Bulgaria’s move to allow US aircraft draws NATO member closer to Iran war

Yemen’s Houthis, who control much of northern and western Yemen and its coastline near the southern entrance to the Red Sea, declared a maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia on Monday, potentially opening another front in the widening regional conflict.

The order targets Saudi-linked shipping rather than all vessels passing through Bab el-Mandeb. The strait has not been closed, and a US Navy-led maritime information center said Tuesday that there had been no confirmed attacks on vessels in the Red Sea over the previous 48 hours.

But the announcement was already affecting commercial shipping.

In a letter sent to shipping companies and seen by Reuters, the Houthis warned that vessels loading or discharging oil at Saudi ports could be attacked anywhere within the reach of their forces.

The group described the measure as a “blockade for blockade,” accusing Saudi Arabia of imposing land, sea and air restrictions on Yemen and targeting Houthi-controlled ports and airports, including Sanaa International Airport.

US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the Houthis had not yet shut Bab el-Mandeb, known as the “Gate of Tears,” but warned that Washington would respond if they did.

“So far it hasn’t happened. Might happen, but we take care of things,” Trump said. “If something like that happens, we take care of it.”

Tankers alter course after Houthi threat

Two tankers that had loaded Saudi crude at the Red Sea port of Yanbu for customers in China and India reversed course Tuesday, heading north toward the Suez Canal rather than south through Bab el-Mandeb into the Indian Ocean.

The vessels, Xin Long Yang and Rodos, had both been sailing south through the Red Sea before turning around. A third tanker, New Prime, which had been heading empty toward Yanbu, also reversed course off Oman.

British maritime risk-management company Vanguard described them as the first confirmed changes to commercial tanker routes following the Houthi announcement and warned of growing disruption to Saudi crude exports and regional shipping.

No evidence has emerged that the vessels were directly threatened, but their diversions showed that shipping companies were already responding to the risk of Houthi attacks.

Saudi Arabia pledges to protect shipping

Riyadh rejected the Houthis’ accusations as false and said it would take all necessary measures to protect its vessels under international law and the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said threats against ships passing through Bab el-Mandeb would be dealt with firmly and that measures were being implemented to safeguard commercial traffic.

Riyadh accused the Houthis of exploiting the wider regional conflict to pursue their own agenda, worsen the suffering of Yemenis and threaten regional security.

Hormuz disruption raises Red Sea stakes

With traffic through the Strait of Hormuz severely reduced by the US-Iran war, Saudi Arabia has increasingly relied on its East-West Pipeline to transport crude across the kingdom to Yanbu for export through the Red Sea.

Saudi Arabia has shipped an average of more than 4.5 million barrels per day of crude and fuel from Yanbu since April, with about 70% destined for Asia, according to data cited by Reuters.

A successful Houthi effort to close Bab el-Mandeb would remove Saudi Arabia’s main alternative to Hormuz and leave much of its oil exports facing lengthy diversions.

Tankers unable to sail south from the Red Sea would have to travel north toward the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean before circling Africa to reach Asian customers. Analysts said the detour could delay some deliveries by about a month and sharply increase freight and insurance costs.

Oil prices rose more than 2% Tuesday, with Brent crude trading above $91 a barrel and US gasoline prices returning to more than $4 a gallon.

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.

The renewed offensive, which entered its ninth consecutive night, came as Iranian media reported explosions across the country's southern coastline and, for the first time in the latest campaign, in the northwestern city of Tabriz, suggesting the geographic scope of the strikes may be expanding.

US president Donald Trump said the latest attacks honoured "probably three great patriots" killed in the conflict, describing them as soldiers who had fought to ensure "Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon."

"We hit them very hard again tonight," he told reporters after returning to Washington following the World Cup final.

US Central Command later said it had completed its ninth consecutive night of strikes, targeting Iranian military command centres, air defence and coastal surveillance sites, maritime capabilities, missile and drone launch sites, and communications networks to further degrade Tehran's ability to threaten shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

Despite the escalation, Rubio reiterated that the United States remained open to a diplomatic solution, maintaining the administration's position that military pressure and negotiations can proceed in parallel.

The widening conflict also rippled through global energy markets. Brent crude rose more than 3% on Monday, climbing above $90 a barrel for the first time since June 11 as attacks on shipping and uncertainty over the Strait of Hormuz intensified.

Iran broadens its threats

Iran, meanwhile, adopted an increasingly confrontational tone in a series of statements issued by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

State media reported fresh missile launches from Lorestan province toward what were described as "enemy targets", while the IRGC claimed it had carried out a surprise strike on the US base at al-Tanf in Syria in retaliation for American attacks that killed Iranian conscript soldiers near Iranshahr.

US Central Command previously denied an earlier Iranian claim that the base had been attacked.

In another statement, the IRGC claimed two oil tankers attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz had exploded after trying to use what it described as an unsafe route under US pressure.

It warned that the waterway would remain unsafe "for even a single drop of oil and gas" as long as US military operations continued and threatened further "punitive" action against American forces.

The force also claimed Jordanians had provided intelligence that enabled attacks on US military facilities at al-Azraq and Aqaba. Those claims could not be independently verified.

Escalationm vs diplomacy

The widening military campaign has fuelled speculation in Washington that the strikes are intended to pave the way for a broader phase of the conflict if diplomacy ultimately fails.

Yet the political messaging from both capitals points to a more complicated picture.

Rubio's remarks echoed comments earlier this week by Vice President JD Vance, who argued that military pressure and diplomacy should proceed together. Iran's chief negotiator and parliament speaker, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, similarly described war and negotiations as complementary tools for defending national interests.

The parallel rhetoric suggests both governments may be seeking to strengthen their bargaining positions ahead of another round of talks rather than abandoning diplomacy altogether—even as the battlefield widens.

Whether that strategy succeeds may depend not only on developments on the ground but also on mounting economic pressure.