Qatar says Iran must compensate it for all damage from attacks

Esfandiyari, 19, was executed on Sunday. He was among 12 defendants sentenced to death over unrest in Isfahan’s Ali Khani Square during nationwide protests in January.

Another defendant was Alireza Raisi, whose sentence had previously been overturned and reduced to 20 years in prison, but has now been reinstated and upheld by Iran’s Supreme Court, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.

The sources could not be named for fear of retribution by Iranian authorities.

Secret burial after execution

A source close to Esfandiyari’s family said his relatives waited outside Dastgerd Prison in the central Iranian city of Isfahan until 5:30 a.m. after he was transferred to solitary confinement.

After waiting until dawn and returning home, Esfandiyari's father received another call ordering him back to the prison, accompanied by one other man, the source said.

Authorities forced the family to pledge that Esfandiyari’s body would not be buried in Isfahan and that they would not hold a funeral, sources told Iran International.

His body was buried in Buin Miandasht, a city in western Isfahan province, without his family present. His relatives were also barred from holding a memorial ceremony.

Iran’s judiciary-affiliated Mizan news agency reported on Sunday that Esfandiyari had been executed alongside 24-year old Afghan citizen Gol-Mohammad Mohammadi, who was also detained during the January uprising in Isfahan.

Cousin of slain protester faces execution

Another source told Iran International that Raisi, who was born in 2004 and is his family’s only son, had been sentenced to death on the charge of “enmity against God.”

The death sentence was initially overturned on appeal and replaced with a 20-year prison term.

However, Raisi’s family was informed on July 5 that the death sentence had been reinstated and upheld by the Supreme Court, the source said.

He has since been transferred to solitary confinement at Dastgerd Prison and is considered at imminent risk of execution, the source said.

Raisi is the cousin of Ramin Raisi, a 28-year-old protester who disappeared on January 9 during demonstrations in Isfahan’s Baharestan neighborhood.

After searching for nine days, his family found his body at the Bagh-e Rezvan mortuary with four gunshot wounds to the chest.

Intelligence Ministry agents traveling in two vehicles arrested Alireza Raisi outside the entrance to Bagh-e Rezvan cemetery on January 19, one day after Ramin’s burial, people close to the family told Iran International.

Security agencies refused for several days to acknowledge holding him and sent his family between different state institutions before they eventually learned that he was in prison.

The family sought to appoint a lawyer but was told Raisi had no right to choose his own counsel and could only be represented by a court-appointed lawyer.

Sources told Iran International that one piece of evidence used against Raisi was a voice message in which he asked Ramin to take part in the protests.

After tracking Raisi’s mobile phone, agents linked him to the deaths of four law enforcement personnel in Ali Khani Square, an accusation his family denies.

Raisi’s mother has multiple sclerosis, and he has two sisters. His family had planned to hold his engagement celebration at the beginning of the year.

A dozen sent to death row

Iran’s judiciary-affiliated Mizan news agency said indictments were issued against 16 people in the Ali Khani Square case and several defendants were sentenced to death.

Iran International reported on July 8 that 59 people were initially arrested during the January protests and the ensuing crackdown in Ali Khani Square. Of those, 23 were sentenced to prison terms ranging from five to 10 years.

Twelve defendants were sentenced to death: Abolfazl Ebrahimi, Amirhossein Ebrahimi-Analoucheh, Erfan Esfandiyari, Shervin Bagherian, Ghaem Hosseini, Ali Dashti, Alireza Raisi, Abolfazl Sepahi, Alireza Sepahi, Amirhossein Safari, Gol-Mohammad Mohammadi and Amirhossein Maleki.

The Ali Khani Square case forms part of a broader escalation in Iran's use of the death penalty against political prisoners since January's protests, the June war with Israel and the conflict with the United States that began on February 28.

Tehran prosecutor Ali Salehi said on July 14 that cases linked to the protests and the two wars had been handled by special judicial branches, which issued prison and death sentences.

Iran’s judiciary has executed at least 50 political prisoners since March 18 and issued death sentences, lengthy prison terms and asset-confiscation orders against hundreds of others.

The trend has heightened concerns over rushed trials and the swift imposition and execution of severe sentences, drawing condemnation from rights groups and prompting hunger strikes by prisoners.

The unusually candid warnings came at a two-day economic conference in Tehran that brought together senior economists, policymakers and business leaders after being postponed three times because of regional instability and wartime conditions.

Speakers said the latest escalation with Washington had transformed discussions from long-term reform into managing an economy under renewed military pressure.

Former presidential adviser Masoud Nili delivered one of the starkest assessments, warning that Iran's economy was moving from a chronic but manageable malaise into an active crisis.

Years of structural mismanagement, he said, were now visibly breaking open, while inflation had entered a "more slippery phase" in which subsidies and social safety nets were no longer sufficient to protect household welfare.

Media coverage reflected the divide between government officials seeking to reassure the public and independent economists warning that structural weaknesses were becoming harder to ignore.

Economic daily Donya-ye-Eghtesad listed chronic inflation, weak and unstable growth, persistent budget deficits, foreign-exchange volatility, dual exchange rates, pension-fund insolvency, foreign-policy pressures and rising geopolitical risks among the country's most urgent challenges.

