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The surprise Israeli attacks that started on June 13 were publicly condemned by Persian Gulf states which oppose Iranian hegemony in the region but seek calm to boost domestic growth agendas.

“These disruptions are of significant concern to Emirati policymakers who place a premium on regional calm and continuity,” said a senior security expert in the United Arab Emirates.

“The UAE remains concerned about the broader implications of regional conflict, economically, socially as well as politically," the expert told Iran International on condition of anonymity due to political sensitivities.

The United Arab Emirates, along with Morocco and Bahrain, is a party to the US-brokered Abraham Accords in 2020 which normalized relations between Israel.

Collective unease with Iran contributed to the historic shift toward normalization, experts say.

Last month, Abu Dhabi publicly condemned the Israeli attacks as a violation of Iran's sovereignty, but the attacks degraded the military might of a rival whose nuclear ambitions its neighbors long feared.

The campaign saw Israel gain control of Iran's airspace within days as it assassinated top military leaders and degraded Iranian missile capabilities.

However, any prolonged conflict or upheaval inside Iran would be viewed as a potential risk to the regional countries' tourism, trade and foreign investment, a taste of which was offered by the closing of air space across the Persian Gulf and crashing stock markets amid the conflict.

The United Arab Emirates is also home to around 500,000-800,000 Iranians who have been a historic force in the country’s trade and commerce concentrated in Dubai.

Interest in relative calm puts Arab capitals potentially at odds with some Iranians' hopes for fundamental change in the wake of the war, which does not appear to be forthcoming despite the punishing air war.

“The UAE takes a pragmatic approach and recognizes that broad systemic change in Iran is unlikely to be externally driven," the expert added.

Risks of regime change in Iran

Iran's southern neighbors are pleased with Tehran's chastisement but will maintain good relations for the sake of regional peace, said Emirati political commentator and academic Abdulkhaleq Abdulla.

The region "is better off now that Iran lost most of its bargaining power, namely its regional proxies, nuclear and missile powers,” he told Iran International.

“But even a weakened Iran remains a key threat to (Persian) Gulf security so the Arab states will continue with their policy of opening up to Iran and show solidarity with its people.”

The fragile ceasefire and the vulnerability of Iran's ruling system is likely to preoccupy Iran's neighbors.

Aimen Dean, of Bahraini-Saudi descent but famous for his deep work for the British spy agency MI6 embedded inside Al Qaeda, said the truce was no panacea.

“The relief isn’t here yet. Not a single government here in this region wants a regime change at least for now,” the managing director of Five Dimensions Consultants in Dubai said.

“They are afraid of two particular scenarios. The first is that an uprising happens and you end up with defections in the army and then the whole country collapses into civil war," Dean added, warning of refugee crisis on Arab shores.

The alternative scenario feared is the possibility of an ethnic breakup of Iran if the government should fall. “Nobody wants that as that also will result in a major flow of refugees and a failed state where people have access to nuclear materials,” Dean explained.

Instead, in the halls of power in the Persian Gulf, from regional juggernaut Saudi Arabia to the tiny island nation of Bahrain, Dean said there is the hope that a “defanged and declawed Iran” would be better contained within its own borders.

“That’s the ideal outcome.”

NetBlocks, which monitors global internet freedom, confirmed the outage, noting “Live network data show a major disruption to internet connectivity in Iran.” The shutdown, which lasted roughly two hours, echoed user reports from across the country.

“The flow of messages in favor of the government increased after the blackout,” a user named Maryam posted on X, suggesting the internet restrictions were designed to “silence critics and opposition.”

NetBlocks also pointed to the recent conflict between Israel and the Islamic Republic, during which Iran’s security forces cut telecommunications nationwide; an action carried out by Iranian security officials under the pretext of “safeguarding national security,” but met with widespread negative reactions both domestically and abroad.

IRNA, Iran’s official news agency, cited the state-run Telecommunications Infrastructure Company, reporting a national-level disruption in international connectivity that affected most internet service providers Saturday night. Yet government officials have not publicly addressed the cause.

Many Iranian users complained that while ordinary citizens lost access, accounts linked to state figures continued operating normally. One user, Soheil, posted: “People don’t have internet, but government supporters still do. Cut theirs too, so they stop getting on everyone’s nerves.”

Another user, Masoud, questioned how prominent establishment figures like former ministers Mohammad Javad Zarif and Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi remained active on X despite the blackout.

Zarif had earlier posted that his account was limited by platform owner Elon Musk—prompting backlash.

