Mohammed, a 41-year-old undocumented Afghan migrant, has for months been confined to the private garden near Tehran where he works as a caretaker, too afraid of detention and deportation by Iran’s police to even go out for a haircut.
“My wife does all the shopping. My two sons are anxious when going to school,” said the father of four, who did not want to give his full name.
“I can’t live in Afghanistan under the Taliban,” said Mohammed, who does not have a bank account and lives in a building on the garden grounds. “My life will be at risk. Not to mention there will be no job, no prospects and family to take care of.”
Mohammed is one of what Iranian authorities say was more than 2mn Afghans who crossed the border into the country after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in 2021 — adding to the many more who had entered in recent decades.
Tehran now says it plans to send them back. With the country grinding through a severe economic crisis and its leaders grappling with an increasingly bitter public, the Islamic republic’s leaders have vowed to accelerate mass deportations.
Nader Yarahmadi, an adviser to the interior minister, claimed that more than 1.2mn Afghans had already been deported between March 2024 and March 2025.
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, who visited Kabul this year, said that the deportations were co-ordinated with the Taliban and would be “gradual and dignified”.
“Afghanistan needs to properly admit and reintegrate them,” he said recently. “We do not want the return of Afghans to turn into a social crisis for either country. What is important to us is to work out a sensible regional approach to deal with the situation.”
Iran is following in the footsteps of neighbouring Pakistan, which has since 2023 expelled hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees back into the Taliban-controlled country, sparking an international outcry.
Iran says that it has accommodated a disproportionate share of refugees from Afghanistan fleeing decades of conflict in the country.
UN refugee agency UNHCR estimated there were about 3.8mn forcibly displaced people of various statuses in Iran in 2024, making it the world’s largest refugee-hosting country. But Iran says the true number of Afghans present, with and without legal status, is just over 6mn. This figure includes those born in Iran.
The Islamic republic says its public services and economy cannot take the strain. Annual inflation has been incessant, not dropping below 30 per cent since mid-2020, while the rial has plunged in value, boosting the cost of imports for Iranian consumers. Iranian authorities say some 600,000 Afghan children are studying at Iranian schools.
Saeid Iravani, Iran’s ambassador to the UN, said last year that Iran was spending $10bn annually to shelter “over 6mn Afghans” with “insufficient” international aid.
The economic situation has become more difficult since US President Donald Trump reimposed his “maximum pressure” campaign over the country’s nuclear programme.
The push to deport the mostly Sunni Afghan migrants has been accompanied by incessant sectarian dog whistles in Shia-majority Iran.
Iranian officials have argued that Afghan members of groups like Isis, which was behind bombings in southern Iran that killed nearly 100 people last year, could cross the border and pose a security threat.
Mohammad Amir, an Iranian lawmaker, called for efforts “urgently” to stop illegal crossings. “Unless migration is regulated, adversaries could use undocumented immigrants to destabilise Iran,” he said.
The prospect of forcing millions more Afghans back across the border also risks exacerbating tensions with the Taliban, Sunni hardliners with whom Iran has a fraught relationship.
Tehran has not yet recognised the Taliban-led government, while the two countries have engaged in periodic border clashes in recent years as part of a long-running water dispute.
In an effort to reinforce internal security, Iran has expedited the construction of a barrier along its porous borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan. Police have also in recent months intensified crackdowns on migrant worker settlements, which have proliferated around cities like Tehran, Karaj and Mashhad.
But Simin Kazemi, an Iranian sociologist affiliated with Shahid Beheshti University, said that rising poverty and inequality were driving a segment of the Iranian public, government and media to “demonise Afghans who work with little pay and without social security, while their children are left out of school and their women without proper healthcare”.
Kazemi said that Afghans have contributed to Iran’s economy by providing a vital source of labour. “Afghan labour has been instrumental to Iran’s development projects,” she said. “Afghans are accused of stealing jobs, while Iranian employers prefer them because they are not covered by the labour law.”
Many, such as 22-year-old Morteza, have never known anywhere else. Born to Afghan parents in Iran, the second-year medical student said he had developed a stronger sense of identity and belonging with Iranian culture than with Afghanistan.
“I have always been treated fairly at school and was never singled out for being an Afghan,” he said. “After I graduate and become a doctor, I prefer to live and work here than go back to Afghanistan. This is the place I have known as home.”