Iranians

TEHRAN, Iran — The United States will deport hundreds of Iranians back to Iran in the coming weeks, with the first 120 deportees being prepared for a flight in the next day or two, Iran said Tuesday.

The deportation of Iranians, not yet publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government, comes as tensions remain high between the two countries following the American bombings of Iranian nuclear sites in June.

Meanwhile, the United Nations reimposed sanctions on Iran this past week over its nuclear program, putting new pressure on the Islamic Republic’s ailing economy.

The deportations also represent a collision of a top priority of President Trump — targeting illegal immigration — against a decadeslong practice by the U.S. of welcoming Iranian dissidents, exiles and others since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

As many as 400 Iranians would be returning to Iran as part of the deal with the U.S., Iranian state television said, citing Hossein Noushabadi, director-general for parliamentary affairs at Iran’s Foreign Ministry. He said the majority of those people had crossed into the U.S. from Mexico illegally, while some faced other immigration issues.

Noushabadi said the first planeload of Iranians would arrive in a day or two, after stopping over in Qatar on the way. Authorities in Qatar have not confirmed that.

The U.S. State Department referred questions to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not immediately respond. The New York Times first reported the deportations.

In the lead up to and after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, a large number of Iranians fled to the U.S. In the decades since, the U.S. had been sensitive in allowing those fleeing from Iran over religious, sexual or political persecution to seek residency.

In the 2024 fiscal year, for instance, the U.S. deported only 20 Iranians, according to statistics from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Iran has criticized Washington for hosting dissidents and others in the past. U.S. federal prosecutors have accused Iran of hiring hitmen to target dissidents as well in America.

It’s unclear exactly what has changed now in American policy. However, since returning to the White House, Trump has cracked down on those living in the U.S. illegally.

Noushabadi said that American authorities unilaterally made the decision without consultations with Iran.

But The New York Times said Tuesday, citing anonymous Iranian officials, that the deportations were “the culmination of months of discussions between the two countries.”

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, as well as President Masoud Pezeshkian, both attended the U.N. General Assembly in New York last week as a last-ditch effort to stop the reimposed sanctions. However, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei boxed in their efforts by describing diplomacy with the U.S. as a “sheer dead end.”

Speaking to state TV in footage aired Tuesday, Araghchi acknowledged that direct communication from Iran went to the U.S. government during the U.N. visit — something he had been careful not to highlight during five rounds of nuclear negotiations with the Americans earlier this year.

“With Americans, both directly and indirectly, messages were exchanged, and eventually, we are relieved that we did whatever it was necessary,” Araghchi said. “It was clear and evident to us after the interpretation the Supreme Leader made that negotiations with Americans is an obvious dead-end.”

Vahdat writes for the Associated Press.

Israel’s bombs have stopped, but grief and fear linger in Iran. As families search the rubble for loved ones, authorities are intensifying crackdowns, branding activists and minorities as Israeli agents. How can Iranians rebuild under tighter repression?

Mandonna “Donna” Kashanian lived in the United States for 47 years, married a U.S. citizen and raised their daughter. She was gardening in the yard of her New Orleans home when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers handcuffed and took her away, her family said.

Kashanian arrived in 1978 on a student visa and applied for asylum, fearing retaliation for her father’s support of the U.S.-backed shah. She lost her bid, but she was allowed to remain with her husband and child if she checked in regularly with immigration officials, her husband and daughter said. She complied, once checking in from South Carolina during Hurricane Katrina. She is now being held at an immigration detention center in Basile, La., while her family tries to get information.

Other Iranians are also getting arrested by immigration authorities after decades in the United States. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security won’t say how many people they’ve arrested, but U.S. military strikes on Iran have fueled fears that there is more to come.

“Some level of vigilance, of course, makes sense, but what it seems like ICE has done is basically give out an order to round up as many Iranians as you can, whether or not they’re linked to any threat and then arrest them and deport them, which is very concerning,” said Ryan Costello, policy director of the National Iranian American Council, an advocacy group.

