Tehran’s prosecutor said on Monday that more than €5 billion in foreign currency had been recovered from exporters who failed to meet their currency repatriation obligations on time.
Ali Salehi said more than €20 billion in export currency obligations had also been reviewed and settled through judicial follow-up, citing reports from Central Bank officials.
He did not name the exporters or specify where the funds had been held.
Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of Iran’s hardline Kayhan newspaper, said on Monday that reopening the Strait of Hormuz would remove one of the main obstacles to renewed attacks on the country.
Shariatmadari said Iran’s closure of the strait and what he called Tehran’s legal sovereignty over the strategic waterway had been among the main tools that forced Iran’s adversaries to back down in the recent war.
“One of the main and most effective levers that brought the enemies of Islamic Iran to their knees in the recent war was closing the Strait of Hormuz and exercising the Islamic Republic’s legal sovereignty over this strategic waterway,” he wrote.
He also argued that control over the strait could bring Iran billions of dollars a year in transit fees from oil tankers and commercial vessels, while higher oil prices would increase Iran’s foreign currency income.
Iran executed a protester who took part in a nationwide uprising in January, over accusations of armed action in the central province of Isfahan, the judiciary’s Mizan News reported on Monday.
Abbas Akbari Feyzabadi had been convicted on charges including “enmity against God” (moharebeh) and collusion to commit crimes against internal security, according to the report.
The report accused him of being an armed leader during protests on January 8 and 9 and added that his sentence had been upheld by the Supreme Court before being carried out.
The report alleged that he took part in an attack on the governor’s office in the city of Naein and fired a handgun toward security forces.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington has presented what he called a “pretty solid” proposal to Iran involving the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program.
Speaking to reporters during a visit to India, Rubio said the proposed framework would allow Iran to reopen the strategic waterway and enter “a very real, significant, time-limited negotiation on the nuclear matters.”
Rubio said the proposal had strong backing from Persian Gulf states and broad international support.
“Every country that we’ve walked through it, understands it’s not just very reasonable but it’s the right thing for the world to get done,” he said.
At the same time, Rubio emphasized that President Donald Trump was not rushing toward an agreement and insisted Washington would reject any arrangement it viewed as weak.
“The president is not going to make a bad deal,” Rubio said.
Asked what was delaying a breakthrough, Rubio said the holdup was Iran’s response and suggested Tehran’s internal decision-making process was slowing communications.
“You’ve got to hear back, and it takes the Iranian system a little while longer to get back,” he said.
Rubio added that the administration would continue pursuing diplomacy before considering alternative options.
Iran’s water authorities say reservoir levels across the country have risen significantly compared to last year following a major increase in rainfall and inflows during the current water year.
According to figures released by Iran Water Resources Management Company, inflows into reservoirs since the beginning of the water year in late September reached 38.71 billion cubic meters, up 72% from the same period a year earlier.
The volume of water currently stored in dams has climbed to 34.74 billion cubic meters, an increase of 29% compared to last year, the data showed.
Authorities also said water releases from dams rose 13% year-on-year.
US President Trump’s approach toward Iran may better be explained by the political timing of the World Cup and the culture of New York real estate dealmaking: performance, delay, leverage and spectacle.
The cadence of Trump’s remarks about Iran belongs less to the world of foreign policy than to the culture that shaped him long before politics did: New York real estate, tabloid combat, and public brinkmanship treated as performance art.
The comparison that comes closest may not come from diplomacy at all, but from David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, that ruthless portrait of American real-estate sales culture, where power belongs not to the wisest man in the room, but to the most psychologically relentless.
In the film’s most famous scene appears Blake, the sleek corporate predator whose confidence and aggression are treated as forms of intelligence. He does not simply sell real estate. He sells power, status, and the fantasy of invulnerability itself.
Trump comes from that exact culture, though he did not invent it. He emerged from it.
It is difficult to understand Trump’s approach to Iran through the traditional frameworks of Republican foreign policy because Trump does not instinctively speak that language. He speaks the language of the deal, more specifically, the language of the New York deal.
To diplomats, consistency creates stability and ambiguity introduces risk. For Trump, unpredictability is leverage. Negotiation is a psychological contest in which pressure, timing, perception, and dominance become instruments of power.
One week, a deal appears close. The next, Tehran faces catastrophic consequences if it refuses American demands. To conventional policymakers, the reversals can appear chaotic. But those familiar with the culture of aggressive American salesmanship recognize the game: create urgency, destabilize expectations, project strength, keep the other side uncertain.
But Trump’s instincts are tied not only to commerce, but to performance.
The United States is approaching the 2026 FIFA World Cup, one of the largest international spectacles ever hosted on American soil. Beginning next June, the tournament will unfold across multiple cities before a global audience measured not in millions, but billions.
That context may help explain the curious patience embedded in some of his recent remarks on Iran.
In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump insisted negotiators should “not rush into a deal” because “time is on our side.” Pressure on Iran, he wrote, would remain in place until an agreement was “reached, certified, and signed.”
In other words: “get them to sign on the line which is dotted.”
The negotiations with Iran may therefore be less about immediate resolution than about the management of instability until after the World Cup final, a spectacle Trump instinctively understands.
A regional escalation or collapsing diplomatic process in the weeks leading up to the tournament would threaten precisely the atmosphere Trump values most: the image of American strength, prosperity, and control.
This does not mean the negotiations are insincere or a deal is impossible. But it does suggest observers should be cautious about interpreting every public signal as evidence of imminent breakthrough or collapse.
He is not fundamentally opposed to negotiation with Iran. On the contrary, he appears deeply attracted to the possibility of a grand bargain. What he seeks, however, is not simply a workable agreement, but a visible triumph dramatic enough to dominate headlines and simple enough to market politically.
This may be the most distinctly American dimension of Trump’s foreign policy: the belief that geopolitical success must also function as branding. Trump wants ownership of the moment as much as he wants a deal. He wants the image of resolution itself: Iran returning to the table, concessions publicly framed as victories, history compressed into a photograph.
But history rarely cooperates with theatrical instincts. Foreign policy does not bend as easily as commercial real-estate negotiation because nations are not distressed assets waiting to be restructured.
The Islamic Republic measures survival differently: absorbing pressure can itself become a form of victory.
Salesmanship can generate headlines, pressure, and even temporary breakthroughs. But there are crises in which personality eventually collides with structure. That may be the clearest lesson of Trump’s long and unfinished confrontation with Tehran.
The art of the deal becomes far more complicated when the other side sees the conflict as a question of historical survival, when the only thing both sides have in common is a profound sense of mistrust.
Whether there will be a hostile takeover after the World Cup remains unclear. But one does not need to be a geopolitical genius to recognize the underlying logic of pressure if one understands the culture from which Trump emerged.
As Blake says in Glengarry Glen Ross, “The only thing that counts in this life is to get them to sign on the line which is dotted.”