FBI says Tehran still seeks revenge over Soleimani killing

“Foreign ministers of nations with brotherly and full diplomatic relations need no ‘neutral’ venue to meet,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on X, referring to his counterpart Youssef Raji proposal to meet in a third country.

“His decision not to welcome Iran's reciprocation of his warm hospitality is bemusing,” Araghchi added.

Raji announced on Wednesday that he had declined an invitation to travel to Tehran as Beirut moves forward with its plan to disarm the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement.

Israel’s punishing strikes on Hezbollah in the final weeks of the year-long war that ended in November left the group weakened but still ensconced in traditional support bases in the country's south and east.

Lebanon’s government has since tasked the national army with confiscating Hezbollah’s arsenal by 2026—a move Iran opposes, arguing that continued Israeli attacks justify what it calls the group’s resistance.

“Subjected to Israeli occupation and blatant ‘ceasefire’ violations,” Araghchi wrote, “I fully understand why my esteemed Lebanese counterpart is not prepared to visit Tehran. Hence I will gladly accept his invitation to come to Beirut.”

Hezbollah debate

Iran invited Raji to Tehran earlier this month to discuss bilateral ties, according to Iran’s foreign ministry, amid mounting debate in Lebanon over the future of Hezbollah—which Iran helped found in 1982—and rising calls for the movement to surrender its weapons.

On Wednesday, Lebanon’s foreign ministry said on X that Raji turning down the visit “does not mean rejecting discussion,” but that “the favorable conditions are not available.”

He renewed an invitation for Araghchi to meet in “a neutral third country” and said Lebanon was ready for “a new phase” in relations based on sovereignty, non-interference, and exclusive state control over arms and national security decisions.

“Building any strong state cannot happen unless the state alone, through its national army, holds the exclusive right to carry arms and the sole authority over decisions of war and peace,” he said, adding that Araghchi remained welcome to visit Beirut.

Its operating model is neither innovative nor cohesive, but a set of pragmatic mechanisms built on three pillars: sanctions-evasion finance, covert oil lifelines and proxy leverage.

Beneath these pillars sits a twin base: China, the economic enabler which buys its oil, and Russia, a fellow bearer of stiff sanctions whose alignment offers diplomatic cover but also commercial competition.

With the aid of these two powers, the Islamic Republic survives not through mastery but through continual manoeuvre.

Understanding this architecture matters because it now shapes a broader convergence in global security. As the United States expands its military buildup in the Caribbean, Iran faces the potential loss of a Western Hemisphere partner long utilised by the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force.

Should Washington succeed in pulling Caracas away from Tehran, one more long-alleged sanctions evasion route may be blocked.

Sanctions evasion

Tehran continues to move funds with notable agility despite the so-called snapback of UN sanctions triggered by Western Europe in October and successive US-led actions to interdict missile and drone procurement networks.

Dubai, Istanbul, Muscat and Baghdad have been named as transit points in US Treasury press releases. Exchange houses and front companies facilitate conversions that allow restricted revenues to re-enter circulation.

Some networks targeted by Western authorities are alleged to have funnelled substantial sums to Hezbollah through opaque trade and currency channels.

These mechanisms define the Islamic Republic’s financial landscape.

Even so, these flows are tributaries. The main current runs east.

Chinese lifeline

The economic centre of the Islamic Republic increasingly lies in Shandong, Shanghai and the harbors of southern China.

Analysts estimate that roughly 80–90 percent of Iranian crude exports ultimately land in China, often routed through ship-to-ship transfers, re-flagged vessels and blends labelled as Malaysian, Omani or others.

These operations appear in tanker-tracking data and in recent investigations highlighting the Revolutionary Guards tightening oversight of a global shadow fleet.

For Beijing, the rationale is straightforward: discounted supplies, insulation from Western price caps and evidence that sanctions enforcement is no longer uniform. For Tehran, the lifeline underscores deepening dependence on a far more powerful state.

Russia’s role differs. Also under sanctions, Moscow competes directly with Tehran for China’s crude demand while simultaneously normalising sanctions-defiance as a geopolitical posture.

