Khamenei resurfaces after 22-day absence, drawing both criticism and praise

The seizure—2.2 tons of cocaine aboard the MV Matthew, a Panamanian-flagged bulk carrier—marked the largest drug bust in Irish history. The vessel was intercepted in a joint operation involving the Irish Naval Service, police and customs officers following months of international intelligence-sharing.

According to the report, investigators believe the transnational operation was coordinated by a network involving the Kinahan organized crime group, associates in Venezuela, and alleged financial backers linked to Iran-backed Hezbollah, a Lebanese group designated as a terrorist organization by several Western governments.

Two Iranian nationals, Soheil Jelveh, 51, and Saeid Hassani, 39, were among eight men sentenced last week by Ireland’s Special Criminal Court. Jelveh, the ship’s captain, and Hassani, a senior officer, were found to have knowingly participated in the smuggling attempt.

The Irish Times said that the court heard of the involvement of “a major Iranian nexus in this operation.”

Prosecutors alleged that the two Iranians acted on instructions from individuals with suspected links to Hezbollah, including a coordinator known as "Captain Noah"—identified in court as Mehdi Bordbar, allegedly operating from Dubai.

According to court documents and law enforcement briefings, the cocaine was loaded onto the MV Matthew off the coast of Venezuela under the cover of night by armed men. The cargo was reportedly financed in part by €5 million in advance payments from organized crime groups, with profits to be distributed among the participants.

“Operations of this scale involve multiple players across continents,” said Angela Willis, Assistant Commissioner for Organized and Serious Crime. “We are continuing to investigate the financial and logistical links, including those with ties to the Middle East.”

Authorities in Ireland are also investigating two individuals who allegedly purchased a secondary vessel, the Castlemore, for €300,000 using funds transferred from Dubai. The boat, intended to collect the drugs offshore, ran aground on Ireland’s Wexford coast due to a mechanical failure, precipitating the unraveling of the trafficking plan.

Eight men—nationals of Iran, the Netherlands, the UK, Ukraine, and the Philippines—have received prison sentences of between 13 and 20 years. However, law enforcement officials emphasized that those convicted were largely mid-level operatives and not the primary architects of the scheme.

“This threat will not make us accept surrender,” Qassem said in a video message for the occasion of Ashura, a major Shia Muslim religious commemoration, amid a fragile ceasefire brokered in November by the US and France.

“The resistance will continue even if the whole world stands against it.”

Washington has called for Hezbollah to disarm completely. Lebanese authorities are expected to deliver a response to US envoy Thomas Barrack's June proposal when he arrives in Beirut on Monday, according to Reuters.

A Lebanese official speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity said authorities have already begun dismantling parts of Hezbollah’s military infrastructure in southern Lebanon, near the Israeli border.

But Qassem, who took over leadership of the Lebanese group following the killing of Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike last year, made clear on Sunday that Hezbollah does not intend to relinquish its core weapons or strategic capability.

“The ceasefire was supposed to stop aggression, but violations have continued,” Qassem said. “No one can ask the resistance to drop its arms while the aggression is ongoing.”

Both Hezbollah and Israel continue to cite continuous violations of the ceasefire.

Qassem added that Hezbollah’s defensive posture was essential for Lebanon’s sovereignty. “Without the resistance, Israel would have overrun our villages,” he said, adding that disarmament would be akin to legitimizing occupation.

In a message to US and Israeli officials, he said: “We reject normalization, which is humiliating and degrading. The American-Israeli formula—‘either you surrender or we kill you’—is laughable and outdated.”

Hezbollah has faced mounting pressure in recent months following its war with Israel, which destroyed large parts of Beirut’s southern suburbs and southern Lebanon and left tens of thousands displaced.

The group is also grappling with financial strain and the loss of its long-time Syrian ally after the fall of former president, Bashar al-Assad, in December.

While sources close to Hezbollah told Reuters that internal discussions have taken place about scaling back its armed presence, Qassem’s speech signaled that any compromise would not include full disarmament. He insisted that Hezbollah’s arsenal is a red line.

He also reaffirmed Hezbollah’s alignment with Iran, offering praise to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Iranian people for their support. “They have stood firm and prevented Israel from achieving its objectives,” he said.

Hezbollah’s position remains at odds with the stance of Lebanon’s government, which has pushed for a monopoly on arms and full implementation of the ceasefire.

Last week, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said that his government is intensifying its efforts to confine weapons solely to state institutions and to extend its authority across the country as part of a broader push to advance the implementation of a ceasefire.

NetBlocks, which monitors global internet freedom, confirmed the outage, noting “Live network data show a major disruption to internet connectivity in Iran.” The shutdown, which lasted roughly two hours, echoed user reports from across the country.

“The flow of messages in favor of the government increased after the blackout,” a user named Maryam posted on X, suggesting the internet restrictions were designed to “silence critics and opposition.”

NetBlocks also pointed to the recent conflict between Israel and the Islamic Republic, during which Iran’s security forces cut telecommunications nationwide; an action carried out by Iranian security officials under the pretext of “safeguarding national security,” but met with widespread negative reactions both domestically and abroad.

IRNA, Iran’s official news agency, cited the state-run Telecommunications Infrastructure Company, reporting a national-level disruption in international connectivity that affected most internet service providers Saturday night. Yet government officials have not publicly addressed the cause.

Many Iranian users complained that while ordinary citizens lost access, accounts linked to state figures continued operating normally. One user, Soheil, posted: “People don’t have internet, but government supporters still do. Cut theirs too, so they stop getting on everyone’s nerves.”

