Telegram Brokers Price Iranian Babies at $1,100 Amid Legal Ban

Iranian social media hosts are openly listing babies for sale, charging buyers between 1.5 billion and 3 billion rials for infants born within the last week. These online offers persist despite a legal prohibition on the sale of children. A review by RFE/RL Radio Farda found that brokers use the language of charity to facilitate transactions on Telegram channels.

One channel administrator, known as "The Doctor," offered a newborn boy for 3 billion rials, roughly $1,100. She described the sum as a "gift" intended to cover legal steps, hospital bills, and support for the birth family. The deal includes ultrasound scans, a birth certificate, and a national ID card. Buyers can submit identity documents to open a file for a fee of 200 million rials, or about $75.

The administrator claims buyers can select the sex of a baby under 10 days old. She stated that the infants are healthy and their parents have no history of addiction. She also said buyers may bring their own doctor to examine the child. According to her, birth certificates and medical records can be arranged to list the buyers as the parents, a process she described as confidential and traceless. Radio Farda could not independently verify these claims.

Another broker, a maternity ward nurse, described a 2021 deal involving a baby girl transferred to an Iranian family in the United States. The birth mother, who already had four children, agreed to hand over the infant for 700 million rials, worth about $2,560 at the time. The nurse said the ultrasound records were registered under the adoptive mother's name, and the baby was discharged from the hospital under that name. The two women never met, and the child was taken to the U.S. about a month after birth.

The nurse noted that some families use makeup, maternity clothes, and staged photos to simulate pregnancy. Iranian law allows residents abroad to apply for guardianship through diplomatic missions, but some families bypass this route. In a separate channel, a woman called "Miss Doctor" advertised a 3-day-old girl and a 7-day-old boy. She said twins were also available for an additional 300 million rials, bringing the total file cost for twins to 400 million rials.

A nurse at a state hospital said her facility transfers at least two newborns a month to Behzisti, the State Welfare Organization. These transfers usually occur because the mothers are addicted to drugs or the families cannot care for the children. Some babies are simply abandoned in the hospital. Iranian authorities have acknowledged the trend for years. In January 2022, a senior Behzisti official said baby sales were rising and often arranged before birth. The head of Tehran's cyberpolice announced the arrest of a group that had offered babies online for 1.2 billion rials the following month.

Four years after that announcement, similar offers continue to circulate on Telegram. Brokers describe the source of the babies as shifting between abandoned newborns and children of families too poor to raise them. The current exchange rate places the typical asking price for a single infant at approximately $1,100.