Two sanctioned exporters move in parallel: rivals commercially, yet aligned in resisting Western leverage.

Armed allis

Armed groups in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen remain central to Tehran’s deterrence and diplomacy. They function, in effect, as strategic currency.

Western intelligence assessments circulated this year suggest Tehran transferred around one billion dollars to Hezbollah—an unusually high figure under any sanctions regime.

While details of the financial conduits remain incomplete, defence officials say Hezbollah is rearming despite the 2024 ceasefire, while Lebanon’s armed forces lack the capacity to enforce disarmament provisions. This comes as Israel maintains outposts in the country and launches deadly air strikes it says target militants.

In this environment, Iranian support is not merely financial but structural.

The Houthis continue to grow more assertive. Their maritime disruptions and drone activity reflect a movement whose operational confidence increasingly exceeds Tehran’s ability to shape or restrain it.

Europe’s reassessment

Europe, long divided over Iran, has entered a period of strategic recalibration. Tehran’s supply of Shahed-series drones to Russia has shifted its significance from a regional issue to a European security concern.

Western officials now warn that such transfers pose direct risks to continental defence.

Germany’s deployment of the Arrow-3 air-defence system—developed jointly with Israel—reflects the jitters. Senior officials from Ukraine and Israel met last week to coordinate responses to Iran’s expanding missile and drone proliferation.

European scrutiny has also grown over Iranian cultural, religious and financial centres suspected of facilitating sanctions evasion or money-laundering.

What was once treated as a bilateral nuisance is now cast as a collective security challenge.

A strained machinery

Thus stands the Islamic Republic in 2025: its revenues routed through offshore channels, its diplomacy reinforced by Russia, its economy dependent on China, its proxies potent but increasingly difficult to manage, and its domestic legitimacy fragile.

It survives on a framework effective in the short term but vulnerable in the long run.

Historical parallels caution that states relying on improvised economic lifelines and brittle alliances can appear stable until stresses accumulate beyond what the system can absorb.

These comparisons do not determine Iran’s trajectory, but they underline that a state held together by constrained revenues and external dependence is off balance and inherently unstable.

“I feel distressed,” Rosen told Iran International. “It seems as if I’m living the situation that I had as a hostage. My due process and the loss of my human rights now seem to be equal to those ... who are now being sent back to Iran."

Iranian officials say the United States has deported a second group of Iranians with a chartered plane carrying more than 50 nationals departing Mesa, Arizona on Sunday.

The first US deportation flight to Iran departed in late September with 120 deportees, representing a rare moment of cooperation between Washington and Tehran.

Many say they fled Iran fearing persecution including Christian converts, LGBTQ Iranians and dissidents. The Trump administration has defended its immigration crackdown as a measure to make America safer and remove what it deems “illegal alien criminals.”

Millions of immigrants entered the United States illegally under President Joe Biden and Trump's pledge to seal US borders and conduct mass deportations helped deliver him re-election last year.

Iran is on a growing list of countries from which Trump has banned entry to the United States. In the wake of a deadly attack by an Afghan immigrant on national guard troops last month, the administration said even green card holders from the flagged countries might face expulsion.

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  Trump admin's green card review sparks fears of collective punishment

Some Iranians had already been deported to third countries earlier in the Trump administration.

Among them is 27-year-old Christian convert Artemis Ghasemzadeh who crossed the southern border seeking asylum but was instead handcuffed, shackled and flown by US authorities to a remote camp in Panama.

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  Deported by US, Iranian Christian convert stranded in Panama jungle camp

Iran International spoke to her in March. “We are not criminals,” she said in a voice message, explaining that she fears execution if returned to Iran.

Rosen, the co-founder of the research and information non-profit Hostage Aid Worldwide, said he was disturbed, alarmed and angry to learn about Iranians at risk of persecution being deported - not only religious minorities, but anyone who could be targeted by the state.

“I just read a story about two Christian Iranians who would be sent back and there seems to be no regard by the government that there would be persecution for them,” he said. “It really gets me. I'm very angry in in many ways because I feel there’s a sense of hopelessness."

