In August, a contact in Iran sent me a message that I had to read three times before it could sink in. She would be deleting our chat history as well as her WhatsApp, she wrote, and it might be hard to reach her for a while. “Please don’t take it as rudeness,” she pleaded.

Sadly, as an Iranian who has lived in exile since fleeing the 1979 revolution as a small child, I know the grammar of these goodbyes well. I have experienced them throughout my life as an Iranian living in the West who wants to have an ongoing relationship with my homeland and my people there. In earlier crackdowns — of which there have been many — people went quiet for a week, sometimes a month, sometimes a couple of years. I am used to having short polite conversations with my family who I know cannot say much beyond “everything is fine.”

This time, though, the cause was specific. Iran’s parliament is advancing a bill to criminalize contact with the outside world — including foreign media, institutions and organizations. On Oct. 6, it approved Article 22 of that bill, which would make it a crime to give an interview to any outlet the Intelligence Ministry deems “hostile.” Dozens of outlets are already on that list, and as a result, my contact is scared to talk to me, an independent journalist.

Tehran’s closing door

Known as the infiltration bill, and formally called Countering the Influence of Foreign Intelligence Services and States or Foreign-Linked Institutions in the Country, the new bill was received by parliament in July 2025, less than a month after the 12-day war waged by Israel against Iran. It then stalled after the U.S.-Israeli bombardment began on Feb. 28 and killed the supreme leader. That illegal war, launched without United Nations Security Council authorization, also provided the supporters of the Iranian bill with their pretext.

Parliament approved the bill’s framework on Aug. 16 by a vote of 183 to 4 , then it approved Article 22 with a vote of 174 to 6 . In Iran, an outline is often approved first, then articles voted on individually. This bill currently has 33 articles and the specific penalties involved remain subject to revision and are currently facing strong opposition in parliament.

“It’s already been a struggle to keep in touch with the rest of the world.”

Iranians who give interviews to, or take part in conversations with, media designated as hostile by Iran or who talk to outlets that are owned, managed or funded within first- or second-tier countries can face penalties under the Islamic Penal Code of up to two years in prison. The bill classifies foreign governments into three tiers, as determined by the Intelligence Ministry, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Supreme National Security Council. The first tier is for countries that are hostile to Iran, the second is for those judged to have harmed Iran’s interests. The United States and Israel are expected to be in the top tier .

Iranian government officials are exempt, and while the text of the bill doesn’t go into detail about which ones are included, the general implications are that these officials are among the few Iranians who will be able to talk to foreign media.

Article 21 of the bill, approved on Oct. 4, stipulates that associations and organizations that break the law by engaging in (so far unspecified) foreign-linked activities can be dissolved, in addition to penalties for the individuals found responsible. Friends and colleagues I have spent decades collaborating with inside Iran who run nongovernmental organizations now risk having their life’s work liquidated if they continue to talk to me.

“It’s already been a struggle to keep in touch with the rest of the world,” Sharam told Truthdig. His and all interviewees’ names in this article have been changed for their protection. Sharam runs an NGO in the poorest part of Tehran that is dedicated to providing clean needles for addicts to prevent HIV infection.

“For decades, we have had to tread carefully when it comes to sharing knowledge and working with other organizations around the world, but we have managed to stay connected anyway. Now, they want to make Iran totally insular. It’s going to make my job much harder when I can’t learn from what colleagues in other countries are doing,” he said.

Parliament still has to vote on and approve the remaining articles of the infiltration bill, and the full text must then pass the Guardian Council before it can become law. The Guardian Council is a non-elected 12-member body, with six clerics appointed by the supreme leader and six jurists nominated by the head of the judiciary and approved by parliament. It reviews every law passed for compatibility with the constitution and Islamic law.

There is a real fear behind this new bill.

Even the Cabinet has had concerns , moving on Aug. 23 to oppose the parliamentary National Security Committee’s report on the bill. The Cabinet’s legal affairs vice president, Majid Ansari, has warned that it would sharply restrict academic contacts abroad and drive more researchers out of the country. Iran already loses large numbers of its most educated citizens to emigration. Earlier drafts of the bill reportedly went further : Individuals and organizations would need written authorization to communicate with foreign embassies or institutions, and scientific cooperation would be limited to institutions on an annual list drawn up by the Intelligence Ministry.

