Iranian authorities have shut down dozens of cafes across the country in recent weeks, according to The New York Times, often citing violations of the mandatory hijab law. The crackdown has also hit restaurants and boutiques in multiple cities. Experts say the closures reflect the regime's broader effort to control public space following deadly protests in January and amid the ongoing war with the US.
For young Iranians squeezed by war, unrest and inflation, one refuge has survived intact – the coffee shop. There, amid friends, they can still feel a fragment of ordinary life.
What began as simple socializing has hardened into a counterculture the whole country can see. Cafes overflow onto sidewalks with young people smoking, flirting and talking. Some drink alcohol or go unveiled – both illegal under Iranian law – doing so openly, in view of any passerby.
That visibility has drawn a response. Police have closed dozens of cafes in recent weeks, most often invoking Iran's mandatory hijab law as grounds for the shutdowns.
The crackdown has widened well beyond cafes. Restaurants and boutiques across several cities have also been forced closed, officials say, though some have since reopened their doors.
To the experts The New York Times consulted, this is no accident – the informal cafe scene runs directly counter to the government's drive to dominate public space. That drive has only sharpened since January, when protests over the economy's collapse were put down with lethal force.
The pressure has not eased since. An unresolved war with the US – waged, in part, to topple the Islamic republic – continues without any end in sight, and the regime has answered with staged nighttime rallies. These serve a dual purpose: projecting an image of popular loyalty while warning off anyone tempted to protest.
Tehran-based interviews with cafe owners, staff and customers point to a clear pattern. Officials appear to be targeting clusters of cafes situated near one another, small businesses whose limited space pushes patrons out onto the sidewalk. It is exactly this kind of spontaneous, informal gathering that draws official suspicion.
Amir falls into that category – a 45-year-old Tehran cafe owner who escaped this round of closures despite having been shuttered once before. "It seems that a campaign has begun to control postwar Iran, a society that is unhappy and under strain," he told The New York Times. His outlook, though, remains defiant: "We always console ourselves with the thought that this is just a wave. They come and shut us down, but we rise again."
Like the other Iranians who spoke for this account, Amir asked that only his first name appear in print, wary of retaliation from the state.
For Mona, a 36-year-old Tehran artist, the explanation is simpler than officials realize. "The cafes are being shut down because of the crowds that gather outside them in the afternoons," she said. She thinks authorities are reading protest into ordinary life – as she put it, they "seem to think it's some kind of protest gathering or something, when really it's just a bunch of young women and men who look a little different from what the officials are used to, hanging out together."
Iran's foreign ministry stayed silent when asked to comment. Officials have cited a shifting mix of reasons for the closures. Regulatory violations and hijab noncompliance top the list, but vaguer labels have surfaced too: "social and moral misconduct," "failing to observe Islamic values," "norm-breaking." The labels aren't baseless. Spontaneous crowds and unveiled women at these cafes do defy what the state expects of its citizens. Beer, it turns out, flows freely at several central Tehran cafes – a detail confirmed by three residents, including one owner, to The New York Times. Under Iranian law, drinking alcohol carries a lashing sentence.
Haleh Mir Miri knows this world well. A Canada-based author and researcher, she has written an entire book on Iran's cafe culture. Her take: these spaces offer both an escape from social pressure and a quiet challenge to the regime's ideology. "Through cafe culture, people could imagine and invent other ways of living and becoming," she said – adding a warning of sorts: "For a totalitarian government accustomed to homogenizing people's lives, that is inherently dangerous."