Faith leaders in Virginia have also raised alarms after US Customs and Border Protection arrested two Iranian Christian sisters — Mahan and Mozhan Motahari — in the US Virgin Islands despite the women having documents allowing them to remain in the country while their asylum cases proceed, according to Religion News Service (RNS).

Their attorney told RNS that CBP publicly posting photos of the sisters without

They remain detained in Florida while their lawyer seeks to expedite their case.

For Rosen the deportations conflict with values he believes the United States has long claimed to uphold.

“What’s happening right now is all these people who thought of America as the shining light on the hill, they’re losing their human rights in the United States, something that I could never conceive of in my entire life.”

Attorney Mahsa Khanbabai, an Elected Director of the Board of Governors for the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) told Iran International that the United States is contravening its founding principles.

"The Constitution doesn’t apply sometimes to some people — it applies to all people, all of the time," said Khanbabai, "It’s hypocritical for the US to criticize Iran for human rights violations while unfairly targeting Iranians here by weaponizing immigration laws to get around due process rights."

Khanbabai underscore the broader systemic issue Rosen has been warning about.

Rosen served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Iran from 1967 to 1969, returned as press attaché in 1978 and was taken hostage during the upheaval of the revolution.

He says he never imagined he would one day defend Iranian refugees in the United States but feels compelled because of his connection to the country he once called his “second home.”

“I feel that we’re living in the dark ages in the United States right now,” he said. “It’s absolutely ugly.”

Haalvsh, a rights group that documents abuses and unrest in Sistan-Baluchestan, said the Jebhe-ye Mobaarezin-e Mardomi (People’s Fighters Front) claimed responsibility in a statement posted overnight. The group said it targeted a convoy of the IRGC’s Imam Hossein battalion, part of the Salman Brigade, in the Lar district on Wednesday.

A spokesman for the group said the attack was meant as retaliation for what it described as the role of security forces in suppressing residents in Sistan-Baluchestan. He said a vehicle carrying the unit’s commander was struck and that four members were killed and several others wounded.

State-linked media initially reported three dead and three wounded but later said the death toll had risen to four. Haalvsh cited local sources as saying the gunfire occurred as several IRGC vehicles were heading toward their base in the Lar area.

Iran’s southeast, bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan, has long experienced armed attacks on security forces and government sites. The region has seen repeated incidents this year, including a major assault on a courthouse in Zahedan earlier in which nine people were killed. A separate Baluch Sunni militant group, Jaish al-Adl, claimed responsibility for that attack.

Authorities said pursuit operations were underway following Wednesday’s shooting, but have released few details so far.

Speaking at The Jerusalem Post Conference in Washington DC on Wednesday, Fetterman questioned Iran’s official line that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful.

“There is no peaceful purpose for ninety percent enriched uranium,” he said. “If Iran continues, I will consistently support attacking and destroying those facilities.”

The UN nuclear watchdog has not reported such levels of enrichment, though its experts warned this year that Iran’s stockpile of 60 percent material can be further purified to weapons grade with relative ease.

Fetterman’s remarks come months after surprise US strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites on June 22, which Trump says “obliterated” its enrichment capability. Trump has vowed to attack Iran again should it revive nuclear activity.

Iranian officials have also confirmed damage to the facilities but the extent of damage has not been independently assessed and some Democratic members of Congress have challenged Trump’s assertion.

Fetterman described the strikes as necessary deterrence against the United States’ arch-foe in the region.

“I was the only Democrat calling to bomb the nuclear facilities as well,” he added.

‘All in’

Elsewhere in his interview, Fetterman reiterated his unyielding support for Israel, especially after the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack which he called a defining moment.

“If the shit hits the fan,” he said, “I would go all in with Israel. And I meant it.”

The Pennsylvania senator, who was honored this year by the World Jewish Congress for his support of Israel, has often faced criticism from within the Democratic Party which has been divided over policy on Israel.

He hit back at colleagues who refused to attend Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress earlier this year.

“When the prime minister spoke to Congress and people turned their backs on him, that was astonishing,” he said. “That was outlandish.”