Economist Mehrdad Sepahvand, one of the conference organizers, said the event had been delayed three times because of the regional crisis.

Investment gap

Former Central Bank Governor Hossein Abdoh Tabrizi argued that banking reform was essential, saying financial institutions must become "efficient allocators of capital rather than money-printing engines."

Although public confidence in the banking system had held up during recent regional conflict, he said, deeper reforms were needed to channel savings into productive investment.

Economist Mohammad-Mehdi Behkish said rebuilding damaged infrastructure, restoring economic growth and modernizing industry would require about $500 billion in investment.

Domestic resources alone were nowhere near sufficient, he argued, making greater foreign engagement and integration into the global economy indispensable.

Alireza Bakhtiari, director of the Donya-ye-Eghtesad Media Group, said policymakers remained trapped between what he described as a "survival paradigm" and a "growth paradigm," arguing that many of Iran's domestic economic constraints could not be resolved without major foreign-policy decisions.

Government response

Government-linked outlets focused instead on Central Bank Governor Abdolnaser Hemmati, who acknowledged the severity of the economic situation while urging against panic.

Hemmati cited Iranian and international data showing a 47 percent decline in real per-capita income, saying the purchasing power of the average Iranian had fallen to levels last seen in the late 1990s.

Calling for "realism without doom-mongering," he argued that neither denial nor exaggeration would improve the economy.

"Price stability alone doesn't create goods," he said. "Only investment and productivity can sustainably restore Iranians' purchasing power."

Inflation pressures

Independent economists painted an even darker picture.

Hossein Tavakolian warned that inflation was entering a more dangerous phase.

Monthly inflation, once around 3 percent and equivalent to roughly 40 percent annually, was now periodically reaching 10 percent, he said, with nearly every major consumer category entering what he described as "red zones."

Academic economist Teymour Rahmani argued that inflation in Iran was fundamentally a political and fiscal problem rather than simply a monetary one.

Although direct government borrowing from the central bank had been curtailed, he said, fiscal pressures had merely shifted onto commercial banks, postponing rather than solving the country's inflation problem.

The backlash followed Araghchi's appearance on the YouTube program Majaray-e Jang (Story of War), in which he discussed the wars with the United States and Israel, internal security planning, succession preparations and negotiations with Washington. He also said security gaps that enabled attacks on senior officials and leadership sites "probably still have not been fully resolved."

"If you wanted publicity or to repair your image, you made it worse," Mostafa Khoshcheshm, a political analyst appearing on Iranian state television, said in response to the interview.

Araghchi's remarks, Khoshcheshm said, reflected what he described as "a lack of strategic thinking," adding: "I am genuinely concerned." He called the interview "a disaster in public relations, image-building and image repair."

Araghchi had said attacks on the former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's compound were carried out through "security gaps" that continued to affect decision-makers and the public atmosphere.

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  Beyond espionage: Araghchi says spies seek to shape Iran's decisions

He also described wartime contingency plans, including preparations for the possible killing of the country's leader and the government's response to attacks on senior officials.

Conservative newspapers criticize disclosures

Javan, a newspaper affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, wrote on Tuesday that confirming details surrounding the attacks, discussing the day the former leader was killed or revealing that the foreign minister had no contact with new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei were not matters that should have been disclosed publicly.

"Please keep the locations of the remaining tunnels and military bases to yourself in future interviews, and exercise restraint when discussing important events," the newspaper wrote.

Safeguarding national security, protecting public trust and defending the country's interests should outweigh the appeal of widely viewed media interviews, Javan added.

Conservative outlet Tabnak also questioned Araghchi's decision to give the interview to documentary filmmaker and online host Javad Mogoei rather than an experienced journalist.

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  Beyond espionage: Araghchi says spies seek to shape Iran's decisions

The outlet wrote that some of the information discussed was likely to be of greater value to Israeli and US intelligence services than to viewers. It also argued that diplomacy and journalism are both specialized professions, asking whether senior officials should grant interviews to content creators without established experience covering political affairs.

The commentary compared Araghchi's media approach with that of former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, arguing that although Zarif also preferred interviews with individuals rather than media organizations, he chose interviewers who better understood political and security sensitivities.

Reaction from Raisi allies

Raja News, a media outlet close to supporters of former president Ebrahim Raisi, also criticized the interview, focusing on remarks by Mogoei identifying locations of underground tunnels and saying military commanders frequently used them.

Araghchi, the outlet said, should not have disclosed such information and argued that the program's producers should have removed those passages during editing. It also questioned why the host publicly identified locations associated with senior commanders, even if foreign intelligence agencies were already aware of them.

The wide-ranging interview touched on issues that Iranian officials have rarely discussed publicly, including internal security failures, wartime contingency plans and high-level decision-making during the conflict.

Reza Sepahvand told ILNA that discussions were taking place within the government and the Plan and Budget Organization, but said raising fuel prices while Iran faces war and severe inflation would be “in no way advisable.”

Sepahvand said the government has the legal authority to change energy prices and that officials from the Oil Ministry and the National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company were expected to discuss the issue with lawmakers this week.

