‘Fix your own country’: Western officials rebuke Araghchi over Polish post

“It started probably with Soleimani. He was a mastermind who did a lot of bad things,” Trump said in a Fox News interview, referring to the late Quds Force commander.

“He’s the father of the roadside bomb that would blow up and maim so many of our great soldiers,” he added.

Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad International Airport in January 2020 on Trump’s orders.

The US president said the turning point that paved the way for the Gaza peace earlier this month came in June when US B-2 bombers carried out what he called a “beautiful military operation” against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“They flew for 37 hours, went into Iran’s airspace, and bombed the hell out of it,” he said. “When we destroyed their nuclear capability, they no longer became the bully of the Middle East.”

He said the US operation, along with Israeli strikes on Iran, made possible what he described as peace beyond Gaza.

“We wouldn’t have been able to make the deal we just made, which is basically peace in the Middle East beyond Gaza,” Trump said.

The ceasefire mediated in early October by the United States, Egypt, Turkey and Qatar put an end to over two years of Israeli attacks on Gaza, which started in response to Hamas's October 7 attack.

Mullah Kamal Salahi-zehi, a well-known community leader in the town of Sarbaz, was killed when unidentified gunmen opened fire on his vehicle in Iranshahr, according to Iranian state media. His son was wounded and taken to hospital.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards condemned what it called a “cowardly terrorist act,” saying in a statement that “mercenary groups linked to the evil Zionist regime” were behind the attack.

It added in the statement that those killed in recent weeks included “the honorable martyrs Mullah Kamal, Reza Azarkish, Parviz Kadkhodaei, and Shams Askani,” and vowed that “the perpetrators and masterminds of these crimes will soon face punishment.”

The statement said such attacks aimed to “undermine the unity of Shia and Sunni communities” in the region but would “never shake the firm resolve of the Iranian nation.”

Tasnim News Agency, affiliated with the IRGC, described Mullah Kamal as one of the “defenders of the Islamic Republic” and wrote: “He always took firm and explicit positions against hostile movements and agents linked to Israel and global arrogance.”

However, the Baluch Activists Campaign offered a different account of Mullah Kamal’s positions, implicitly suggesting that the Islamic Republic was responsible for his killing.

The local outlet portrayed Mullah Kamal as a respected community leader, peace-seeking social activist, and a prominent figure “opposed to the Islamic Republic” in the 1980s and 1990s, who had repeatedly clashed with military forces. However, he stopped his struggle against the Islamic Republic after mediation by local elders.

According to the report, the Islamic Republic had made several attempts to assassinate Mullah Kamal both before and after granting him a guarantee of safety.

The killing follows several similar incidents in recent months.

In September, Reza Azarkish, a local Basij militia member, was shot dead in Iranshahr. Earlier in the month, Iraj Shams Askani, a member of the Revolutionary Guards, was gunned down in the border town of Rask, in an attack claimed by the Sunni militant group Jaish al-Adl.

Earlier this month, Parviz Kadkhodaei, a local Basij commander in Nikshahr, was killed in a separate assault.

The province, bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan, has long been the scene of attacks by Sunni insurgent groups that Tehran says are backed by foreign intelligence services.

It was a rare moment of honesty — and a metaphor for a deeper failure in Western journalism. For decades, many correspondents have mistaken access for understanding and permission for credibility.

This reporting perpetuates the illusion that a “moderate” or “reformist” faction within the clerical regime is always on the brink of pursuing a more friendly policy toward the West — if only Washington and its partners would be more conciliatory.

At the same time, this coverage conceals the essential truth that a younger, connected, and defiantly secular generation rejects religious dictatorship.

To report from Iran, Western journalists must operate under state supervision. Their “fixers” are often regime-approved minders who decide which families they can meet, which streets they can visit, and what stories they can tell. The price of defiance is expulsion. Most choose to stay, and so they comply.

The result is journalism that reports through the regime’s lens. Coverage mirrors Tehran’s narrative while ignoring its contradictions.

When Iran invited Western media to cover the recent 12-day war with Israel, many major outlets accepted. Yet none mentioned the most visible fact on Tehran’s streets: women walking unveiled in courageous defiance of the law and regime threats.

Instead, their dispatches focused narrowly on civilian casualties, using regime-selected witnesses and identical talking points. Access was preserved; truth was not.

Since 1979, Western coverage has lagged a decade behind Iran’s reality.

In the early years of the revolution, reporters portrayed a nation united behind Ayatollah Khomeini, ignoring the liberals, nationalists, and religious dissenters who opposed him.

