Iran International
Tehran’s increasingly combative official statements suggest its leaders may be taking US military deployments more seriously than Washington’s signals of diplomacy.
The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, along with several destroyers and warplanes, is set to arrive in the Middle East in the coming days, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing two US officials.
“We have a big force going toward Iran,” US President Donald Trump said on Thursday. “I’d rather not see anything happen, but we will see. We are watching them very closely. We have an armada, we have a massive fleet heading in that direction, and maybe we won’t have to use it.”
The strike group has been en route from the Asia-Pacific region even as Trump has spoken publicly about talks following Iran’s violent crackdown on protests, which has left thousands dead.
The tone from parts of Iran’s military establishment has been notably defiant—and at times confident—prompting questions about whether some in Tehran see war as politically useful, a major event that could overshadow the mass killing of protesters.
“We are preparing for a fateful war with Israel. We possess weapons no one else has,” said Yahya Rahim Safavi, a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a senior adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
“The next war will end this conflict once and for all.”
Another senior commander, Ali Abdollahi, warned that any attack on Iran’s territory or interests would turn US interests, bases, and centers of influence into “legitimate and accessible targets.”
Revolutionary Guards Commander Mohammad Pakpour wrapped it up: Iran was prepared for any possibility, he said, “including an all-out war.”
Diplomatic messaging from Tehran has been more restrained but no less accusatory.
On Thursday, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi again accused the United States of instigating unrest inside Iran. An all-out confrontation, he wrote, would be “messy, ferocious and far longer” than Israel or its allies anticipate.
Araghchi’s tone contrasted with Trump’s remarks earlier in the week, in which he said he had pulled back from a strike after Iran reportedly halted plans to execute hundreds of detainees.
“Iran does want to talk, and we’ll talk,” the US president said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Hours later, aboard Air Force One, Trump reminded reporters that military action remained an option.
As ever, Trump appeared to be keeping his options open. In Tehran, however—perhaps mindful that Israeli strikes last June came amid US-Iran talks—officials appear to have drawn their own conclusions.
Judicial authorities in Qom province last week announced the confiscation of all assets and bank accounts belonging to Mohammad Saeedinia, the founder of a popular cafe chain operating in several Iranian cities.
Saeedinia had been arrested a day earlier and officials linked the move to his alleged support for strikes and protests after he temporarily closed his cafés following calls for strikes and work stoppages.
State-affiliated Fars News reported that assets linked to Saeedinia—including cafe chains, a roadside complex and food-industry businesses—were valued at between 25 and 27 trillion rials ($17.5–19 million).
Prosecutors said similar cases had been opened against dozens of other cafes, as well as actors, athletes and signatories of protest statements, adding that some assets had already been seized to compensate for damage to public property.
No violent crime, financial fraud or national-security offense has been publicly substantiated in Saeedinia’s case. Instead, it illustrates how economic pressure has emerged as an element of state repression in a practice with a long pedigree.
Confiscation codified
From the earliest months after the 1979 revolution, confiscation was used not only to dismantle the ancien régime’s economic base, but to restructure ownership and concentrate power within institutions aligned with the new state.
In the chaotic post-revolutionary period, seizures were carried out in what amounted to a legal vacuum. Revolutionary courts and ad hoc committees confiscated property under broad ideological justifications, often before a coherent judicial framework existed.
Decrees issued by Ruhollah Khomeini concerning “ownerless” or “illegitimate” property created elastic categories through which private assets could be absorbed by revolutionary bodies.
Although framed as redistribution, these measures laid the economic foundations of new power centers.
Over time, confiscation was institutionalized through bodies such as the Foundation of the Oppressed and the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order, as well as through legal provisions including Article 49 of the constitution, which targets “illegitimate wealth” without defining the term.
Among the early and most consequential targets was Ahmad Khayami, a pioneer of Iran’s modern auto industry and co-founder of Iran National, later Iran Khodro. The seizure of his assets and removal of private control over the company marked a decisive break with Iran’s pre-revolutionary model of industrial entrepreneurship.
Another prominent case was Habib Sabet, an entrepreneur active in media, construction and commerce, and the founder of Iran’s first private television network. His assets were confiscated in the revolution’s aftermath, reflecting how independent capital—even without overt political involvement—was treated as incompatible with the new order.
Private sector hobbled
The execution of Habib Elghanian, a leading industrialist and head of Tehran’s Jewish community, sent a particularly chilling signal. After a summary revolutionary trial in 1979, his assets were seized and he was put to death, accelerating capital flight and underscoring the risks facing private enterprise in the new Islamic Republic.
The impact on Iran’s modern private sector was significant.
Entrepreneurs who had built manufacturing, retail and financial enterprises over decades were removed, their assets transferred to state or quasi-state structures. Many left the country.
Others were sidelined through prosecution or regulatory exclusion.
As revolutionary fervor faded, the practice evolved rather than disappeared. Highly publicized trials and executions gave way to asset freezes, license revocations and selective enforcement. Confiscation became less spectacular but more routine, embedded in administrative and judicial processes.
Recent protest cycles have again brought these mechanisms to the fore. Business closures, account seizures and professional bans have accompanied crackdowns, reinforcing the message that economic activity remains conditional on political compliance.
The seizure of Saeedinia’s assets fits squarely within this longer trajectory. It is not an isolated response to unrest, but part of a system in which control over property has, from the outset, served as a means of political management.