Homeland Security did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment on Kashanian’s case but have been touting arrests of Iranians. The department announced the arrests of at least 11 Iranians on immigration violations a week ago, during the weekend of the U.S. missile strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said, without elaborating, that it arrested seven Iranians at a Los Angeles-area address that “has been repeatedly used to harbor illegal entrants linked to terrorism.”

The department “has been full throttle on identifying and arresting known or suspected terrorists and violent extremists that illegally entered this country, came in through Biden’s fraudulent parole programs or otherwise,” spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said of the 11 arrests. She didn’t offer any evidence of terrorist or extremist ties. Her comment on parole programs referred to former President Biden’s expanded legal pathways to entry, which President Trump shut down.

Russell Milne, Kashanian’s husband, said his wife is not a threat. Her appeal for asylum was complicated because of “events in her early life,” he explained. A court found an earlier marriage of hers to be fraudulent.

But over four decades, Kashanian, 64, built a life in Louisiana. The couple met when she was bartending as a student in the late 1980s. They married and had a daughter. She volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, filmed Persian cooking tutorials on YouTube and was a grandmother figure to the children next door.

The fear of deportation always hung over the family, Milne said, but he said his wife did everything that was being asked of her.

“She’s meeting her obligations,” Milne said. “She’s retirement age. She’s not a threat. Who picks up a grandmother?”

While Iranians have been crossing the border illegally for years, especially since 2021, they have faced little risk of being deported to their home countries due to severed diplomatic relations with the U.S. That seems to no longer be the case.

The Trump administration has deported hundreds of people, including Iranians, to countries other than their own in an attempt to circumvent diplomatic hurdles with governments that won’t take their people back. During Trump’s second term, countries including El Salvador, Costa Rica and Panama have taken back noncitizens from the U.S.

The administration has asked the Supreme Court to clear the way for several deportations to South Sudan, a war-ravaged country with which it has no ties, after the justices allowed deportations to countries other than those that noncitizens came from.

The U.S. Border Patrol arrested Iranians 1,700 times at the Mexican border from October 2021 through November 2024, according to the most recent public data available. The Homeland Security Department reported that about 600 Iranians overstayed visas as business or exchange visitors, tourists and students in the 12-month period through September 2023, the most recent report shows.

Iran was one of 12 countries subject to a U.S. travel ban imposed by Trump that took effect this month. Some fear ICE’s growing deportation arrests will be another blow.

In Oregon, an Iranian man was detained by immigration agents this past week while driving to the gym. He was picked up roughly two weeks before he was scheduled for a check-in at ICE offices in Portland, according to court documents filed by his attorney, Michael Purcell.

The man, identified in court filings as S.F., has lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years, and his wife and two children are U.S. citizens.

S.F. applied for asylum in the U.S. in the early 2000s, but his application was denied in 2002. His appeal failed, but the government did not deport him and he continued to live in the country for decades, according to court documents.

Due to “changed conditions” in Iran, S.F. would face “a vastly increased danger of persecution” if he were to be deported, Purcell wrote in his petition. “These circumstances relate to the recent bombing by the United States of Iranian nuclear facilities, thus creating a de facto state of war between the United States and Iran.”

S.F.’s long residency in the U.S., his conversion to Christianity and the fact that his wife and children are U.S. citizens “sharply increase the possibility of his imprisonment in Iran, or torture or execution,” he said.

Similarly, Kashanian’s daughter said she is worried what will happen to her mother.

“She tried to do everything right,” Kaitlynn Milne said.

Chandler, Rush and Spagat write for the Associated Press.

Tehran, Iran – The highways leading into Tehran are busy again, filled with cars carrying families, suitcases, and the cautious hope that home might finally be safe. After 12 days of war that killed more than 600 Iranians and displaced hundreds of thousands from the capital, a ceasefire announced on Monday has begun drawing residents back to a city still scarred by Israeli air strikes.

For many returning to Tehran, the relief of sleeping in their own beds is tempered by the constant fear that the bombing could resume at any moment.

“Coming back home after all these days, even from a place where you had physical safety, feels like heaven,” said Nika, a 33-year-old graphic designer who spent nearly two weeks sheltering with her husband at their relatives’ home in Zanjan, some 286 kilometres (177 miles) northwest of the capital. “But I don’t know if the ceasefire will last or not,” she said.