Iran has already used similar wording to the current bill, in court. In early August, a Tehran Revolutionary Court sentenced photojournalist Yalda Moaiery in absentia to 15 years prison via an espionage law amended in 2025. The charges included “interviewing with networks hostile to the system.” Further, dozens of outlets, including BBC Persian, were named on a “hostile media” list the Intelligence Ministry published in July, and I do not know whether any outlet I write for will be on it in the future.

There is a real fear behind this new bill. A state whose supreme leader was killed in a foreign attack is understandably obsessed with infiltration. For decades, Tehran has branded its own citizens “foreign spies” or collaborators with “foreign regimes” when they protest for their human rights. Then, when the mass protests and violent crackdown in January later became part of the justification for the illegal war launched by the U.S. and Israel, the Iranian state’s paranoia was justified, and is now being written into a bill that aims to regulate its citizens’ communications.

U.S. blockade hits ordinary Iranians hardest

Washington says it is aiming its wide-ranging new sanctions at the Iranian government. But Iran has been under U.S. sanctions in one form or another for more than four decades. They began in November 1979, when the U.S. froze about $12 billion in Iranian assets after the seizure of its embassy in Tehran. They were lifted in 1981 under the Algiers Accords, then rebuilt piece by piece. Iran was designated a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984. President Ronald Reagan banned Iranian imports in 1987. In 1995, President Bill Clinton barred U.S. companies from trading with Iran altogether. Congress added secondary sanctions on foreign firms investing in Iran’s energy sector in 1996, and it sanctioned Iran’s Central Bank in 2012. President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal in 2018 and reinstated all the sanctions it had lifted.

To cap off this long siege, on Aug. 24 this year, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Operation Economic Outcast, extending secondary sanctions beyond just the energy sector, to Iran’s aviation, shipping, gold, technology and digital-asset sectors, with the declared aim of severing every economic lifeline until “Tehran stands alone.” These new measures go much further than those of 1995 and 1996, as the Treasury Department can now sanction any company or bank — worldwide — that trades with Iran in the aforementioned sectors.

But it is not the Iranian state that ends up standing alone. Within days of the sanctions, the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan and Oman halted flights by Iranian carriers, and Turkish Airlines said it had no flights to Iran scheduled until March 2027. International flight capacity to Iran was already 49% lower in August than a year prior. That month, diaspora Iranians visiting family in Iran found themselves grounded on the tarmac.

Travelers leaving Iran now take 2,400 kilometer bus trips to Istanbul, which the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National reports cost about $41 a seat, up by a third since the latest sanctions. Iran’s average monthly minimum wage is the equivalent of around $71.

One couple from Tehran made that journey to sit for the IELTS, the English exam many foreign universities require, because it had been canceled in Iran due to the August sanctions. They spent three days on the road.

“That trip to Baku cost my family everything they had saved.”

Because the U.S. doesn’t have an embassy in Iran, another contact, Kimia, traveled by road to Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, early last year to sit for the IELTS and various other exams that are required for her to pursue her doctorate at a U.S. university. Her admission had been confirmed before the war and she was due to leave in September last year. She spent two weeks in Baku to take the tests, but then, in August 2025, her visa to the U.S. was canceled. Despite her professors in the U.S. advocating on her behalf, she is still in Iran and tells me she has no hope of being able to begin her doctoral program.

“That trip to Baku cost my family everything they had saved,” she told me with tears in her eyes. “My mother even sold her gold jewelry so I could have this opportunity for a better education and a better life.” In Iran, when a woman sells the gold jewelry she was given at birth and on marriage, it is a sign of desperation.

“We are a family of seamstresses and artisans,” Kimia said. “We haven’t had an order since the 12-day war last June. Without the possibility of my studying abroad and sending back money, we really don’t know how to manage.”

U.S. Presidential Proclamation 10998, in force since Jan. 1, suspends visas for Iranian nationals, student visas included. An earlier ban, from June 2025, had already stopped new Iranian students like Kimia from going to the U.S. Some 12,400 Iranians were enrolled at U.S. universities in 2023-24. At the University of Virginia, the student newspaper The Cavalier Daily reported that processing of post-graduation work authorizations for Iranian students had been paused.

