Iranian students have lost access to major English-language and graduate admission exams after the suspension of a US sanctions exemption, forcing some applicants to consider costly travel abroad while raising concerns over university application deadlines.
ETS, the US-based organization that administers the TOEFL and GRE, said it had suspended testing in Iran after the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) froze General License G on August 24. The license had allowed certain educational services to continue operating in Iran despite existing sanctions.
"Following OFAC's suspension of General License G, ETS has paused administration of the TOEFL and GRE tests in Iran effective immediately," the organization said in an official notice.
The TOEFL is a US-based English-language proficiency examination accepted by universities around the world, while the GRE is a standardized test required by some graduate programs, particularly in the United States and Canada.
ETS said Iranian nationals could still sit the exams outside the country and that it was examining ways to resume testing in Iran.
Some Iranian applicants had already been traveling to countries including Türkiye and Armenia to take IELTS, the British equivalent of the TOEFL, amid separate difficulties affecting the availability of the UK exam inside Iran in recent months.
The suspension comes as US sanctions on Iran have expanded since the war began in late February, targeting Iranian trade and exports and contributing to wider disruptions across the country’s economy.
Iranian students preparing for the TOEFL and GRE have launched an online petition calling on ETS to restore access to the examinations.
According to the petition, thousands of students have been cut off from tests required for university admissions, scholarships, graduate programs and other academic opportunities. Many applicants, it said, had spent months preparing for the exams, paid related fees and organized their application schedules around specific testing dates.
"Students should not lose years of preparation or their chance to pursue higher education because access to required examinations has suddenly been removed," the petition states.
The petition organizers are urging OFAC to introduce a specific exemption covering standardized academic testing and asking ETS to restore TOEFL and GRE services in Iran as soon as legally possible.
They argue that sanctions intended to pressure the Iranian government should not prevent ordinary citizens from pursuing educational opportunities, particularly when those applicants have no role in state policy.
By Nazrin Sadigova
