The head of inspections and monitoring of Mashhad guilds, in an interview with IRNA, the official news agency of the Islamic Republic, explicitly announced that the sealing of business units during the first four months of the current Iranian year has increased by 20 times compared with the same period last year.

According to Mohsen Sayadi, during this period 104 business units were sealed by orders of the mobile branches of the government’s Commerce Offenses (Tazir) offices, while in the same period of the previous year this figure was only five units. He did not state the reason for this number of sealed business units, but claimed that 322 billion and 500 million rials have been returned to complainants.

The manager of inspections and monitoring of Mashhad guilds claims that these business units were sealed in the first four months of the current Iranian year, at a time that coincides with the days of war and business downturn.

Earlier, numerous reports had been published about the sealing of businesses—including cafes and hookah lounges across the country—on accusations such as failure to observe mandatory hijab.