“Kicking 90 million Iranians offline, then crying about a missing blue check,” one user wrote in response.

It comes as the cyber warfare between Israel and Iran steps up in spite of the ceasefire.

A shadow war of mutual cyber-attacks between Iran and Israel has replaced missile fire and air strikes as a fragile truce holds, security experts told Iran International.

Authorities have given undocumented Afghans until July 6 to return to Afghanistan.

490,000 undocumented Afghan immigrants have left Iran over the past 100 days, a deputy governor general in Razavi Khorasan province said on Saturday.

Brigadier General Ahmad-Ali Goudarzi, the Border Guard Commander of Iran’s Law Enforcement Force (FARAJA) announced last week that all rental agreements with undocumented Afghans have been nullified.

Landlords, he warned, would have their properties confiscated if they failed to comply.

Following the conflict with Israel, Iranian security forces arrested several Afghans who allegedly helped Israeli intelligence.

The accused, they said without providing evidence, participated in Mossad operations including surveillance and building drones to strike Iranian targets.

As Iranian officials and state media warned about the security threat undocumented Afghans could pose to the Islamic Republic, anti-Afghan sentiments surged on social media in the days leading to the ceasefire.

Speaking on state television on June 28, Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni said some Afghans who entered Iran in recent years came “with a specific intent to carry out sabotage operations” during the recent Iran-Israel conflict.

“We can’t accept some people to come into our country and harm our security," he said.

Increase in migrants

As inflation and unemployment has mounted in recent months, some Iranians and officials had already been calling to expel the millions of undocumented and impoverished Afghans to claw back jobs and government handouts for citizens

Until the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan in 2021, the number of Afghans, including 780,000 who held official refugee status, rarely exceeded two million.

The number of Afghans living and working in Iran sharply increased during President Ebrahim Raisi’s tenure, who adopted what critics called an “open border policy.”

Under this policy, Afghans entering on a three-month tourist visa were allowed to extend their stay and obtain work and residence permits. Officials say as many as 4,000 visas per day were issued until recently.

Some officials say over 3 million documented Afghans and an additional 4 million undocumented economic migrants live in Iran now. A small minority of non-refugees are wealthier Afghans who fled after the Taliban takeover.

Surge in forcible returns in recent weeks

A June 25 flash update from the UN Migration Organization (IOM) reported that over 30,000 Afghans have returned from Iran daily following the ceasefire, compared to 3,000–4,000 per day before the conflict.

Returnees face heightened protection risks and require urgent access to safe accommodation, healthcare, and water, sanitation, and hygiene services upon arrival, the report said.

UNICEF reports that 5,000 unaccompanied children are among recent returnees.

Demand for Afghans’ return

Persian-language social media have been flooded with anti-Afghan posts in recent years. Calls for the expulsion of all Afghans were a major topic in last year’s snap presidential elections.

Critics argue that cheap Afghan labor deprives Iranians of jobs and strains healthcare and education systems while increasing government subsidies for essentials like bread, oil and fuel.

However, some Iranians express sympathy for Afghans and condemn their sudden, forcible repatriation. Others point out that life under the Taliban will destroy the lives of many Afghan women who will no longer be able to study or work.

“I am ashamed to see and hear about the manner of deporting Afghans, and I apologize to them. This way of sending them off is imprudent,” wrote Ali-Asghar Shafieian, managing director of the reformist Ensaf News.

“They worked hard in Iran and wouldn’t have migrated if conditions were favorable (at home)".

Warnings about labor crisis

Undocumented and many documented Afghans have provided cheap labor to Iran's industries, agriculture and services sector for decades.

Although employing undocumented immigrants is illegal and their presence is banned in over a dozen provinces, many government contractors for local governments rely heavily on their labor.

In a recent article, Donya-ye Eghtesad, an economic daily, argued mass deportation could create more jobs for low-income Iranians and reduce unemployment, but warned it may also cause labor shortages in construction and agriculture and drive up prices of goods and services.

Iran’s official unemployment rate stands at 7.6 percent, but many believe the real figure is significantly higher, as the government considers anyone working at least one hour per week as employed. Around one-third of Iranians live below the poverty line.

The video shows two powerful blasts roughly a second apart just steps away from the main hospital in the Tajrish area, near the capital's bustling Qods Square.

One hits a building, sending a huge cloud of smoke up on the other side of the street, and another lands between cars at an intersection.

The second blast hurls the vehicles and a huge plume of smoke high into the air.

At the time of the explosions, around 15:30 local time on June 15, the street was busy with vendors, shoppers, metro passengers and traffic as many had still not left the capital for safer places.

