Iran must weigh security over diplomacy if neighbors host threats – Farhikhtegan

“Nobody cares, but I am too. I sent those planes,” Trump told radio host Mark Levin.

Talks with Tehran under the Trump administration began with a 60-day ultimatum. On the 61st day, June 13, Israel opened a military campaign. Nine days later, US bombers hit three Iranian nuclear sites, which Trump has repeatedly said “obliterated” the country’s program.

“We wiped out Iran’s entire nuclear capability overnight, which they’d have used against Israel in two seconds if they’d had the chance—but we took it out. Iran was four weeks from a nuclear bomb,” Trump said.

Trump also described hosting the pilots behind the Iran strike. “I sent those planes. You know, 22 years. The pilots came, I rewarded them, I brought them all into the Oval Office, the people having to do with that operation, which was so perfect.”

During the intense 12-day conflict in mid-June 2025, Israel’s airstrikes on Iran resulted in over 1,000 Iranian deaths, while Iran’s retaliatory missiles and drones killed 31 Israelis. The conflict also claimed the lives of over 30 senior Iranian commanders and 11 nuclear scientists.

“The missiles we used in the 12-day war were built several years ago. Today we possess missiles with far better capabilities, and if the Zionist enemy embarks on another adventure, we will certainly use them,” Defense Minister Brigadier General Aziz Nasirzadeh told reporters in Tehran, according to state media.

He said the confrontation was not only with Israel but with “all the logistical, intelligence and support capabilities of the United States” behind it. Despite this, he said, Iranian forces relied entirely on domestically produced systems.

“The world saw that the missiles we used struck their targets and inflicted heavy losses on the Zionist enemy,” Nasirzadeh said. He added that while Israeli media censored footage of strikes, “the information gradually emerged, showing the strength of Iran’s armed forces.”

Nasirzadeh said Israel’s defense systems – including the US-made THAAD and Patriot batteries, the Iron Dome and Arrow – had been unable to stop most of the projectiles.

“In the early days, about 40% of our missiles were intercepted, but by the end of the war, 90% were striking their targets,” he said. “This showed that our experience was growing while the defensive power of the other side was decreasing.”

Earlier in August, Israel’s military chief said the army is prepared to launch more strikes on Iran if necessary, after what he described as a successful preemptive war in June that halted an emerging existential threat to Israel.

Israel launched a surprise military campaign on June 13 targeting military and nuclear sites, assassinating senior Iranian commanders, and killing hundreds of civilians.

During the 12-day conflict, Israel killed more than 30 senior security officials and at least 11 senior nuclear scientists.

According to an Iranian government spokesperson, 1,062 Iranians were killed, including 786 military personnel and 276 civilians.

Iran retaliated with missile strikes that killed 31 civilians and one off-duty soldier.

Israel's military says that the interception rate for missiles and drones during the 12-day war was about 90%.

Lot 41 in Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery contains the remains of members of groups who opposed Ayatollah Khomeini’s rule following Iran’s 1979 revolution—especially the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK)—as well as Baha’is and wealthy individuals accused of “corruption on earth.”

“Lot 41, where hypocrites were buried early in the revolution, was left untouched,” Tehran’s deputy mayor Davoud Goudarzi told reporters, using the pejorative for MEK in the Islamic Republic’s lexicon.

“We suggested to the relevant authorities and later to the provincial supply council that, since people frequently visit Lot 42 and parking was needed, this plot could be converted. We received permission and did it.”

News of the conversion quickly sparked criticism from human rights advocates and families of those buried in Lot 41.

“Destruction of these graves is a serious human rights violation as it hinders future investigations into the mass executions carried out by the Islamic Republic,” Shahin Milani, Executive Director of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, told Iran International on Tuesday.

‘Curse-land’

For decades, Lot 41 has been heavily guarded, monitored around the clock with cameras and personnel. Some Iranians call it the “section of the executed” or “curse-land,” while the cemetery officials refer to it as the “scorched section.”

Authorities have tried to erase its traces over the decades by breaking headstones, concealing grave markers, burning trees and leveling the ground.

Tehran municipality established Lot 42 at the end of June to bury those killed during Israel’s 12-day military campaign against Iran.

According to Iranian media, Israeli strikes killed dozens of senior security officials and several nuclear scientists. Government figures put the overall toll at more than 1,000 Iranians, including hundreds of military personnel and civilians.

“We turned Lot 41 … into a parking lot for visitors to Lot 42,” cemetery chief Mohammad Javad Tajik told Shargh daily on August 16.

In the aftermath of the 1988 massacre of political prisoners, many bodies were never identified or returned to families.

Calls for justice continue to this day, led by survivors, relatives, and human rights groups—who see the destruction of Lot 41 as part of a deliberate effort to erase evidence of past crimes.

“This action violates the dignity and respect of the dead and denies their families the possibility to honor their loved ones,” Milani said.

In a lengthy analysis, Tasnim News Agency said proposals by reformists amounted to “a Gorbachev moment” in which politicians, under the influence of foreign narratives, accept solutions that weaken their own national interests.

