‘Mark my words’ — Iran issues warning ahead of IAEA board meeting

Tabriz Friday Prayer Imam Ahmad Motahari Asl said Iran will push its nuclear energy and uranium enrichment programs “to the maximum,” insisting the country needs no one’s permission to pursue scientific and national progress.

“Halting enrichment would mean halting the country’s growth,” he said during Eid al-Adha prayers, echoing official resistance to Western pressure amid renewed nuclear talks.

“America operates 100 nuclear power plants and now wants to triple that number. What we do is none of their business,” he added.

“These hostile states are using organized crime groups to carry out violent and disruptive operations,” Jonathan Hall said, warning that such threats are much harder to conceptualize for the public compared to terrorism, but no less dangerous. “If you’re an intelligence officer, why would you not exploit divisions in the West?” he added.

Hall warned that while some operatives are “bunglers,” others have come alarmingly close to their targets.

His comments come amid a series of prosecutions involving state-linked threats.

In one trial, six Bulgarians were convicted of spying on behalf of Russian intelligence. In two separate operations on May 3, eight men, including seven Iranians, were arrested by the British counter-terrorism police. Three were later charged under the National Security Act for conduct 'likely to assist a foreign intelligence service.' The foreign state involved is Iran, police said.

Iran poses ‘unacceptable threat,’ UK minister says

Last month, UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper declared in parliament that “the Iranian regime poses an unacceptable threat to our domestic security, which cannot continue.”

“We will not tolerate growing state-backed threats on UK soil,” Cooper said. “The UK will not accept any Iranian state threat activity in the UK.”

Push to target Iran’s IRGC gains momentum

In response to the rising threats, Hall last month urged the government to expand its powers to target affiliates of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which he said poses a unique challenge. The Revolutionary Guards cannot be blacklisted the same way non-state actors are, Hall argued, but recommended a new mechanism — a Statutory Alert and Liability Threat (SALT) notice — to disrupt its networks and apply international stigma.

“It will allow the government to communicate decisive stigma... and put the IRGC on notice that its operations, minions, and influence networks are at greater risk of executive action,” his report said.

Over 550 UK lawmakers and peers signed a letter in early May calling for the full proscription of the IRGC as a terrorist group, intensifying political pressure on Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government to act.

The detentions span several provinces, including Kurdistan, Gilan, Fars, Qazvin, and Kermanshah, and involve both striking drivers and citizens accused of promoting the protests online or documenting blockades.

The strike began on May 22 in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, triggered by mounting frustrations over rising costs, falling freight rates, fuel restrictions, and lack of state support. The movement quickly spread, and the Alliance of Iran Truckers and Truck Drivers’ Unions (AITTD) now says drivers in at least 155 cities and towns are participating.

Those arrested include named individuals such as Farzad Rezaei, Zanko Rostami, Rezgar Moradi, Sediq Mohammadi, Ata Aziri, Alireza Faghfoori, and Shahab Darabi—who has reportedly been released. Authorities in Qazvin said nine people were detained for allegedly disrupting traffic and posting videos on social media. In some cases, state media aired what appeared to be forced confessions.

The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) has called the strike “the largest labor protest in recent years,” citing it as evidence of growing discontent over the country’s deepening economic crisis.

Iran remains the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism and uses groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis to sow instability in the Middle East, the US State Department spokesperson said Thursday.

“Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis are cancers in that region that exist to destabilize, to murder, to maintain a kind of chaos that allows Iran to continue to survive,” said Tammy Bruce in an interview with Fox News.

A US federal jury has convicted a Pakistani national of smuggling Iranian-made advanced weaponry to Yemen’s Houthis and threatening witnesses, the Justice Department announced Thursday.

Muhammad Pahlawan, 49, was arrested in January last year after US Navy forces boarded an unflagged dhow in the Arabian Sea and discovered ballistic missile parts, cruise missile components, and a warhead. The weapons were consistent with those used by the Houthis in attacks on commercial and military vessels.

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