WANA (Sep 01) – The administration of TOEFL and GRE examinations has been officially halted in Iran.

 

Educational Testing Service (ETS) announced on its official TOEFL iBT registration portal that, in compliance with recent regulatory changes by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), testing operations for TOEFL and GRE in Iran have been suspended.

 

Reacting to the impact of academic sanctions on university exchanges and international testing, Iranian Minister of Science, Research, and Technology Hossein Simaei Saraf stated that the objective behind these sanctions is to force the country into submission, adding that various forms of restrictions have been deployed over time.

 

“Academic sanctions are not unprecedented,” Simaei Saraf noted. “For years, several of our universities have faced sanctions, and research papers submitted under Iranian affiliations have been routinely rejected.”

 

“Now, barring individuals from taking a standardized exam simply based on Iranian nationality and citizenship represents archaic behavior,” he added, criticizing U.S. President Donald Trump’s past remarks about returning Iran to the Stone Age while asserting that such measures themselves reflect primitive conduct.

 

Regarding the current status of international exams, the minister noted that the National Organization for Educational Assessment oversees the management of these tests and is currently reviewing the situation.