Trump is no Cyrus: Iran envoy swats down Gaza peace plaudits

“There’s a lot more work to be done on the overall peace agreement,” Hoeven said, referring to ongoing US-backed efforts to consolidate a regional peace framework following the Gaza ceasefire.

The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is holding for now after Hamas released 20 hostages to Israel on Monday in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian political prisoners.

In Sharm el-Sheikh, regional and international leaders convened to advance the fragile peace process. Egypt’s president described the US-backed proposal as “the last chance” to secure lasting stability in the Middle East.

“If this peace agreement can come together, and it has such broad-based support among not only Israel and the United States, but the Arab countries, we have a chance to really change the paradigm in the Middle East," Hoeven told Iran International.

Hoeven, a senior senator and long-time supporter of Israel, said Iran remained the key obstacle to regional stability.

“As far as Iran and the reign of terror, they have been the number one state sponsor of terror for many years,” he said. “Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis, they are proxies for Iran. Iran props them up," Hoeven said.

The senator expressed optimism that renewed US and Arab cooperation could reshape the region’s security and economic future. “If we can change that dynamic and get back to the Abraham Accords and get Saudi Arabia engaged like we’d like to, hopefully we can really change the region for a better, peaceful, prosperous future.”

The Abraham Accords, brokered in 2020 by President Donald Trump and his senior adviser son-in-law Jared Kushner, normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states.

Current efforts to expand that framework could gain momentum following the Gaza ceasefire.

Hoeven’s remarks follow similar comments made to Iran International last week by Democratic Senator Cory Booke, who said Iran “plays a destructive role across the Middle East” and remains the main spoiler of peace efforts.

“Conditions for the entry of Iranian refugees have been prepared … provided they have not committed other criminal acts,” Hossein Nooshabadi, the ministry’s director general for parliamentary and legal affairs, told the semi-official ILNA news agency.

"Seeking asylum is not considered a crime," Nooshabadi added.

His remarks came after a meeting attended by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and lawmakers, where officials discussed expanding engagement with Iranians abroad, including the possibility of postal or electronic voting in future presidential elections.

Nooshabadi added that Iran would provide consular services to citizens abroad “regardless of their political views.”

While Iran says it welcomes the return of refugees, the country’s laws criminalize a wide range of behavior — including political dissent, activism, homosexuality, and refusal to comply with compulsory hijab rules — the same issues that have led many Iranians to seek asylum abroad.

Pop singer Amir Tataloo, who lived in exile in Turkey for about four years before returning to Iran in 2023, was arrested upon his return and sentenced to death on blasphemy charges.

Iranian media reports in August said the judiciary is reviewing the case for a possible pardon after accepting his repentance. Though he remains imprisoned in Iran.

In June, former Iranian diplomats and embassy staff members told Iran International that the Islamic Republic uses its overseas missions to covertly surveil dissidents and fund influence operations via state-backed cultural initiatives.

A 2014 report by UK-based IranWire said Iranian embassies in Europe have refused consular services to critics and opponents of the Islamic Republic living abroad.

Human rights groups have documented widespread repression inside Iran, including arbitrary arrests, forced confessions, and prosecutions of peaceful critics.

In reports this year, they have documented widespread repression inside Iran, including arbitrary arrests, forced confessions and prosecutions of peaceful critics.

Lindsay and Craig Foreman, both 52, were arrested in January while traveling through Iran on an around-the-world motorcycle tour.

Iranian authorities accused them of espionage — charges their relatives have forefully denied.

The pair have been held for nine months, with Mrs. Foreman only recently moved from the infamous Qarchak women’s prison to Evin prison in Tehran, where her husband is also detained.

Qarchak, a converted cattle farm about south of Tehran, is one of the country's harshest prisons, and rights groups have said it is overcrowded and rife with disease.

Mrs. Foreman, the family told the Telegraph, was transferred to Evin after three women in Qarchak died in just ten days from lack of medical care.

Evin prison has held foreign nationals, journalists and political dissidents for decades.

Joe Bennett, Mrs. Foreman’s 31-year-old son from Kent, said the family was watching recent political developments closely — particularly President Trump’s remarks about Iran during his address to Israel’s parliament on Monday.

In his speech to the Knesset, President Trump appeared to extend an olive branch to Tehran, declaring: “We are ready when you (Iran) are, and it will be the best decision that Iran has ever made, and it’s going to happen. The hand of friendship and cooperation is open.”

