Four Iranian-flagged oil tankers passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Monday for the first time since April 15 and the US blockade of Iranian ports, AFP reported, citing maritime tracking firm Kpler.
The tankers Hilda I, Amber, Silvia 1 and Happiness I were carrying a total of seven million barrels of oil, the report said.
The ships loaded their cargo in mid-April on Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil terminal, and crossed the strait on Monday with their AIS transponders turned off, the report said.
As Iran grapples with its most severe crisis since 1979, a new book by journalists Yeganeh Torbati and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin is revisiting how a revolution built on promises of justice and equality turned into what the authors describe as a mafia state.
Published this week, Stolen Revolution: Betrayal and Hope in Modern Iran has drawn attention at policy forums in Washington and New York, where its authors discussed Iran’s modern history, the resilience of the Islamic Republic and the country’s uncertain future after war, economic collapse and the succession of Mojtaba Khamenei.
The New York Times Book Review described Stolen Revolution as “one of the most perceptive books on modern Iran in years, capturing not only the machinery of repression but the fragile forms of hope that survive beneath it.”
The Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings hosted Torbati, the New York Times Iran correspondent, and Sharafedin, the Head of Digital at Iran International and a former Reuters Iran correspondent, on Wednesday.
The discussion was moderated by Suzanne Maloney, an Iran scholar and vice president and director of the Foreign Policy program at Brookings.
“One theme that runs throughout the book is the constant push and pull between the nation and the state,” Sharafedin said at the event.
“The Islamic Republic tries to project an image of continuity, to show it is business as usual and they are in full control. Much of the people’s struggle against the system has been an effort to break that continuity. Yet the system has proved quite resilient. Even foreign intervention was unable to create a rupture or break that continuity,” he said.
Sharafedin said the succession of Mojtaba Khamenei after his father was a sign of that continuity.
The assassination of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in late February plunged the country into its most perilous crisis since the 1979 revolution, leaving the Islamic Republic struggling with the aftermath of war, a collapsing economy and the military's expanding role in state affairs.
“I think what we've learned over the last 10 or 12 weeks—and what also became clearer to us while writing the book—is that individuals play a very important role in shaping the trajectory of events,” Torbati said.
“At the same time, the system is bigger than any one person—whether a supreme leader, a general, or a national security adviser. It is a system deeply committed to its own survival and self-preservation.”
Torbati said Iran is projected to face around 70 percent inflation this year. Food prices have soared, and layoffs have followed the war. Yet the system and its leadership appear willing to absorb those costs, and have ordinary Iranians bear much of the burden, in order to survive and avoid capitulating to the United States and Israel.
“By contrast, American leaders must contend with public opinion. President Trump has to worry about public support, and his party has to worry about the midterm elections,” she said.
“As a result, the Iranian government can often tolerate far more pain and pursue tactics for much longer than its American counterparts. I think that helps explain its survival up to this point.”
At a separate discussion hosted by the 92nd Street Y in New York on Wednesday night, journalist Scott Anderson, the author of King of Kings, joined Torbati and Sharafedin to assess Iran's modern history and the fallout from the US-Israeli war.
“Iranians have expressed [they want democracy] many, many times, and they've been machine-gunned for it,” Anderson said, referring to the January massacre in Iran that killed tens of thousands.
“Iran is not a closed society like North Korea. Iranians have a very good concept of what's happening in the outside world. Yet it's just this massive monolithic structure that has the guns,” he said.
The book traces how a revolution that promised to build an egalitarian society gradually transformed into what the authors describe as a mafia state. It tells that story through the lives of six Iranians whose experiences span the arc of modern Iranian history and who undergo profound transformations themselves.
One of them is Mehdi Karroubi, a devoted follower of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who rose to the highest ranks of power. Over time, however, he became a vocal critic of the Islamic Republic after seeing corruption, especially the growing role of the Revolutionary Guards in the economy. He paid a heavy price for his criticism and ultimately spent years under house arrest.
Another is Said Rahmani, who returned to Iran hoping to spark a startup boom in his country. Instead, he encountered a ruthless security state that seized much of his business empire and eventually forced him into exile.
“In my opinion, this is a book that will be of great interest both to those who have never read anything about Iran but are watching the news and want to better understand the country, and to those of us who already have large libraries of books on Iran,” Maloney said.
Former UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw called the book “extraordinarily powerful,” while Jonathan Blitzer, an American journalist and writer, described it as “a masterwork of reporting.”
David Hoffman, author of The Billion Dollar Spy, called it “a brilliant investigative history of modern Iran,” and the BBC’s Lyse Doucet said it was “a rare and riveting chronicle of a major political story of our time.”
Iran and Hezbollah are trying to undermine hopes for security and peace following a US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, Israel's ambassador to the United States said on X.
Yechiel Leiter said the agreement was based on Hezbollah stopping fire, withdrawing from southern Lebanon and being disarmed.
"There was real hope at the negotiating table for a new chapter of security and peace. Hezbollah and Iran are trying to destroy that hope. They must not succeed," he said.
"Today, it is the United States is waiting for Iran's green light, and until we obtain all of our rights, we will not show that green light to anyone," Mohsen Rezaei, an adviser to Iran's supreme leader, said on Thursday.
"The United States is struggling for no reason. The sooner it delivers the rights of the Iranian nation, the better it will be for itself," he added.
Rezaei, a former commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and currently a military advisor to Iran's supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei, also said President Donald Trump wants to pressure Iran into accepting US conditions while keeping Tehran's demands in a vague state.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Israel was the main reason for the deterioration of Iran's relations with the United Arab Emirates.
Araghchi said there was "a great deal of evidence" that the United States and Israel had used the UAE's airspace and territory against Iran.
He also said Iran had documents and evidence showing that in some cases the UAE had personally participated in military operations against the Islamic Republic.