Freelancers across Iran lost foreign contracts and saw income dry up during January’s internet shutdown, digital workers told Iran International, as weeks offline cut their access to projects and payments in an economy already hit by global isolation.
Iranians took to social media on the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution to challenge the Islamic Republic’s claims of overwhelming public support, sharing videos of anti-government chants and questioning the authenticity of state broadcasts.
Digital art and AI-generated images of protesters killed in Iran have flooded social media, turning victims of recent unrest into national icons.
Physicians working with Iranian protesters are warning that hospitals and medical care in Iran may be increasingly used as tools of repression, as doctors are arrested or threatened for treating the wounded and injured demonstrators are denied care.
The killing of thousands of protesters in Iran last month was followed by a near-total internet and phone blackout, leaving millions of Iranians abroad trapped in prolonged fear, trauma, and emotional paralysis.
Global beauty brand Huda Beauty has become the focus of a viral backlash after its founder, Huda Kattan, shared a social media post that many Iranians said echoed Tehran’s narrative about the deadly crackdown on nationwide protests.
Iranian families are turning funerals of youths killed in a deadly protest crackdown this month into celebrations of life, with dancing and wedding music aimed at defying their heartbreak and state repression.
With tens of thousands killed and society still reeling, the Islamic Republic has turned to sport to project normalcy as matches return, but players’ muted celebrations and empty stadiums show how little of the script still holds.
Iran’s state broadcaster has reached a point where control no longer translates into attention, exposing how years of manipulation, omission and distrust have hollowed out its authority and left a system that still fills airtime but is no longer watched.
The unprecedented brutal crackdown on recent protests in Iran suggests Tehran's rulers are no longer attempting to govern a discontented society but are in open conflict with it.
After the January 8-9 mass killing of protestors in Iran, state media broadcasts fresh snow falls and other serene scenes bearing little resemblance to the agony of many Iranians reeling from the historic violence.
Iranian authorities are moving quickly to launch a new project designed to make it possible to cut the country off from the global internet completely and for extended periods, according to information obtained by Iran International.
What is unfolding in Iran is a clash between a state that treats isolation and sacrifice as strategic virtues, and a society no longer willing to bear the economic and human cost of the Islamic Republic’s ideological and regional ambitions.
I am writing this from Tehran after three days of trying to find a way to send it: things may get a lot worse before they get any better.
As protests continue across Iran under a near-total internet shutdown, a viral clip showing a cleric calling for the Islamic Republic’s overthrow has fueled debate over the role of the clergy and broader shifts in public attitudes.
Looking back at Iranian films in 2025, one fact is hard to miss: it was underground cinema—not the country’s officially sanctioned productions—that defined the year internationally.
Bahram Beyzaie, one of the most influential figures in modern Iranian theater, cinema and literature, has died on his 87th birthday, according to a statement by the Stanford Iranian Studies Program, where he served as a visiting professor for the past 15 years.
Iranian psychiatrists are warning of a sharp rise in acute psychiatric emergencies linked to drug use, particularly among adolescents, raising concerns that the country may face a wave of long-term psychotic disorders if the trend continues.
A network of tunnels formed by illegal underground excavations beneath Tehran’s Grand Bazaar has triggered official warnings over serious safety risks, while raising questions about their purpose and those behind the digging.
There is a cruel ritual in Iranian opposition politics: some voices abroad constantly interrogate the “purity” of activists inside—why they did not speak more sharply or endorse maximalist slogans, why survival itself looks insufficiently heroic.
Iran’s chief prosecutor said on Monday that combating drug abuse and alcohol consumption should be treated as a national security priority, arguing that Iran’s adversaries were seeking to exploit social harm to destabilize the country.
An Iranian labor representative said soaring prices have eroded wages to the point where one gram of gold now equals a full month’s minimum pay for a worker.