Iran’s foreign ministry said on Monday that the arrival of foreign warships near Iran would not change Tehran’s defense posture or its approach to diplomacy, after reports that a US aircraft carrier had reached the Middle East.
“Our position is clear. We have never welcomed war, and we have never turned away from diplomacy and negotiations, and we have shown this in practice,” Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmail Baghaei said.
“The entry of foreign warships is not meant to affect Iran’s resolve and seriousness in defending the country,” he said, adding that Iran had “full will and capability to defend Iran with the backing of our people.”
Israel’s Channel 13 reported that the US aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln arrived in the Middle East on Sunday evening and was operating near Iran. The report said a ship carrying missile defense systems was heading toward Israel and that a THAAD air defense battery was expected to arrive in the coming days.
Turkey has drawn up plans to create a buffer zone along its border with Iran in case of a new migration wave, Türkiye newspaper reported, citing a briefing by the Turkish Foreign Ministry to parliament’s foreign affairs committee.
According to the report, ministry officials told lawmakers Ankara had prepared multiple scenarios “for all eventualities,” including a buffer zone intended to keep any arrivals on the Iranian side of the border.
“We believe there should be a buffer zone to ensure that those who arrive in the event of a migration remain on the Iranian side,” the briefing said, as quoted by the newspaper.
The briefing also said Turkey opposes foreign intervention in regional countries and does not want further instability in the region, the report added.

Ali Ansari, an Iranian businessman under UK sanctions for allegedly financing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards, built a European property portfolio worth about €400 million, according to a Financial Times investigation based on corporate filings.
The outlet reported that the assets include luxury properties across several European countries, ranging from a golf resort in Mallorca to a ski hotel in Austria.
The holdings were structured through a complex network of offshore companies registered in jurisdictions including Luxembourg, St Kitts and Nevis, as well as Austria, Germany and Spain.
Ansari is not under European Union sanctions.
The findings show how wealthy Iranians with close ties to the ruling system have continued to acquire high-value assets in the West despite sanctions.
The report comes as Iran has been shaken by widespread protests fueled by a collapsing currency, high inflation, and public anger over corruption. Protesters have accused elites of enriching themselves while living standards for much of the population have sharply deteriorated.
Sebastian Tynkkynen, a member of the European Parliament, criticized what he described as double standards in mainstream media coverage, contrasting extensive reporting on the Gaza war with what he said was limited attention to the killing of Iranian protesters.
In a post on X, Tynkkynen said mainstream outlets focused heavily on the Gaza conflict, often citing daily death tolls as fact even when the figures came from Hamas.
“Yet, here we are with the unprecedented massacre of Iranian protesters – and things are eerily silent,” he wrote.
Tynkkynen said mainstream media were now “posting about almost anything else,” and when they did report figures related to Iran, they were “quick to err on the cautious side.”
He questioned why media organizations apply different standards when reporting on conflicts and human rights abuses.
“Why the double standards?” Tynkkynen asked.
Thousands of Iranians rallied in Brussels and London on Sunday, calling for international support for people in Iran in the aftermath of the deadly crackdown on nationwide demonstrations and internet blackouts.

Cryptocurrency is a rare tool embraced by both Iran’s rulers and its citizens—used at the top to enrich elites to dodge sanctions and at the bottom to survive the economic devastation wrought by their policies.
Blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis estimates that Iran’s crypto ecosystem exceeded $7.78 billion in 2025.
Any figure attached to Iran’s crypto economy is of course partial: both the state and private users have powerful incentives to conceal activity, whether to limit sanctions exposure or avoid domestic scrutiny.
What is increasingly clear, however, is that the state now dominates a large share of that volume.
Chainalysis estimates that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps processed more than $3 billion in crypto transactions last year. Israel’s counter-terror financing authority has published a seizure order listing 187 crypto addresses worth roughly $1.5 billion in Tether, a crypto denomination pegged to the dollar.
New findings by the blockchain analytics and crypto-compliance firm Elliptic link Iran’s central bank to at least $507 million in purchases of dollar-pegged Tether (USDT).
That stockpile could supplement constrained foreign-exchange reserves and help authorities lean against sudden spikes in the rial’s parallel market.
In effect, USDT can function as an off-balance-sheet foreign-exchange buffer: accumulated outside correspondent banking channels, mobilized through intermediaries, and sold into rial markets via local exchanges and over-the-counter desks when pressure builds.
Access, however, is not evenly distributed. Reports indicate state blessing for—or "whitelisting"—internet connectivity for certain traders, even as much of the country has endured a pervasive internet blackout since a deadly crackdown on protestors ramped up on Jan. 8.
When the rial comes under pressure, connectivity itself becomes an instrument of intervention: stablecoin-based market operations still require traders who can connect, quote prices, and settle transactions.
Alternate reality for households
Iran’s central bank has imposed limits on currency trading and transaction flows, while rolling out an anti-speculation tax regime covering gold, jewelry, foreign currency and cryptocurrencies.
The effect has been to raise the cost of traditional inflation hedges while signaling that policymakers now view household portfolio shifts as a macroeconomic risk.
The central bank has moved to cap individual crypto holdings at $10,000, despite warnings from Iranian traders and economists that such restrictions would choke savings and push activity further underground.
On the mining side, the divide is even starker. State-linked and religious institutions are among the largest players, in part because electricity tariffs in Iran are not uniform.
Iran International has reported repeated allegations of crypto mining at state-sponsored sites, including mosques, which benefit from reduced energy rates—an obvious advantage in an industry where profitability hinges on power costs.
The result is effectively two mining economies: small operators running rigs at home or in workshops, attempting to stay invisible, and state-linked actors with access to cheaper electricity, larger facilities, and more predictable protection.
Authorities have periodically blamed illegal neighborhood miners, but some experts see that focus as a way to deflect attention from deeper problems of grid management and governance.
Where the cheapest power is concentrated in privileged institutions and enforcement is uneven, the largest rents accrue not to households plugging in a single machine, but to organized actors with access.
Iran has become a cutting-edge battlefield of monetary adaptation. The central bank experiments with stablecoins to stabilize the rial, while households use the same rails to escape it.
A tightly capped, KYC-only micro-saver lane could offer households limited protection for modest savings while increasing transparency and helping isolate state-connected networks operating at scale.
The unresolved question is whether regulated crypto channels can be structured to distinguish household self-preservation from state-linked finance—or whether policy choices will continue to push both into the same shadows.
Whether the state and its beleaguered citizenry can defy mounting economic pressure may hang in the balance.