Another user, Masoud, questioned how prominent establishment figures like former ministers Mohammad Javad Zarif and Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi remained active on X despite the blackout.

Zarif had earlier posted that his account was limited by platform owner Elon Musk—prompting backlash.

“Kicking 90 million Iranians offline, then crying about a missing blue check,” one user wrote in response.

It comes as the cyber warfare between Israel and Iran steps up in spite of the ceasefire.

A shadow war of mutual cyber-attacks between Iran and Israel has replaced missile fire and air strikes as a fragile truce holds, security experts told Iran International.

"Although the Iran-Israel ceasefire has paused direct military engagement, cyber operations have intensified," Marwan Hachem, co-founder of FearsOff cybersecurity experts, told Iran International.

“Since the truce began, nearly 450 cyberattacks have been recorded against Israeli targets—many attributed to pro-Iran hacker groups,” he said.

Attacks on Iran's finance, infrastructure and energy complex, Hachem said, were fewer but more sophisticated and have been traced to actors linked to Israeli intelligence.

"Post-ceasefire, there are only about 10 known cyberattacks by pro-Israeli actors against Iran ... the fewer Israeli attacks tend to be more targeted and impactful.”

During the war, a pro-Israeli hacking group known as Predatory Sparrow claimed credit for a major cyberattack on Iran’s Bank Sepah.

The group also later said it had drained around $90 million from Nobitex, Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, adding it had posted Nobitex source code lists on X.

In spite of a ceasefire, however, the cyber war goes on.

“The era of silent digital aggression has arrived, and even allies may become targets in this murky domain of quiet offensives. The illusion of peace doesn’t extend to cyberspace. In fact, we expect cyber operations to grow more aggressive—only more covert. Silence is no indicator of safety.”

Daily attacks

Israeli cyber expert Boaz Dolev, from Clearsky Cyber Security, said there are daily attempts to hack small to medium sized businesses in Israel, and as yet, have not succeeded in attacking critical infrastructure.

“There is a lot of smoke all of the time. Iran didn’t disrupt Israel’s infrastructure by cyber-attacks but some Israeli companies were hacked and some sensitive information was leaked."

“We think they’ve breached dozens of Israeli companies, small to medium sized ones," Dolev added. "Most of them are providing services to large organizations in Israel so there is some sensitive information that was inside."

“They tried to do it by using vulnerabilities in computer systems, or sending it as phishing, but as much as I can say, they didn’t succeed most of the time. The ones they breached and hacked, they can start the destruction process, and some companies have had servers hacked and deleted.”

One cyber expert in Israel who asked not to be named, said Israel remains “much stronger than Iran in the cyber arena”.

“They can do whatever they want in Iran. The question is how they’re using the power and who you’re going to attack, when, and what will be the damage,” he added.

“This is why they decided to attack the financial system in Iran," the expert added. "It was a message for Iran that said the infrastructure is more vulnerable than they can imagine.”

The video shows two powerful blasts roughly a second apart just steps away from the main hospital in the Tajrish area, near the capital's bustling Qods Square.

One hits a building, sending a huge cloud of smoke up on the other side of the street, and another lands between cars at an intersection.

The second blast hurls the vehicles and a huge plume of smoke high into the air.

At the time of the explosions, around 15:30 local time on June 15, the street was busy with vendors, shoppers, metro passengers and traffic as many had still not left the capital for safer places.

Other videos of the incident posted earlier on social media showed extensive flooding caused by damage to a major water pipeline from the second blast, adding to the chaos. A three-year-old child reportedly drowned in the flood.

The 12-second footage, released on social media on Thursday, appears to be from a traffic surveillance camera.

The footage emphasized the harm endured by Iranian civilians apart from Israeli strikes which assassinated commanders and nuclear scientists and pummeled key military and nuclear facilities until a June 24 ceasefire.

Iran's health ministry reported 610 people were killed in the conflict and 4,746 injured.

Independent tallies put the toll higher—1,190 according to the US-based human rights group HRANA, which reported military deaths just above 400, with the rest either civilians or yet to be determined.

Verified

Some activists and social media users allege that the video was digitally manipulated or AI-generated.

However, Factnameh, an Iranian fact-checking website, and BBC both deemed the footage genuine, comparing it with other images from the area of the impact.

Victims

Iran reported 18 people killed, including a pregnant woman and her child, and 46 injured in the strike but has not released a full list of victims.

The Israeli military reported the killing of Brigadier General Mohammad Kazemi, chief of the IRGC Intelligence Organization, his deputy Brigadier General Hassan Mohaqeq, and military intelligence officer Mohsen Bagheri on the same day.

Iran confirmed their deaths but neither side has disclosed the exact location of their deaths.

Other incidents with high civilian casualties

On June 23, Israel launched several missiles at Tehran’s Evin Prison, calling the site a “tool of repression.”

Among the dead were two prison officials, Ruhollah Tavasoli and Vahid Heydarpour, as well as Evin's top prosecutor Ali Ghanaatkar. Dozens of detainees, medical staff, visiting families — including a young child — and even a bystander were also killed.

Another Israeli attack on June 24 in Astaneh Ashrafieh in northern Iran killed 16 people, most of them from the same extended family, and completely destroyed several homes.

The bombing targeted nuclear scientist Mohammad-Reza Sadighi, who had survived an earlier Israeli attack in Tehran but lost his 17-year-old son Hamidreza in the airstrike.