and for facilities and equipment to be upgraded or replaced where necessary.

Such a transformation could increase Iran’s production capacity, reduce energy waste and the flaring of associated gas, improve environmental standards and create substantial direct and indirect employment.

None of this, however, would happen automatically or immediately after a change of government. The lifting of sanctions, legal protection for investors, transparent oil contracts, efforts to combat corruption, an independent judiciary and political stability would all be prerequisites for attracting investment on the required scale.

Oil revenues would also need to be managed through transparent mechanisms and directed toward rebuilding the country, its infrastructure, education, healthcare and public welfare, avoiding a repeat of Iran’s historic overdependence on oil.

The US-Venezuela partnership therefore matters to Iran for more than the possibility that a blend of light American and extra-heavy Venezuelan crude could emerge as a serious competitor to Russian Urals in parts of the European market.

The more important lesson is that vast hydrocarbon reserves can regain economic value when accompanied by investment, technology and access to international markets. Iran’s oil and gas resources could still underpin a new period of economic growth if a stable and transparent government with constructive international relations emerges after the Islamic Republic.

Cooperation with American and other major international companies could then help rebuild Iran’s aging energy industry and restore the country as a significant and reliable player in the global energy market.

The regime needs hard currency to defend the rial, pay its military and security forces, and keep salaries, pensions, and subsidies flowing. Reports from across the country already describe wages months in arrears, delayed pension payments, and near-daily protests by workers and retirees.

It also needs imports that can physically arrive in the country. China provides neither, with its overland rail corridor being marginal next to the seaborne trade the blockade cut off.

When the Islamic Republic sells oil to China it is paid in yuan, which it already had more than it could spend before the blockade was in place.

The lifeline that China provides to the Iranian regime has proven to be not as helpful in a crisis. While China buys almost all of Iran’s oil, is the largest supplier of the consumer goods Iran imports, and supplies the components that built the regime’s weapons systems, those transactions are entirely on China’s terms.

The relationship is structured around what China wants: the Islamic Republic isn’t paid in currency it can readily deploy. Its main revenue source is largely stuck in China in yuan and can only be swapped for imports that are blocked by the blockade.

China’s private sector is so connected to the rest of the world that it is susceptible to de-risking under pressure.

While Beijing gives cheap cover by condemning American sanctions and ordering its companies to ignore them, its real support has not escalated with the conflict, with the exception of a deniable shoulder-fired missile deal that may not have made it through.

The bank in Dubai

On Friday morning, Treasury named the bank Secretary Bessent had been promising all week, and as I predicted, it was not Chinese.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network proposed a rule to cut the UAE branches of Banque Misr, Egypt’s second-largest bank, off from the international financial system, saying they had processed roughly 1.8 billion dollars for 103 companies tied to Iranian shadow banking networks.

The proposal is subject to a 30-day comment period and, if finalized, would cut Banque Misr’s UAE branches off from US correspondent banking.

The choice of a UAE bank reflects that the Emirates is where the regime gets what it needs most. The hard currency comes back through Dubai, where front companies and brokers deal with the world on Iran’s behalf and exchange houses convert the proceeds into currency the regime can spend at home. Dubai functions for Iran the way Hong Kong functions for China.

The same traders supply the imports Iran cannot buy directly, Western machinery, electronics, and parts, purchased in their own name and re-exported across the Gulf. The Emirates also moved Iranian fuel oil, which it sold into the regional ship-fuel market through Fujairah, one of the world’s largest bunkering hubs, where blending stripped its Iranian identity. The blockade now cuts off the Iranian supply.

Even the oil money parked in China depends on this channel. What the regime manages to repatriate from those accounts moves through the Emirates, which is why a trade halt announced in Abu Dhabi reaches revenue earned in Shandong.

The pressure is landing on a country that has already turned against the Iranian regime. The Islamic Republic has fired missiles at the Emirates, and on August 19th, Abu Dhabi announced that all trade and financial transactions with Iran were halted.

American officials had pressed Abu Dhabi for years over the exchange houses and trading companies serving Iran, but the attacks aligned incentives between the U.S. and UAE as a shared security concern. The halt has no precedent in a country that has served as Iran’s commercial gateway for decades, and its value will be decided by enforcement.

The land border

What is of importance in Turkey is the remaining cross-border trade. Petrochemicals and metals earn less than oil, but the proceeds are in currency the regime can spend. The goods are also easier to sell, since petrochemicals and metals don’t carry the same fingerprint as Iranian crude, and can disappear across the border into Turkish plants to be resold.

Washington has designated small and mid-sized Turkish buyers of these commodities for years without meaningfully slowing the trade. The larger importers that have so far gone untouched are most susceptible to the renewed pressure campaign.

The UAE’s suspension leaves Turkey as one of the few channels the Islamic Republic has left, a major hub it can reach by land. Turkish banks are unlikely to handle displaced Iran business, especially after Halkbank’s decade-long criminal case ended this year with a deal barring Iran business that touches the U.S., after its deputy general manager went to American prison. Turkey’s banks avoid the regime’s business rather than process Iran-linked payments. After United Nations sanctions snapped back, Ankara froze the assets of dozens of Iranian entities, including Bank Sepah.

If the pressure on buyers is effective, what remains of the regime’s business in Turkey is what has always run outside the system, cash collected in Turkey and carried across the border.

Iraq’s oil and dollars

The Iran-Iraq border provides an accessible path through the blockade for the Islamic Republic to get its oil out. Iranian crude and fuel oil are blended with Iraqi cargoes, onshore and in ship-to-ship transfers at sea, and sold as Iraqi product. The smuggling earns the regime and its proxies at least a billion dollars a year. The regime collects its share of earnings from the U.S. dollars in Iraq’s own banking system.