Other videos of the incident posted earlier on social media showed extensive flooding caused by damage to a major water pipeline from the second blast, adding to the chaos. A three-year-old child reportedly drowned in the flood.

The 12-second footage, released on social media on Thursday, appears to be from a traffic surveillance camera.

The footage emphasized the harm endured by Iranian civilians apart from Israeli strikes which assassinated commanders and nuclear scientists and pummeled key military and nuclear facilities until a June 24 ceasefire.

Iran's health ministry reported 610 people were killed in the conflict and 4,746 injured.

Independent tallies put the toll higher—1,190 according to the US-based human rights group HRANA, which reported military deaths just above 400, with the rest either civilians or yet to be determined.

Verified

Some activists and social media users allege that the video was digitally manipulated or AI-generated.

However, Factnameh, an Iranian fact-checking website, and BBC both deemed the footage genuine, comparing it with other images from the area of the impact.

Victims

Iran reported 18 people killed, including a pregnant woman and her child, and 46 injured in the strike but has not released a full list of victims.

The Israeli military reported the killing of Brigadier General Mohammad Kazemi, chief of the IRGC Intelligence Organization, his deputy Brigadier General Hassan Mohaqeq, and military intelligence officer Mohsen Bagheri on the same day.

Iran confirmed their deaths but neither side has disclosed the exact location of their deaths.

Other incidents with high civilian casualties

On June 23, Israel launched several missiles at Tehran’s Evin Prison, calling the site a “tool of repression.”

Among the dead were two prison officials, Ruhollah Tavasoli and Vahid Heydarpour, as well as Evin's top prosecutor Ali Ghanaatkar. Dozens of detainees, medical staff, visiting families — including a young child — and even a bystander were also killed.

Another Israeli attack on June 24 in Astaneh Ashrafieh in northern Iran killed 16 people, most of them from the same extended family, and completely destroyed several homes.

The bombing targeted nuclear scientist Mohammad-Reza Sadighi, who had survived an earlier Israeli attack in Tehran but lost his 17-year-old son Hamidreza in the airstrike.

The group urged the Communications Ministry and the Infrastructure Company to “immediately end the deliberate disruptions to online access.

“Over 400,000 small and medium-sized enterprises, whose livelihoods millions of Iranians depend on, are facing complete collapse," the open letter dated July 2 said.

Internet access in Iran was disrupted on June 13, the first day of the 12-day war with Israel, and was completely cut on June 17. Partial service has since resumed, but connection speeds and access remain severely limited.

State media defends blackouts citing cyber war

On Saturday, the IRGC-affiliated Fars News Agency said the disruptions may reflect a large cyber war targeting national infrastructure, describing the attacks as organized and part of a “hidden battle growing more severe by the day.”

During the war, officials justified the shutdowns as a measure to block Israeli reconnaissance drones allegedly using Iranian SIM cards and to disrupt intelligence gathering via WhatsApp. But military and communications experts have dismissed those remarks.

“I categorically reject the Islamic Republic’s claims. No evidence has been presented to show that Israel uses SIM cards for drones," Mehdi Yahyanejad, an expert in internet technologies, told Iran International.

"Even if that were the case, a nationwide internet shutdown is not a logical solution," he said.

The daughter of top military commander Ali Shadmani—killed shortly after his appointment to lead Khatam-al-Anbia Central Headquarters—said her father carried no smart devices during the war, and that “Israel’s precision targeting went far beyond WhatsApp or traditional espionage.”

Her remarks followed accusations from Gholamreza Jalali, head of Iran’s Passive Defense Organization, who said WhatsApp was used to locate and kill Iranian commanders—a charge Meta has denied.

Layoffs, collapse feared in tech sector

The Internet Business Association, in its letter, cited ongoing disruptions—DNS tampering, throttling, protocol filtering, and loss of global access—as already triggering mass layoffs, stalled investment, and startup shutdowns.

“We are witnessing a broad wave of job cuts, halted investment in the startup ecosystem, and announcements of company closures—that is to say, bankruptcies,” the letter said.

The group warned that continued interference “threatens public trust, accelerates elite migration, and risks the death of Iran’s tech sector,” demanding an immediate end to all forms of service degradation.

Iran ranked near the bottom in global internet freedom last year. According to the Tehran Electronic Commerce Association, the country is placed among the lowest in speed and reliability out of 100 surveyed nations.

Surveys suggest 84% of Iranians rely on VPNs to access free internet.