Cutting off SIM cards has emerged as one of the more effective tools available to Iranian authorities seeking to punish critics and civil society activists, with consequences that go well beyond losing mobile phone service.
Because access to banking, government, insurance, judicial, and even educational services in Iran is now tied to a verified mobile number and one-time SMS codes, cutting off a person's SIM effectively locks them out of a wide range of essential services and civil rights.
One woman, Donya Rad, said she recently discovered she could not renew her car insurance because a new mandatory rule requires registering one's address through a state housing portal -- a process that requires an SMS verification code she could not receive.
She wrote on X that SIM cutoffs have become so routine over the past two or three years that people talk about them the "way they complain about traffic or the weather." She described it as "a punishment that arrives before any legal charges are filed."
Mahsa Safaei, a car mechanic who posts content on Instagram, said her SIM was cut off three years ago because she appeared in videos without a head scarf and in short sleeves.
"You asked what I did wrong? What I did was earn an honest living," she said in a video. "It's been three years."
Ali Akbar Gorji, a professor of constitutional law, and journalist Saeideh Shafiei both had their SIM cards blocked without warning; both said that when they sought to have the blocks lifted, they were told to delete certain critical social media posts and write 20 posts defending the Islamic republic.
The Precedent
The tactic emerged following the 2022 nationwide protests that gave rise to the Women, Life, Freedom movement and intensified further following the 12-day war with Israel in June 2025.
A mobile number in Iran's digital infrastructure now functions as a form of identification used to receive one-time codes, meaning a cutoff can trigger a chain reaction across other services.
Filterbaan, an Iranian digital rights organization, has described SIM cutoffs as an extralegal tool designed to identify individuals, restrict them, and disrupt activists' ability to communicate with each other, institutions, and the media -- including by cutting people off from the judiciary's electronic notification system and blocking delivery of court summonses.
That is what happened to Yalda Moayeri, a well-known Iranian photojournalist, who said she only learned by chance during an unrelated court visit that a trial date had been set for her and that officials had tried to reach her using the very line they cut off before issuing a verdict against her in absentia.
The Legal Excuse
Authorities have in some cases cited Article 247 of Iran's Code of Criminal Procedure, which allows an investigating judge -- who oversees the preliminary investigation of criminal cases -- to impose supervisory measures such as travel or driving bans on a suspect.
But activists and lawyers say the central legal question is whether that provision can be stretched to justify severing a person's access to their phone number and by extension an entire set of essential services, particularly when ordinary citizens say they received no advance notice.
Hossein Ahmadiniaz, an Iranian lawyer based in the Netherlands, told RFE/RL's Radio Farda that Iran's judiciary has "no legitimate legal basis for the practice," calling it a pretext to restrict people's freedoms in violation of basic legal principles, including the principle that punishments must be defined by law and consistent with constitutional protections.
He said the practice leaves no right to a fair hearing and no judicial independence.
"The law can have no real meaning in the Islamic republic of Iran," he said.