The pressure on Iraq’s dollar system is already built and can tighten. Iraq sells its oil for dollars that are held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and for years its banks drew those dollars through a central bank auction that Iranian networks used to buy hard currency. The Treasury Department and the New York Fed barred roughly two dozen Iraqi banks from that window, and at the end of 2024 the auction was shut and replaced with correspondent channels open only to vetted banks. In April, Washington reportedly blocked a shipment of nearly 500 million dollars in banknotes to Baghdad. Electronic transfers continued, and physical deliveries resumed months later.

Pressure here will take the form of policing the correspondent channel, monitoring the vetted banks and cutting off any that move money for the regime, with continued outreach to Baghdad. Iran-backed militias, which hold seats in parliament and units in Iraq’s security forces, run the oil trade across the border, a problem that has confounded policymakers for years due to the Islamic Republic’s meddling in Iraq.

But if the regime cannot turn the proceeds into dollars, the fact that oil crosses the border is less important and turns into the same problem the regime has in China.

What the Islamic Republic needs from its neighbors is what China cannot give it, money it can spend and imports that can arrive. That is why the campaign started in the Emirates rather than Beijing, and why the pressure everywhere aims at the point where the regime’s earnings become usable.

Stopping the trade at the source is not required. If the proceeds cannot be converted, the oil and goods crossing Iran’s borders earn the regime what its oil sales to China earn — money it cannot readily deploy.

The Islamic Republic has made the work easier, firing missiles at its neighbors’ cities and critical infrastructure and mining and attacking the strait its neighbors’ economies depend on. The countries that carried Iran’s business for years now have their own reasons to end it.

Published in The Guardian on August 20, the open letter addressed political prisoners facing imprisonment, torture and execution under the Islamic Republic while also condemning US and Israeli military action against Iran.

“We write in solidarity with Iran’s political prisoners, who are trapped between two blades of a scissors,” the letter said, describing one blade as the Islamic Republic’s authoritarian rule and the other as the US-Israeli military assault.

The letter called for an end to executions and the release of political prisoners, arguing that opposing foreign military intervention should not mean remaining silent about repression inside Iran.

What followed was a fierce argument, particularly among figures on the political left.

Several people initially listed as signatories withdrew their names. Historian Robin D.G. Kelley said the published version was not exactly what he had initially seen.

University of Toronto professor Nisrin Elamin said she disagreed with the content and the process through which her name was added, arguing that the letter created a “false and harmful equivalency” between Iran and Israel.

Academics Rashid Khalidi and Nadia Abu El-Haj also removed their names. Other critics went further, characterizing the letter as contributing to efforts to manufacture consent for war.

Human rights lawyer Gissou Nia said the intensity of the reaction surprised her because she regarded the original statement of solidarity as “the bare minimum.”

For Nia, the dispute is about more than a single letter. She worries that ideology and disinformation can distort how international audiences understand repression inside Iran.

“There’s been a massive problem in terms of how narratives have been constructed since January of this year,” Nia told Iran International’s English language podcast Eye for Iran.

She pointed to internet shutdowns, restrictions on independent reporting and competing accounts of the January crackdown. Nia accused some commentators outside Iran of amplifying narratives that shifted responsibility for the killings away from the Islamic Republic despite evidence implicating its forces, describing some of the rhetoric as “mass atrocity denial.”

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  At least 916 executed in Iran since January - rights group

The stakes are particularly high amid a dramatic rise in executions.

The Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran documented over 900 executions in the first seven months of 2026, including 56 on political or national-security charges. Its database now lists 967 reported executions this year.

Political prisoners welcome attention, with reservations

Roya Boroumand, executive director of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, said some former political prisoners she works with were pleasantly surprised to see prominent figures in Western academia and on the left publicly acknowledge their plight.

But the response was not without criticism.

Some felt politics weighed too heavily in the letter and questioned comparisons between their experiences under the Islamic Republic and injustices in Western countries. Others asked why China and Russia were absent if the principle was solidarity with prisoners more broadly.

Still, Boroumand said support for Iranian political prisoners should be welcomed rather than subjected to an ideological test.

“You can't criticize people for doing the right thing because the victims they are talking about are not the right victims in your politics,” she said.

Boroumand said political imprisonment can follow Iranians long after they leave a cell. Prisoners may endure physical and psychological torture and lose jobs, educational opportunities and their health. After their release, they may remain under state surveillance, while their relatives can also face pressure over their activities.

Even exile does not necessarily end it. Former prisoners can receive calls from interrogators and see relatives inside Iran summoned over social media posts made abroad.

“You have to face the people who say you don't exist or you don't matter,” Boroumand said.

Why Iran becomes an ideological argument

Journalist and author Jay Solomon said the backlash should also be understood through the ideological legacy of Iran’s 1979 revolution.

For parts of the anti-imperialist left, he said, the revolution came to symbolize a historic defeat for US power. The Islamic Republic later cast itself as a leading opponent of the United States and Israel, creating a political framework in which criticism of Tehran can be seen as weakening that broader struggle.

Solomon said he was struck by the “callousness” of some responses, which he interpreted as effectively asking political prisoners to accept their suffering for the sake of a broader geopolitical cause.

He also pointed to a political purity test in which criticism of the Islamic Republic can quickly generate accusations that critics are serving Western or Israeli interests. Solomon compared the dynamic with other ideological movements that became increasingly intolerant of internal criticism.

That rhetoric is particularly significant in Iran, where authorities themselves have long portrayed dissidents as agents of foreign powers.

For Iran’s political prisoners, the debate is anything but theoretical. They are living through an escalating campaign of executions and repression while arguments continue abroad over how their suffering should fit into competing political narratives.

“Solidarity is really being in solidarity with people and their plight,” Nia said, “regardless of the politics.”