Deported in shackles: Iranians sent back from US without consent, lawyer says

The ruling concerns Mohammadreza Mazloumi Aboukheili, 64, a former director of operations at the National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company, a state-owned firm reporting to Iran’s Ministry of Petroleum.

He had applied for a visa to visit his son in Ontario, but Canadian authorities determined he was inadmissible due to his senior role in "a regime engaged in terrorism and systematic human-rights abuses," according to the court ruling.

Mazloumi had previously visited Canada before Ottawa introduced a 2022 policy targeting high-ranking Iranian officials, the court decision cited by Global News said.

Immigration officials argued his position placed him only two ranks below Iran’s oil minister, undermining his assertion that he was a “middle manager.”

Mazloumi challenged the assessment, but the judge rejected his arguments, saying the government’s decision was reasonable and supported by evidence. The court found “no error” in how the visa officer handled the case, noting the executive knowingly served in a government accused of terrorism and repression.

The case reflects Ottawa’s broader effort to prevent senior Iranian officials from entering Canada.

Almost three years after the policy was introduced, authorities have stopped nearly 200 suspected Islamic Republic figures at the border.

However, deporting those already inside Canada has proven more difficult. Only one suspected official has been removed to Iran, while several others remain in the country due to legal challenges.

Oil revenues play a central role in funding the Iranian state, which Ottawa has accused of supporting groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas and Yemen’s Houthis, and supplying drones to Russia for its war in Ukraine.

Canadian authorities have also accused Tehran of targeting critics abroad, including activists and journalists living in Canada.

Mazloumi did not respond to a request for comment, Global News reported.

The renewed restrictions are biting deep into society, yet they are ultimately the result of Tehran’s own policies, economist Mahdi Ghodsi told Eye for Iran.

“In the past 10 years, the real income of Iranians has been halved. The middle class has become poor and the poor cannot live under these conditions,” he said.

“I consider sanctions as the effect of bad management, bad policy and bad governance. If you think about the benefits of your own people, you don’t impose policies that attract sanctions,” he added.

Iranians themselves are pointing the finger at their leaders, analyst Holly Dagres said.

“You’re hearing chants from retirees, you’re hearing labor unions saying enough — stop blaming sanctions and inflation. This is all on you. The West is not the problem here. You’re the problem,” said Dagres, a fellow at the The Washington Institute think tank.

Currency tank

The rial has collapsed to 1,170,000 to the US dollar — or 117,000 tomans on the free market — the weakest in Iran's history.

Iran’s Central Bank Governor blamed the plunge on an “enemy’s psychological war,” but for families, it has meant soaring costs for food, rent, and medicine. The broad scope of the new sanctions, covering oil, banking and dual-use goods, is already eroding purchasing power across the country.

The volatility is also taking a psychological toll.

“People are constantly checking the exchange rate, they’re constantly checking the gold rate,” Dagres said. “It’s like a stock market for them, because they know that tomorrow their bread or their rent or their medicine could cost more.”

The so-called snapback of United Nations sanctions was welcomed on October 1 by the foreign ministers of the G7 countries, joined by the EU’s High Representative.

Tehran was accused of failing to meet its nuclear obligations, and urged to return to direct talks with Washington. The measures restore sweeping restrictions first imposed between 2006 and 2010, which had been lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal.

The United States, European Union, and allies including Canada and Japan have also moved to reimpose their own measures.

Research highlights how devastating such measures have been. Sanctions between 2012 and 2019 shrank Iran’s middle class by up to 28 percentage points compared with a no-sanctions scenario, according to a study by Mohammad Reza Farzanegan of Philipps-Universität Marburg and Nader Habibi of Brandeis University, published in the European Journal of Political Economy.

Sanctions “laid waste” to the very group that once drove reform and moderation in Iran, the authors wrote in an op-ed published by Al Jazeera.

War fears

The sanctions appear to deepen an impasse that may culminate in more war.

"The specter of war is still on Iran. Iranian airspace is still under control of Israel and the United States, Ghodsi said. "Either the Iranian government will try to resolve all these issues or the tensions will escalate soon."

Dagres said average Iranians are fearful of another war and its attendant death and displacement, but Tehran's hard line hard line may augur another conflict.

"To me, it seems like things are not changing in the view of the Islamic Republic. And the way that things are going, it does look like a path to confrontation."

You can watch the full episode of Eye for Iran on YouTube or listen on any podcast platform of your choosing like Castbox, Spotify, Apple or Amazon Music.

Iran, slain Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, and senior Hamas leaders such as Ismail Haniyeh "were unaware of the October 7 attack,” said Esmail Qaani, head of the foreign operations wing of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Quds Force.