“No issue has yet been raised with parliament or the Energy Committee,” he said, adding that lawmakers would seek a clearer answer from ministry officials.

Iran currently sells the first 60 liters of monthly petrol allocated to private cars at 15,000 rials per liter, equivalent to about $0.008 at an open-market exchange rate of about 1.9 million rials to the dollar.

A further 100 liters are available at 30,000 rials per liter, or about $0.016, while additional petrol purchased using station fuel cards costs 50,000 rials per liter, about $0.026.

Sepahvand warned that even from this heavily subsidized base, an increase could push up transport costs and the prices of goods and services.

“Any increase in petrol prices could fuel a new wave of price rises and place additional pressure on people’s livelihoods,” he said.

He urged the government to avoid changing petrol prices while households are already dealing with the economic effects of war and what he described as runaway inflation.

Petrol pricing is one of the most politically dangerous economic issues for the Islamic Republic. Iranian officials have repeatedly approached even limited changes cautiously because higher fuel costs quickly feed into transport, food and other prices, while falling real wages leave households with little capacity to absorb another shock.

The caution is rooted in the nationwide unrest of November 2019. A sudden overnight increase raised the subsidized petrol price by 50% and tripled the price charged above the monthly quota, setting off demonstrations within hours in cities and towns across Iran. The protests quickly broadened from anger over fuel costs into demands directed against the political system.

Authorities responded by cutting Iran off from the global internet for nearly a week and using lethal force against protesters. Amnesty International has documented 321 men, women and children killed by security forces, while Reuters, citing Iranian Interior Ministry officials, reported that about 1,500 people died.

The memory of those protests continues to shape government calculations. A petrol price increase during war and severe inflation would risk being viewed not simply as a fuel-policy change but as another sudden transfer of the state’s economic burden onto households already facing collapsing purchasing power.

The remark marked a subtle but significant shift. Iranian officials have long acknowledged espionage and intelligence breaches, particularly after the precision with which senior commanders, nuclear scientists and political leaders have been located and targeted exposed profound vulnerabilities within Iran's security establishment.

Speaking in the first part of a nearly 90-minute podcast interview, Araghchi suggested foreign intelligence activity inside Iran may be something more ambitious than gathering intelligence: shaping the decisions of the state itself.

He made the remarks when asked by establishment podcaster Javad Mogoei about the opening hours of the war, when coordinated strikes killed Iran's supreme leader along with several senior military, security and political figures.

"I believe this security breach is not limited merely to infiltration and obtaining information," Araghchi said.

"Sometimes it also exists in influencing the decision-making process itself. And even more importantly, it extends to shaping our psychological environment and public perception."

Araghchi did not identify any foreign intelligence service or explain how such influence might operate, although Israel appeared to be the implied actor in the discussion.

To Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, that distinction was the most revealing part of the interview.

"The job of these assets isn't just to leak the location of leaders in a certain place to be killed," Vatanka told Iran International. "It is to influence decision-making. It's to influence the policy process."

Vatanka believes Araghchi's remarks were directed as much at Iran's internal political debate as at foreign intelligence operations.

"He's hinting that elements inside the regime are openly arguing for policies that the enemy—the United States and Israel—prefer," he said. "Is he talking about the pro-war hawks? Is this part of scoring points against one another? Could well be."

"These things are obviously not accidental," he added. "This is very much messaging at a moment of war."

Mogoei nevertheless raised another possibility, invoking Masoud Kashmiri, the alleged infiltrator who rose through the ranks of the Islamic Republic before the 1981 bombing that killed President Mohammad Ali Rajai and Prime Minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar.

"Perhaps we have another Kashmiri," he suggested.

Araghchi did not endorse the comparison, saying Iran's adversaries had become familiar with the supreme leader's routine and that the Intelligence Ministry meeting may simply have coincided by chance.

Whether Araghchi was describing a sophisticated foreign influence operation or speaking more broadly about the effect of outside pressure on Iran's internal politics is where analysts begin to diverge.

Omid Memarian, an Iran analyst at DAWN, said one possible manifestation of the kind of influence Araghchi described would be officials advocating policies that prolong the war despite the damage continued conflict causes to the Islamic Republic's own interests.

"Some of the decisions they are making are exactly the things that Israelis might wish for," Memarian told Iran International.

"When it comes to Iran's national security and national interests, they don't make sense,” he added. "We see the smoke. We don't see the fire."

Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Araghchi's comments should also be viewed through the lens of Iran's internal political rivalries.

"That doesn't mean these guys are doves by any measure," Taleblu told Iran International. "But it does mean that they have different views about how best to preserve, protect and defend the Islamic Republic."

Taleblu said public acknowledgments of security failures are often aimed less at the Iranian public than at rival political factions or security institutions, with officials defending their own approach while criticizing competing strategies.

He said Araghchi's comments also highlighted a less discussed aspect of intelligence operations: their ability to shape leaders' perceptions rather than merely gather information.

"Influence is to shape their decision-making, perhaps by lulling the Supreme Leader's office into a false sense of security and back into the routines that existed before," he said.