Bennett said his family took hope from the statement, suggesting Trump’s renewed push for Middle East diplomacy could offer a path toward freeing the couple.

“What’s happened with the Hamas peace treaty and everything over there, Donald Trump is saying he wants to start the same course of action potentially with Iran, there might be scope for some sort of negotiation in that sense.”

Asked whether the family would reach out directly to Trump or his team, Bennett said: “I think as a family we would be open to exploring that to get the safe and urgent return of my mum and Craig home, we would be naive not to explore all opportunities, or at least listen to what’s possible. It may not be that it’s the US or Donald Trump that does it, it may be a third-party embassy.”

The family is scheduled to meet UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper on Thursday. Bennett said they are cautiously optimistic about his mother’s transfer to Evin, calling it “welcome news” given the slightly better conditions there and the possibility of more phone contact.

The only direct communication he has had with his mother in nine months was an eight-minute call in July. “She was placed on an intravenous drip while held in Qarchak but has learnt that she no longer needs one,” he said.

The case underscores the ongoing strain between Iran and Western governments over the detention of dual nationals and foreign travelers — a pattern human rights groups have decried as “hostage diplomacy.”

For the Foreman family, the hope now lies in a potential shift in US-Iran relations

“To be honest, we were surprised. But if our Iranian partners accepted this formulation - which, frankly, was a legal trap - we had no grounds to object,” Lavrov told reporters in Moscow.

Last month, UN sanctions were reimposed on Iran after France, Germany, and the United Kingdom triggered the so-called snapback mechanism, accusing Tehran of spurning diplomacy and nuclear inspections.

The snapback mechanism was part of the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). It allows any participant, including the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, to reimpose UN sanctions on Iran in the event of alleged violations, without the possibility of a veto.

Iran denies seeking a nuclear weapon and calls the new sanctions aggressive and illegal.

Hardliners in Iran have long criticized Zarif for accepting the JCPOA’s snapback mechanism, viewing it as a concession that ultimately enabled the reimposition of sanctions.

“That provision was, in fact, agreed upon during the final stage of the direct negotiations" between Iran's then top diplomat Mohammad Javad Zarif and his US counterpart John Kerry, Lavrov added.

“The other participants were essentially observers at that point, watching the US and Iran reach an agreement."

“What happened instead is that Iran did not breach the deal, yet the United States withdrew from it, and the Europeans failed to meet their commitments,” Lavrov said.

Fate of the deal

The United States withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 during first President Donald Trump’s administration. In response, Iran gradually reduced its compliance with the JCPOA and in 2019 began enriching uranium at higher levels.

Zarif expressed frustration with Russia’s role in a leaked 2022 interview, saying, “When the JCPOA was signed, Russia made every possible effort in the final week to prevent the agreement from being concluded.”

Israel launched a surprise military offensive in June, striking Iran’s military and nuclear facilities and targeting top officials. Iran retaliated with waves of drone and ballistic missile attacks.

The United States entered the conflict on June 22 with strikes on key nuclear sites in Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan, and later brokered a ceasefire between Iran and Israel after 12 days of fighting on June 24.

Following the attacks, Iran halted cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

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  Russia will meet Iran's military needs despite UN sanctions, Lavrov says

“We believe the decision by prison officials to deny him and his wife visitation on the pretext of hijab is a form of white torture against this prisoner and his family,” the inmates said in a joint letter signed by 12 detainees.

Khandan, who is serving a three-and-a-half-year sentence for opposing Iran’s compulsory hijab law, began a sit-in on September 30 to protest the visitation ban.

The inmates said prison officials continue to enforce hijab rules for visitors even as the government and other institutions have retreated from strict enforcement in public spaces.

They called the ban a violation of human rights and urged authorities to allow visits or grant Khandan temporary leave.

Last week, rights groups Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, PEN America, and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights filed a petition and urgent action request with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, calling Khandan’s detention unlawful and “life-threatening.”

The groups said Khandan, 60, has been arbitrarily detained since December 2024 in reprisal for his peaceful activism against Iran’s hijab laws and warned of dire prison conditions following Israeli airstrikes that damaged Evin Prison in June.

“Reza Khandan is being punished simply for his peaceful advocacy and his unwavering commitment to women’s rights in Iran,” said Kerry Kennedy, president of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights.

While Iranians continue to defy hijab rules, the Islamic Republic's judiciary said on Tuesday that the country’s hijab laws “remain in force” and that penalties will continue to be applied under the Islamic Penal Code.