For many Iranians, study, work and their future now depends on their passport. This is not a sanction on a bank. It is a whole nationality treated as a threat.

Similarly, the economic consequences of the blockade affect Iranians’ daily spending and access to basic goods. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Iran is heading for an economic “cataclysm,” as though he were describing the weather. The rial has just hit a record low at over 2.5 million to the dollar. The annual inflation rates is near 90% , according to the Statistical Center of Iran. Even wealthy upper-class Iranians tell me that they can only afford to eat meat once a month.

Westminster’s definition of “benefit”

Then there is Britain and its new State Threats Act. This law could contribute to the demonization of Iranians, which in turn discourages including their voices in media coverage and other spaces and lends moral support to the U.S. attacks on the country. It can also reduce contact and economic activity between U.K. entities and Iranians.

Formally known as the National Security (State Threats) Act 2026, the law received royal assent on July 8. It gives the home secretary the power to designate bodies involved in “foreign power threat activity,” and criminalizes supporting or assisting them, or obtaining a “material benefit” from them. The statute’s own text says a material benefit may include financial gain and “information.” The offenses carry up to 14 years in prison. The first designations took effect on July 17 against the IRGC, an Iran-linked group called the IMCR, and Russia’s GRU Volunteer Corps.

London’s case is not frivolous. The government cites IRGC-linked plots to assassinate two Iran International TV journalists in the U.K. But the IRGC is not a small network. It is basically a parallel army with a business empire. In 2021, the U.S. Treasury Department said that four giant entities, including the IRGC-owned conglomerate Khatam al-Anbiya and three foundations controlled by the supreme leader, were “said to control more than half of the Iranian economy.” The Khatam al-Anbiya company dominates Iran’s construction, oil, gas, petrochemical, mining, water management and telecommunications sectors. In that situation, who would be considered a conduit for a “material benefit”? The engineer? The supplier? The source?

As a journalist, it makes talking to my contacts even more risky.

The British government says the act does not criminalize journalistic activity that isn’t prejudicial to the U.K., and offers a “reasonable excuse” defense to those who obtain information from a designated body. However, the London law firm Gherson has warned that the designation scheme risks abuse when the behavior in question overlaps with journalism, research or community activity.

It remains to be seen how the measure will be applied. According to the British Home Office, the offenses apply to conduct outside the U.K. when committed by a “U.K. person,” a British national or someone living in Britain. An engineer in Iran appears to fall outside that, but British banks, universities and companies may not want to risk maintaining business or academic relationships with people in Iran. The Home Office’s own guidance describes a hypothetical example of a U.K. defense manufacturer suspending orders from a supplier owned by a designated body.

For the hundreds of thousands of Iranians in Britain, including British Iranians like myself, fear as a result of this law can lead to self-censorship and caution. As a journalist, it makes talking to my contacts even more risky — “material benefit” could apply to the fee for a commissioned article — and it makes it much harder to get nongovernment voices out of Iran. Similarly, it could further reduce U.K. coverage of Iran, where mainstream outlets already carry little on-the-ground reporting and few Iranian voices.

One cage

Each government says it is acting against hostility: against internal anti-government forces, or against the Iranian government or its bodies. Each does it by regulating the same thing — whom an ordinary Iranian may speak to, travel with and study alongside, and who may speak to her.

The result is a population that cannot be heard. The voices left to fill the silence are the Islamic Republic’s spokespeople and Washington’s officials, who see Iranians as an economic variable or as disposable.

For journalists like myself, these measures seriously jeopardize my work. Every Iranian who speaks to an outlet on the Iranian Intelligence Ministry’s list could risk prison. I do not know whether any outlet I write for or have written for in the past will be on a future list. Neither do the people who talk to me.

My contact asked me not to take her silence as rudeness. I haven’t. I take it as a measure of how fast a door can close when three governments lean on it at once, each alleging it is punishing someone else.

The post How Tehran, Washington and London Are Shutting Out Ordinary Iranians appeared first on Truthdig .