Two decades later, President Mohammad Khatami was cast as proof that “reformers” were emerging inside the system. In fact, his 1997 victory was a bottom-up protest vote, not a top-down project of change.

Ever since, journalists have recycled the same script: “moderates” versus “hardliners.” They still describe every election as a “battle for Iran’s future,” though every candidate operates within red lines drawn by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

The 2015 nuclear deal was touted as the triumph of moderation under President Hassan Rouhani — yet it was conceived and authorized by Khamenei himself.

While foreign correspondents chase factional drama, Iran’s people have transformed. A younger, connected, and defiantly secular generation has rejected clerical control.

The revolt of Iranian women — from the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising of 2022–23 to daily acts of unveiled defiance — represents the most sustained challenge to the Islamic Republic since its founding.

But these stories are rarely told. At their height, protests command the attention of Western journalists. When they abate, often because of bloody suppression, it is back to the old story about alleged “moderates.”

When Western correspondents appear on air from Tehran wearing the compulsory hijab, they explain it as “respect for local culture.” But there is nothing cultural about coercion. Millions of Iranian women are risking imprisonment to defy that law, while foreign journalists are complicit in its perpetuation.

There are exceptions. VICE News correspondent Isobel Yeung chose honesty over access in her 2023 documentary on post-Mahsa Amini Iran. She’s unlikely to receive another visa. Meanwhile, the same media that rail against limits on press briefings in Washington submit meekly to the censorship of a theocracy.

This is more than a journalistic sin; it’s a strategic failure. Policymakers rely on the press to gauge Iran’s internal dynamics. When the media misread the country, so do the governments that read them.

Washington and Europe have spent years betting on “moderates” who don’t exist, negotiating with powerless presidents, and failing to see the possibility that the Islamic Republic will collapse from within.

Ultimately, those who pay the price are Iranians themselves.

Jon Snow’s line — “They whistle, and we go” — should be engraved above every newsroom desk that covers Iran. It captures the moral inversion of access journalism: the more the regime whistles, the faster the press runs.

Iran today is not the country Western reporters still describe. It is a nation where millions quietly rebel, where women lead a moral revolution, and where a dictatorship survives because it guns down dissenters while outsiders echoing the Islamic Republic’s preferred narrative.

The choice for Western journalists is clear: keep obeying the whistle — or finally listen to the voices on the street.

Hajibabaei said Iran “firmly supports the legitimate resistance of the Palestinian people” and the creation of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

He urged Muslim unity against what he described as Israel’s “decades-long impunity for war crimes.”

Speaking at the 151st IPU Assembly -- which focuses on humanitarian norms and inclusive democracy -- Hajibabaei warned that any temporary ceasefire should not mean “forgetting justice or accountability.”

He added that global action was needed to prosecute those responsible for crimes in Gaza and said Islamic solidarity was key to achieving “a just and lasting peace for Palestine.”

In a post written in Polish on X, Araghchi said, “The exhibition in the British Parliament of a drone falsely and maliciously attributed to Iran is a pathetic scene staged by the Israeli lobby and its sponsors.”

He added that “those hostile to friendly relations between Iran and Europe are creating fabricated narratives that do not reflect the historical ties -- including between Iran and Poland.”

Araghchi added that Tehran remained ready to engage in technical talks and exchange of documents to clarify the facts, dismissing what he called “an absurd performance.”

The remarks came days after Iran summoned Poland’s chargé d’affaires in Tehran to protest Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski’s participation in an event in London that featured a Shahed-136 drone allegedly used by Russia in its war in Ukraine.

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  Iran summons Polish diplomat over London drone display

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  Iran denies involvement in UK-linked plots after MI5 warning

The display, organized by the US-based advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), was held at the Houses of Parliament and attended by Western and Ukrainian officials.

Tehran condemned the exhibition as a politically motivated act, accusing organizers of spreading “baseless and repetitive accusations” about Iran’s drone program.

Iran says it supplied drones to Russia before the war began, but denies providing weapons for use in Ukraine. Western governments and Kyiv say Iranian-designed Shahed drones, now produced in Russia under the name Geran, have played a key role in Moscow’s air strikes.

Araghchi’s statement also followed a sharp exchange between Tehran and London over British intelligence claims of Iranian-linked plots on UK soil. MI5 chief Ken McCallum said last week that more than 20 Iran-related operations had been disrupted over the past year, describing Tehran as one of the UK’s most active hostile state actors.