Why over 500,000 Afghans were forced out of Iran in just 16 days and what’s next?

Behind this exodus lies a brutal combination of politics, suspicion, and long-standing tension. What Iran says is a national security move, critics call a purge of one of the region’s most vulnerable communities.

The eviction begins

On June 24, just days after the fighting ended, Tehran’s mass deportations accelerated. By July 9, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) recorded 508,426 Afghans crossing the border back into their homeland. Some 51,000 were forced out in one day alone, a crescendo ahead of a July 7 deadline for undocumented migrants to leave.

Among them was Bashir, a young man in his twenties who had been living and working in Tehran. “The police caught me in the street,” he told reporters in Islam Qala, CNN reported.

Bashir added, “They took 10 million tomans ($200) from me, sent me to a detention centre, and forced me to pay another 2 million ($50). They didn’t give us food or water. They beat us.”

He said around 200 people were being held in that facility, detained without basic necessities and treated with abuse. For many, these last days in Iran were marked not by quiet exits but by extortion and violence.

Parisa, just 11 years old, stood beside her parents after arriving back in Afghanistan. “We lived in Iran for six years. I was told I couldn’t go to school anymore,” she said. “Even though we had a legal census document, they said we had to leave immediately.”

Her education now hangs in limbo — especially in Taliban-run Afghanistan, where girls’ schooling is severely restricted, the report by CNN added.

Fear, suspicion, and collective punishment

Iran had long hinted at its desire to reduce the number of undocumented Afghans, many of whom perform low-wage, grueling labour across cities like Tehran, Isfahan, and Mashhad. But the new wave of expulsions followed a chilling narrative twist: unproven claims that Afghan nationals spied for Israel during the recent conflict.

Though no substantial evidence has been presented, Iranian state media has broadcast footage of a supposed Afghan “spy” admitting to passing locations to a handler based in Germany in exchange for $2,000. The man’s identity and the claims remain unverifiable, but they’ve been enough to ignite public suspicion and fuel what rights groups say is a campaign of collective punishment.

“We are witnessing discrimination, dehumanising language, and incitement to violence,” the CNN report quoted Richard Bennett, the UN’s special rapporteur to Afghanistan as saying, warning of growing hostility towards Afghans and other minorities in Iranian media, .

Tehran has defended the removals. “We’ve always striven to be good hosts, but national security is a priority,” government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said on July 1. “Naturally, illegal nationals must return.”

The deportations come at enormous human cost. Mihyung Park, IOM’s mission chief, as per a report by CNN, said that half of all Afghan returnees this year crossed the border since June 1, with 250,000 arriving in one week of July alone.

“There are thousands under the sun. It’s quite dire,” Park told CNN. “Last week alone, there were around 400 unaccompanied, separated children, that is a lot.”

Video footage from the border shows long lines of people waiting to be processed, faces flushed from heat, hands shielding infants from the sun. Some are bused in and marched off to unknown locations. Others speak of police raids in Iranian cities, with migrants hunted across open fields or yanked from construction sites. In one segment aired by Iranian television, a journalist confronts an employer: “Why did you hire the Afghan? It’s against the law.” The man replies, “I know! But I had to pay him before he left.”

No way back

Many deportees had spent years in Iran, carving out precarious but meaningful lives. Some had sent their children to school, started small businesses, and blended into communities despite lacking formal papers. That life, in the end, proved fragile — easily erased by a policy shift and a wave of fear.

Iran’s recent expulsions reflect not just the fallout of a regional war, but a growing intolerance toward those deemed foreign, illegal, or disposable. For the hundreds of thousands pushed into the deserts of western Afghanistan, survival has once again become the only goal.

And with temperatures rising and aid resources stretched thin, the journey ahead looks just as perilous as the one behind.