Betting in Iran: the law, the risks and the sites that accept Iranian players

The legal position

Gambling is a crime under the Islamic Penal Code, with penalties that include fines, imprisonment and corporal punishment; running or facilitating a gambling site is a more serious offence, and the authorities have prosecuted operators of payment gateways and promoters on social media. Domains are blocked by the national filtering system, and international sanctions cut Iranian banks off from the foreign payment networks the platforms use elsewhere.

What exists anyway

1xBet, Betwinner and their siblings run Persian-language sites with rial or dollar accounts, reached through mirrors that change weekly. Money moves through local card gateways operated by intermediaries who accept Shetab card payments and credit the betting account, taking a cut and carrying the legal exposure, and through crypto bought peer-to-peer, which has become the safer of two unsafe routes. Withdrawals go to the same gateways or to USDT. None of the platforms holds any authorisation; none offers recourse; the gateways can disappear with the money in them.

What we suggest

We tested an account from outside the country and it was paid; that says nothing about the risk to a resident, which is legal, financial and, in the penal code, physical. Anyone who bets from Iran does so against every kind of advice, including ours.