Iran says Tehran sonic booms came from MiG-29 on routine mission

As newspapers warned of collapsing pension funds, chaotic currency markets and rising poverty, Ghalibaf this week moved to appropriate part of the government’s plan to shield low-income families from soaring prices.

It was not the first time he claimed credit for a program launched nearly a decade ago under Hassan Rouhani, but the timing underscored his intent: advance precisely as Pezeshkian is too embattled to push back.

Speaking in the Majles on Wednesday, Ghalibaf proposed replacing the 1980s coupon system with smart-card rationing and portrayed himself as the champion of cost-of-living issues.

He said the scheme would stabilize prices year-round, an ambitious promise in a market where staples such as rice and meat have quadrupled in price since 2020.

For Ghalibaf, however, the political optics appear to outweigh economic feasibility.

At Pezeshkian’s expense

Pezeshkian, who defeated Ghalibaf in last year’s presidential race, now faces intense criticism for promises he is struggling to deliver. Some of the failure is his administration’s own missteps; much of it is structural.

Iran’s economic landscape is dominated by quasi-state foundations, conglomerates linked to the Revolutionary Guards, and networks whose interests often run counter to national policy.

Sanctions remain a permanent drag, yet the president has no authority over nuclear or foreign policy to address them. Key domestic and foreign policy decision-making rests with Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Tehran’s media and political insiders rarely point to these upper floors of power, leaving the elected administration to absorb the blame.

‘Catastrophe looming’

Iran’s oldest—and relatively neutral— daily Ettela’at captured the depth of the crisis with an unusually stark editorial on Wednesday.

“Pension funds are on the verge of bankruptcy and instability in the foreign exchange market has driven up prices, directly affecting the livelihood of the lower strata of society,” it wrote, chastising the government for placing “massive monetary and forex resources at the disposal of unknown individuals.”

The collapse of pension funds, the daily warned, will be “an irreversible social catastrophe for the country and the nation.”

Ettela’at also weighed in on the sensitive issue of fuel prices, which Pezeshkian has promised to address but finds all but impossible to touch. “You must be too brave to start a losing game of doing away with fuel subsidies,” the editorial warned.

Tehran’s prominent economic daily Jahan Sanat ran three analyses attacking the administration’s “uncalculated” economic decisions. It accused Pezeshkian of “giving a green light to price rises” by scrapping the preferential exchange rate for essential imports, creating uncertainty around the supply of basic staples.

In this climate of economic deterioration, institutional constraints and relentless public pressure, Ghalibaf appears to have sensed opportunity.

By inserting himself into economic policymaking and presenting himself as the official focused on the people’s livelihood, he is positioning for political advantage—likely with an eye on the next presidential race.

In a phone call with his Venezuelan counterpart, Araghchi condemned what he called "the United States' bullying approach toward Venezuela and other independent developing countries in the Western Hemisphere," according to state media.

Washington’s "threat to use force against Venezuela is a clear example of a gross violation of the fundamental principles of the UN Charter and the peremptory norms of international law," he added.

The administration of US President Donald Trump has been amassing forces in the Caribbean in the biggest military buildup in the region for decades.

Washington accuses Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro of narco-terrorism and has offered a $50 million dollar reward for information leading to his arrest. The US strategy remains unclear but appears aimed at unseating the leftist populist.

Ties between Iran and Venezuela flourished under Maduro's predecessor Hugo Chavez and the countries continue to find common ground over objections to US policy.

Araghchi on Wednesday urged UN member states to rally against "America’s aggressive unilateralism" and accused its Mideast foe Israel of being a menace to Latin America, calling it "a major threat to the region’s peace, stability and security."

US news outlets citing US and Israeli officials reported this month that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps sought to kill the Israeli ambassador to Mexico but the plot was thwarted over the summer by Mexican security forces. Iran denied the allegations.

As the lines open, I picture Tehran under its nocturnal dome, a sky not dark but dimmed, as if a giant thumb has pressed the horizon into a bruise.

The city breathes shallowly now. Pollution maps pulse in colors that feel less like data than diagnosis: orange, red, a purple so deep it suggests something beyond neglect, something closer to abandonment.

To the north, the Hyrcanian forests, once described by an old ranger as “green witnesses from before language,” have been burning for weeks. Flames move through those ancient stands with a slow, deliberate patience, as if obeying an unseen logic.

From a distance, these may appear as separate misfortunes, poisoned air in the cities, burning lungs in the mountains.

But the longer I listen to callers, the more the crises merge into a single story. In Iran today, even breathing has become contested terrain. Breathing itself is political.

Neither dawn nor dusk

Tehran, a metropolis of more than thirteen million, has offered its residents only a handful of clean-air days this year.

In Karaj, Ahvaz, Mashhad, Tabriz and Isfahan, air-quality readings have climbed into ranges Americans might remember from the rare weeks when wildfires smothered the West Coast.

In Iran, though, the crisis is not a season, it is a condition. Schools close. Emergency rooms fill. Children learn to recognize, by color alone, the days when they must stay indoors. The city moves under a half-light that resembles neither dawn nor dusk.

The voices that reach me on “The Program,” my nightly show, arrive with a clarity that often anticipates scientific explanation.

A mother whose children wake coughing. A factory worker whose exhaustion seems to begin in the mind, not the muscles. A man who runs a short errand and ends the day bedridden.

Later, experts explain these stories in clinical language: microscopic particles slipping through the lungs into the bloodstream, crossing the blood-brain barrier, raising the risk of heart disease, cognitive decline and dementia.

By the government’s own admission, roughly sixty thousand Iranians die each year from air pollution, or nearly 160 people every day.

Hyrcanian forest

Far from the capital, the forests fight their own losing battle for air. The Hyrcanian woodlands, recognized by UNESCO for their botanical uniqueness, have burned across the hills of Chalus and Dizmar.