The conflict that upended millions of lives began at dawn on June 13, when Israeli warplanes launched what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. What followed was an unprecedented exchange of fire between the two regional powers that brought direct warfare to the heart of Tehran for the first time in decades.

As Israeli attacks on residential areas intensified and warnings from American and Israeli officials to evacuate Tehran grew louder, many residents, fearing for their lives, were forced to flee the capital for the relative safety of other cities and villages.

For many of Tehran’s inhabitants, abandoning their lives was a soul-crushing decision.

“I had an incredibly busy life before the war,” said Saba, a 26-year-old university student. “I lived in Tehran, had a full-time job, was studying, and since I lived alone, I managed all my household chores. When the war started, for a few days, I couldn’t believe this routine was coming to a halt. I still went to work, went out for shopping or to a cafe. But at some point, you couldn’t deny reality anymore. Life was stopping.”

By the fifth day, the war forced her to leave.

“First, my university exams were postponed, then my workplace told us to work remotely, and one by one, all my friends left Tehran. I felt a terrible loneliness,” she recalled. “I kept myself busy during the day, but at night, when the sounds of bombing and air defences began, I couldn’t fool myself any longer.”

Unable to secure a car, her father drove from her hometown of Quchan, a city near Mashhad in northeastern Iran, to bring her to the family’s house, where she stayed until the ceasefire.

‘The nights were unbearable’

According to the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education, at least 610 people were killed and 1,481 wounded during the conflict, with more than 90 percent of the casualties being civilians.

“Initially, I had decided to stay in Tehran and keep the company running,” said Kamran, a businessman and CEO of a private firm in the capital, who requested anonymity due to security concerns. “There was bombing and the sound of air defence, but life was manageable during the day. The nights, however, were truly unbearable,” said the father of two.

Many fled the city in the very first days of the war. At that time, two major obstacles plagued their departure: long queues at petrol stations made it difficult to secure enough fuel for the journey, and the main exit routes from the city were choked with heavy traffic from the sheer volume of cars trying to get out.

Now, since the ceasefire was declared, many who had abandoned Tehran have begun to make their way back.

“After 11 days of living in a place where there was no sign of war, but wasn’t home – no privacy, no peace of mind – coming back to my own house felt like heaven,” explained Nika.

“After years of being accustomed to the silence of my own home, enduring life with 11 other people in an environment that was never quiet was incredibly difficult,” she said. She returned to her two-bedroom flat in Tehran as soon as the ceasefire was declared.

“I don’t know if the ceasefire will last or not,” Nika admitted. “But even if it doesn’t, I don’t think I want to leave my home again.”

Uncertain future

Not everyone was lucky enough to return to an intact home.

Keyvan Saket, a renowned Iranian musician, had learned of his home being hit by an Israeli missile while sheltering with his family in a nearby town. Yet, his neighbour’s call delivering the grim news did not keep him from rushing back after the ceasefire was declared.

According to Saket, one of the bombs fired at his residence failed to detonate, a stroke of fortune that spared further destruction. But it barred him and his family from entering their home due to safety concerns. “Once the issue was resolved and we were allowed inside, we faced an unsettling scene,” he said. “The doors and windows were shattered, the building’s facade was obliterated, and household appliances like the washing machine and refrigerator were severely damaged. The attack was so intense that even the iron doors of the building were mangled.”

Saket’s voice carried a deep sorrow as he reflected on the toll of the conflict. “With every fibre of my being, I despise war and those who ignite it,” he said, lamenting the loss of a home he cherished. “War is the ugliest of human creations.”

Since the ceasefire took effect, both sides have accused each other of violations, and fear of renewed violence has been high. Iran has reported continued Israeli attacks for several hours after the agreement, while Israel claims to have intercepted Iranian missiles post-ceasefire. In the immediate aftermath of the ceasefire announcement, strikes continued on both sides, with Israeli forces hitting targets in Tehran, including the notorious Evin Prison, and Iranian missiles striking areas in Israel.