Israel has accused Iran of orchestrating the October 7 attacks, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisting that Tehran funded, trained and planned the assault as the culmination of its longstanding support for Hamas.

Successor to Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad in 2020, Qaani has mostly maintained a low profile and survived serial Israeli assassinations of IRGC commanders during a surprise military campaign in June.

According to Qaani, Haniyeh was preparing for a trip to Iraq when he was surprised to learn of the assault on Israel by Hamas. Haniyeh, a senior Palestinian politician and Hamas’s political leader, served as chairman of the group from 2017 until his assassination by Israel in Tehran in July 2024.

Qaani said he traveled to Lebanon on the afternoon of October 7 and met Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah to discuss next steps.

“During the meeting, Nasrallah decided to launch attacks on Israel on October 8,” he said, noting that a large number of Lebanese civilians were holidaying away from homes in southern Lebanon at the time.

On October 8, Hezbollah fired rockets and artillery at multiple Israeli military sites in northern Israel, including around the disputed Shebaa Farms in solidarity with Hamas. Israel responded with heavy artillery fire.

The Jewish State carried out multiple strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon, including pager explosions in September 2024 that killed more than 30 Hezbollah commanders.

Later that month, an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon killed most of Hezbollah’s senior leadership, including Nasrallah. A subsequent air campaign and ground incursion killed over 3,000 people.

Hezbollah disarmament

Qaani added that if Israel could disarm or destroy Hezbollah militarily, it would have continued fighting without pause, but instead Israel requested a ceasefire to regroup.

“While some Israeli officials prematurely claimed Hezbollah’s destruction, battlefield realities showed otherwise,” he said.

Lebanon’s government has unveiled plans to disarm Hezbollah by the end of 2025, aiming to make the Lebanese Armed Forces the country’s sole armed force even as Israel maintains an armed presence in parts of the country's south.

Hezbollah, with backing from Iran, has resisted handing over its weapons.

An Islamic Revolutionary Court had originally sentenced Morteza (Calvin) Faghanpour Sassi, Abolfazl (Benjamin) Ahmadzadeh Khajani, Hossam al-Din (Yahya) Mohammad Joneydi, and two others whose names were not disclosed.

The defendants have chosen Christian names for themselves.

Each was given seven years and six months for “deviant educational and propaganda activities contrary to and disruptive of Islamic Sharia, involving foreign connections,” plus an additional seven months for “propaganda against the system,” according to the Christian outlet Mohabbat News.

Faghanpour Sassi received an extra 17 months for “insulting the leadership.”

The court cited reports from the Intelligence Ministry, defendants’ statements and evidence of house churches, Christian promotion, enrollment in foreign online universities, training trips to Turkey and efforts to recruit others as grounds for upholding the convictions.

The defendants were pressured to sign statements renouncing their faith in exchange for reduced sentences, while “at least one of them, Morteza Faghanpour Sassi was subjected to physical torture,” according to the advocacy group Article 18.

Iran has shut down Persian-language churches and frequently raids homes and house-churches. Converts often face accusations such as promoting “Zionist Christianity,” membership in groups opposed to the Islamic Republic or attempting to convert Muslims - charges that can lead to lengthy imprisonment often without substantial evidence.

Under Iranian law, only ethnic Armenians and Assyrians born into Christianity are recognized as Christians. Conversion from Islam is prohibited.

Renaz Ebrahimi, 34, holds Finnish citizenship - one of the many nationalities represented on board the so-called Global Sumud Flotilla, which includes participants from various countries including Spain, Italy, Turkey and Malaysia.

In a video transmitted on Instagram, she appears to narrate the moment of her detention by Israeli forces while labeling its incursion into Gaza a genocide.

Israel denies the charge and has accused the activists of performing propaganda for Hamas militants.

She was aboard the Polish-flagged Marinette with six crew members, which was stopped 49 miles from Gaza's coastline.

On social media, Ebrahimi identifies herself as a journalist and activist, with a series of videos in Finnish about the recent flotilla movement to Gaza.

The Israeli navy stopped the flotilla, detained those on board on charges of attempting to cross a blockade, and is currently in the process of deporting them.

The flotilla launched in July 2025 as a humanitarian aid mission to break Israel's blockade of the coastal enclave. It started with 44 vessels, all of which have now been stopped by Israeli forces.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition, which has organized several such missions since 2008, released a statement upon the interception by the Israeli navy, vowing to continue their efforts.

“We stand with every human rights defender aboard. Their courage is part of our shared struggle to end Israel’s deadly siege,” the statement said.

Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate activist, was also among those detained.

Israel imposed a land, air and sea blockade on the Gaza Strip in 2007 after Hamas took control of the territory. The aim was to prevent weapons smuggling and restrict Hamas’s military capabilities.