Each morning, new smoke rises behind press briefings that insist the fires are “contained.” Despite years of warnings, Iran lacks any aerial firefighting ability.

These fires are not anomalies. They are symptoms of deforestation, unrestrained development and a bureaucracy that mistakes denial for strategy.

Nearly half the forests have already been lost. What should be a coordinated national response has instead become a volunteer effort carried out by the people least equipped to shoulder the burden.

Meanwhile a state capable of constructing an enormous surveillance apparatus remains unable to protect the most basic conditions of life: water that sustains, forests that stand, air that does no harm.

For years, Iranians have described political repression as a form of suffocation.

Now the metaphor has become literal. Cities are not simply policed, they are choking. Forests that once served as the country’s lungs burn in pale columns visible for miles.

The distance between living politically and living biologically narrows by the day.

Each night, as the program winds down, I repeat a simple invitation: send a message, and we will send you a link that connects you directly to our studio.

The microphone will pass from my hand to yours. It remains, against the scale of the crisis, a fragile gesture. But in a country where breathing grows harder each year, refusing silence is no longer only a political act, it is an act of survival.

My last caller tells me invokes rock band Nine Inch Nails in a proud, defiant voice: “I got my fist, I got my plan. I got my survivalism.”

I smile. She hangs up, and that is our show for tonight, I say. Take care of the person sitting next to you. I will see you tomorrow night at eleven p.m., Tehran time.

“We are off air,” my director tells me. I lower my forehead to the microphone, close my eyes, and take a long breath.

Hussein, Iraq’s former president, used chemical weapons extensively against Iranian forces and Iraqi Kurds during the conflict.

“The truth must prevail, and those who supported Saddam’s chemical weapons program must be held responsible,” Araghchi told the 30th annual Conference of the States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in The Hague on Tuesday.

In December 2002, Berlin daily Die Tageszeitung reported that Germany was the country whose companies contributed most to Baghdad’s efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction, citing documents Iraq submitted to the United Nations.

“We urge Germany to release the results of its past investigations and commit to full and transparent investigations about the involvement of its companies and nationals in enabling Saddam’s atrocities,” he said.

Relations between Berlin and Tehran are at a low ebb after Germany joined France and Britain in September in reimposing international sanctions on Iran for what the European powers see as defiance of UN nuclear inspections.

Tehran had also bristled at comments by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz during a surprise military campaign on Iran in June in which he described the attacks as "dirty work Israel is doing for all of us."

Araghchi said Iran’s unanimous election to the Chemical Weapons Convention Executive Council — the 41-member policy-making body of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons — was “a meaningful step for all who believe in a world free of chemical weapons.”

“As a nation that has suffered deeply from Saddam’s chemical attacks during the 1980–1988 war on our people, Iran carries enduring wounds that still affect tens of thousands of victims and their families,” he said.

Araghchi attended the conference with Kamal Hoseinpur, a lawmaker from Sardasht, a city in Iran’s northwest near the border with Iraq that was hit by Iraqi chemical attacks in 1987.

Araghchi described Sardasht as “a global symbol of resistance, suffering and the call for justice.”

“The people of Sardasht endured chemical attacks whose consequences continue even today, made worse by unjust US sanctions that restrict access to vital medicines and medical care,” Araghchi said.

Araghchi contrasted Germany with the Netherlands, where Dutch businessman Frans van Anraat was convicted in 2005 for supplying Iraq with chemicals used to produce mustard gas during the 1980s.

“The judicial investigations by Dutch authorities which led to the prosecution and conviction of one Dutch individual is appreciated,” he said. “However, we all know that it was the very minimum and showed only the tip of the iceberg.”

“Justice for the victims is overdue, and their calls for justice must never be forgotten,” he added.

Araghchi's comments come as Iran's own government came under scrutiny after security forces used an unidentified "green gas" against protestors during the nationwide protests in 2022 after a young woman, Mahsa Amini, died in morality police custody.

In November 2022, videos were posted on social media that showed thick green smoke wafting through the streets in Javanrud in Western Iran as security forces there confronted protesters.

The German newspaper Bild reported in 2018 that Berlin had approved a license for a company to sell technology with potential military applications to Iranian firms which were ultimately used by the Syria in domestic chemical weapons attacks.

In a decision issued on Monday, Justice Anne Turley dismissed Mohammadreza Vadiati’s application for judicial review, finding that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) had acted fairly and reasonably when it ruled him inadmissible under section 34(1)(f) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), which bars members of terrorist organizations.

Vadiati, who served two years as a conscript in the IRGC before seeking asylum in Canada, argued that his service was involuntary and that immigration officials failed to account for coercion or the impact on his family.

The court rejected those claims, saying he was given a full opportunity to respond to officials’ concerns.

“The applicant has failed to establish any procedural unfairness in the decision-making process,” Justice Turley wrote, concluding that conscription in the IRGC “does not negate membership in the group” under the immigration law.

Ottawa formally listed the IRGC as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code in June 2024.

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  IRGC terrorism designation must spare innocent conscripts

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  What Does Canada's IRGC Terror Listing Really Mean?

Under Canada’s anti-terrorism laws, membership in or support for a listed terrorist entity can result in inadmissibility, asset freezes, and criminal penalties.

The listing of the IRGC – which Canada blames for human rights abuses and the 2020 downing of flight PS752 – has broad implications for thousands of Iranian nationals who performed compulsory service.

Canadian politicians, including MP Kevin Vuong and Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, have said the listing aims to curb Tehran’s influence in Canada and prevent IRGC-linked individuals from operating on Canadian soil.

The court also confirmed that humanitarian or family reunification arguments cannot override terrorism-related inadmissibility findings under the IRPA.