Hamed, a political science student, believes the situation is precarious. “This feels like a recurring nightmare to me,” he said. He had returned from the southeastern Iranian city of Kerman, where he was displaced to, on the day the ceasefire was announced, but was worried he might have to abandon his home and life all over again. “I really don’t want to have to pack my things and leave my home without knowing when, or if, I can come back.”

Despite this underlying anxiety, the streets of Tehran are visibly busier than before the ceasefire. As companies end their remote work policies and recall employees, there is evidence of a cautious, determined return to life in the capital.

Infrastructure damage across Tehran was significant, with attacks striking multiple provinces, including Alborz, East Azerbaijan, Isfahan, Fars, Kermanshah, and the capital itself. The Israeli military claimed to have struck more than 100 targets across Iran during the 12-day conflict.

In the early mornings, the hum of traffic weaves through Tehran’s wide boulevards once more. “Seeing others return to the city alongside me, watching cafes and restaurants reopen, and feeling life flow back into the streets – it truly lifts my heart,” said Saba, her eyes bright with cautious optimism. Yet, as the city stirs back to life, the shadow of an uncertain ceasefire looms, a quiet reminder that this fragile revival could be tested at any moment.

This piece was published in collaboration with Egab.

Gilan, Iran – Iranians inside and outside the country have been closely monitoring and reacting to rapidly unfolding events after United States President Donald Trump ordered the bombing of Iran’s top nuclear sites amid the ongoing conflict with Israel.

US bunker-buster bombs dropped from B-2 Spirit strategic bombers and Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from naval platforms hit Iran’s three main nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan early on Sunday. Trump claimed the nuclear facilities were “totally obliterated”, though there has been no evidence shown as of yet to confirm that.

Iranian authorities confirmed the strikes after several hours, but said there was no radioactive leak. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also confirmed there was no off-site contamination.

Iranian state media appeared to downplay the impact, with the government-run IRNA reporting from an area near Fordow, the most significant and hard-to-reach nuclear site, that there was only limited smoke rising from the place where air defences were believed to be stationed and no major activity from emergency responders.

Satellite images circulating on Sunday appeared to show possible impact sites at Fordow, where the massive GBU-57 bombs are believed to have burrowed deep underground before detonating in an attempt to destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities dug beneath the mountains.

The head of Iran’s Red Crescent Society, Pir Hossein Kolivand, said there had been no deaths in the US strikes.

Images also showed substantial movement of trucks and bulldozers around Fordow in the days preceding the strikes, in what appeared to be an attempt by Iran to move out equipment and nuclear materials stored at the protected site in anticipation of US strikes.

Heavy machinery also appeared to have been deployed to fill the entrance tunnels of the facility with earth, in a move aimed at limiting damage at the site from the incoming bombs.

Speaking in Turkiye’s Istanbul, where he was attending a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi indicated a military response by Tehran is inevitable.

“My country has been invaded, and we must respond,” he told reporters. “We must remain patient and show a proportionate response to these aggressions. Only if these measures are stopped, then will we make decisions about diplomatic pathways and the possibility of restarting negotiations.”

In a televised message issued last week from an unknown location, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had warned that it would be to the detriment of Washington if it chooses to directly enter the war.

“The damage it will suffer will be far greater than any harm that Iran may encounter. The harm the US will suffer will definitely be irreparable if it enters this conflict militarily,” he said.

Hardliners call for action

Iranian state media and many hardline politicians led a furious response after the US strikes.

State television’s Channel 3 showed a map of US military bases across the region, including in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Iraq, which are within range of Iranian missiles.

“It is now clearer than ever, not just for the Iranian nation but for the whole peoples of the region, that all US citizens and military personnel are legitimate targets. We were negotiating and progressing through a diplomatic path, but you chose to spill the blood of your soldiers. The US president in the Oval Office chose to take delivery of the coffins of up to 50,000 US soldiers in Washington,” the channel’s anchor Mehdi Khanalizadeh said.

Amirhossein Tahmasebi, another anchor who had released a defiant video from inside the state television IRIB buildings in northern Tehran after they were bombed by Israel last week, said he “spits” on Trump and anyone who claims he is a president of peace.