“The ‘Gorbachev moment’ refers to a situation in which a leader, fearing crisis, adopts the enemy’s prescription for survival. Out of fear of death, he commits political suicide,” wrote Jafar Hassankhani, from Tasnim’s Strategic Studies Center.

Tasnim said recent reformist statements – including open letters, an essay by former foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Foreign Policy, and demands by the Reform Front coalition to suspend uranium enrichment and free political prisoners – reflected a “coordinated program” that risked undermining Iran’s resilience.

“Trusting the enemy’s smiles and imagining that the solution to all of the nation’s problems lies in the hands of foreign powers is precisely what led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union,” the agency argued.

“The Supreme Leader of Iran has repeatedly stressed that diplomatic engagement and negotiations must never be interpreted as trust in the enemy. The historical experience of Gorbachev showed that trusting the enemy’s smile is nothing but an illusion, and even gestures such as the West’s open arms and friendly smiles can be part of a deception project. One of Gorbachev’s weaknesses in this regard was his tendency to seek approval,” read the article.

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  Tehran infighting escalates over moderates' push for change of course

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  Moderates tell Tehran to offer enrichment halt for sanctions relief

A separate Tasnim article on Monday accused reformist groups of “passing the ball to the enemy” by issuing a statement that, it said, paralleled Western criticism of Iran.

That piece, titled "Reformist old children helping Israel,” argued that a new Reform Front declaration calling for reconciliation and sanctions relief was reminiscent of the Freedom Movement’s 1980s calls to halt the war with Iraq after Iran recaptured Khorramshahr.

"At critical moments, both groups have tended to resort to internal blame-casting and one-sided proposals instead of supporting national interests and territorial integrity — effectively handing the other side the ammunition to justify aggression against Iran,” read the article.

Moderate and reformist figures, including Zarif, former president Hassan Rouhani and Green Movement leaders Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, have in recent weeks pressed for what they call a “paradigm shift” in Iran’s governance.

• 

  Tehran infighting escalates over moderates' push for change of course

• 

  Moderates tell Tehran to offer enrichment halt for sanctions relief

The Reform Front on Sunday called for a voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief, broader engagement with the West, and domestic reforms including the release of political prisoners. “Iran’s social fabric was deeply wounded, with public life overshadowed by despair and anxiety,” the group said.

Rouhani argued last week that “there is no way to save the country except for all of us to become servants of the people — to recognize that sovereignty belongs to the people.”

Conservative outlets close to Khamenei have condemned the proposals as dangerous and aligned with Western agendas.

Kayhan newspaper called them “capitulation” to foreign powers, while the IRGC-linked Fars News Agency described the reformist roadmap as a “charter of submission.”

“The unfinished plan of Israel and the United States to eliminate the Islamic system continues with the assistance of those claiming to be reformists,” Kayhan wrote last week.

Bloomberg said the Israeli strikes killed many senior commanders in what was described as the most damaging conflict in the Guard’s history, forcing a restructuring of Iran’s security decision-making. Yet the confrontation has also reinforced the IRGC’s role at the heart of the Islamic Republic.

The Guard, founded after the 1979 revolution, has grown into a sprawling organization with land, naval, aerospace and intelligence arms, as well as the Quds Force for operations abroad and the Basij volunteer paramilitary.

Its influence extends into universities, hospitals, media outlets and large business conglomerates such as Khatam al-Anbiya, which is involved in oil pipelines, infrastructure, and housing projects. Estimates of its direct personnel run as high as 200,000, Bloomberg said.

“The war affirmed just how important the IRGC is,” Abdolrasool Divsallar, an Iran military analyst at Universita Cattolica in Milan, was quoted as saying.

A newly announced National Defense Council, headed by President Masoud Pezeshkian and dominated by IRGC veterans, underscores that expanded role, according to state media cited by Bloomberg.

The Guard is criticized at home and abroad. Rights groups and Western governments have accused its security branches of human rights abuses and crackdowns on dissent, while critics inside Iran link it to corruption and political repression. Supporters see it as a bulwark against Israel and the United States and as central to defending Iran’s sovereignty.

Narges Bajoghli, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, told Bloomberg: “People are angry at them, but they also realize that there is no other force in the country. What they’re committed to today is about sovereign independence and the idea of resistance.”

The IRGC’s overseas networks — Hezbollah in Lebanon, militias in Syria, and Hamas in Gaza — have been badly weakened by Israeli action, Bloomberg said. That may push the organization to focus more on nuclear deterrence, analysts said.

Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute, told Bloomberg: “The 12-day war exposed the IRGC’s counterintelligence failures. However, the IRGC’s loss of prestige is unlikely to lead to its capitulation.”

The report said the IRGC’s future remains closely tied to that of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, now 86, around whom the organization’s management is centralized.

It would take a US ground invasion or a sustained bombardment by both the US and Israel to change the metrics for the IRGC, Alfoneh said.