Hossein Shariatmadari, the Khamenei-appointed ultraconservative head of Keyhan daily newspaper, wrote: “It is now our turn to immediately rain missiles down on the US naval force in Bahrain as a first measure.”

He also renewed his longtime call for Iran to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz and said Tehran must deny access to ships from the US, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

Hamid Rasaei, one of the most hardline members of Iran’s parliament who is close to the Paydari (Steadfastness) faction led by security council member and failed presidential candidate Saeed Jalili, went one step further and said Iran must hit US bases in Saudi Arabia.

Relations between Tehran and Riyadh, however, have thawed considerably in recent years.

Threats against ‘treachery’

Most Iranians in the country are still unable to go online due to state-imposed internet restrictions, but those who have managed to find a working proxy connection are also reacting angrily to the war.

“Thirty years of Iranian oil money and thirty years of economic opportunities that could have turned tens of millions of people into citizens like the rest of the world have become three deep pits,” wrote one user on X, in reference to the nuclear sites.

“Trump says let me just drop the heaviest bomb in the world and then it will all be about peace,” another user sarcastically wrote.

“Stalwart like Damavand, to the last breath for Iran,” wrote two-time Oscar-winning film director Asghar Farhadi on Instagram with a picture of Mount Damavand, the highest peak in Iran at 5,609 metres (18,402 feet) and a symbol of national pride.

But some Iranians living overseas who are against the ruling theocratic establishment, along with some inside the country, were in favour of the US and Israeli attacks in the belief that they may help overthrow the governing body.

This has prompted denunciations, and even threats, by Iranian authorities and state media against any form of “treachery”.

Elias Hazrati, the head of President Masoud Pezeshkian’s communications council, said during a late-night state television interview on Saturday that the state views those who side with Israel and the US as “dishonourable opposition” who are selling out their own country.

In a statement on Friday, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said those who have willingly or unwillingly collaborated with Israel have until the end of Sunday to turn themselves in – or face “the harshest punishment as fifth column and colluders with a hostile country during wartime”.

Iran has executed several people since the start of the war, including one person on Sunday morning, after convicting them of “spying” for Israel.

Iranians awoke to bombs dropping across the country, as Israel launched a major attack on the country. Israel says it targeted military and nuclear sites and officials, but entire residential buildings have been destroyed.

The men were charged with engaging in conduct likely to assist a foreign intelligence service, police said.

British police say they have charged three Iranians with suspected espionage for Iran’s intelligence services from August 2024 to February 2025.

The police said in a statement on Saturday that the three men were charged with offences under the National Security Act following a major counterterrorism investigation.

Mostafa Sepahvand, 39, Farhad Javadi Manesh, 44, and Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori, 55, were accused of conduct likely to assist a foreign intelligence service between August 14, 2024, and February 16, 2025, the police said, adding that the foreign state to which the charges relate is Iran.

The three men are due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court later on Saturday.

Commander Dominic Murphy, from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, said the men were arrested two weeks ago. “These are extremely serious charges under the National Security Act, which have come about following what has been a very complex and fast-moving investigation,” he said.

Sepahvand was also charged with carrying out surveillance, reconnaissance and open-source research, intending to commit serious violence against someone in the United Kingdom, police and prosecutors said, while Manesh and Noori were also charged with engaging in surveillance and reconnaissance, with the intention that serious violence against someone in the UK would be carried out by others.

A fourth Iranian national, 31, who was also arrested and detained as part of the investigation, was released with no further action on Thursday.

The arrests took place on the same day that five other Iranians were detained by police as part of a separate counterterrorism probe, in what the UK’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper called some of the biggest investigations of their kind in recent years.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had previously said he was “disturbed” to learn that Iranian citizens had been arrested by the British authorities.

The UK has placed Iran on the highest tier of its Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS), which aims to boost the UK’s national security against covert foreign influences.

The measures, due to come into place later this year, will mean that all people working inside the UK for Iran, its intelligence services or the Revolutionary Guard would have to register or face jail.