Rushdie attacker contacted person in Iran before attack, US prosecutors say

"Iran's in a lot of trouble," Rubio told reporters on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit.

He said Iran was facing "hyperinflation, runaway inflation, high food costs," adding that the country's military infrastructure had suffered "a tremendous amount of damage."

Rubio accused Tehran of spending "every penny they have" over the past two decades "not spending it on their country," but instead "sponsoring terrorist groups and building up their missiles and their drone systems."

He said those missile and drone capabilities had been intended to shield Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"A year from now, Iran would have had so many missiles and drones that they would have been behind a conventional shield that would have given them immunity to do whatever they wanted."

Shipping campaign

Rubio said the United States was focused on protecting commercial shipping and reducing Iran's ability to threaten maritime traffic.

"Ships are trying to go through the Straits and they're getting blown up. Commercial ships are going through the Straits and they're being blown up," he said.

"The United States is defending that shipping and, in addition, is targeting the places that are launching against those ships that continue to degrade Iran's ability to target and harm global shipping."

"So that's what's happening there, and that's what we're focused on."

Memorandum of understanding

Asked about Iran's announcement that it had suspended its commitments under the Islamabad memorandum of understanding with the United States, Rubio said agreements depended on compliance.

"If you make a deal, if you sign on to an agreement, and then you violate the agreement, the agreement's no longer valid," he said.

"That doesn't mean you can't have a future agreement, but ultimately, that future agreement will have to be judged on whether or not you're complying with the conditions."

Rubio said the memorandum "called for the opening of the Straits, free and fair navigation."

"In fact, they were supposed to put out a statement to that regard a week and a half ago, and instead, on the day they were supposed to put out that statement, instead of doing that, they targeted and hit a ship."

Diplomacy remains possible

Rubio said Washington had not abandoned diplomacy despite the military campaign.

"We remain open to diplomacy. We remain open to working it out in a negotiated way."

"But right now, they don't seem to be serious about that, and so we're going to continue to protect shipping."

He added that other countries should join the effort.

"We think other countries should join us in that endeavor. We don't need them to, but they should because they're more impacted by it than we are."

"And at the same time, we are going to, when the opportunity presents itself, degrade their ability to target global shipping."

China and the Strait of Hormuz

Rubio said China's actions had not changed the course of the conflict with Iran and suggested Beijing opposed any disruption to navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.

"Nothing that's happened, nothing that China has done, has in any way changed the trajectory of what you're seeing in terms of the conflicts we're having with Iran," he said.

"I don't think they're big fans of what Iran is trying to do in the Straits."

"They've said so publicly that they oppose tolling or any sort of restraint on freedom of navigation in the Straits, and we hope they'll continue to say that. It's important that other countries say that as well."

“The new site that they’re talking about, they’re trying to possibly reconstitute a site, we’ll hit that site,” Trump told reporters Tuesday during an Oval Office meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun.

“Any site where they’re even thinking about nuclear, we’ll be hitting it very, very powerfully.”

Hours after the US president’s warning, Iran’s joint military command warned that any US attack on Iran’s nuclear or other sensitive sites would widen the regional war, according to state media.

US interests and those of countries supporting Washington would face a “powerful assault” by Iran’s armed forces, Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters said.

Raja News, a hardline Tehran outlet, went further, calling for Iran to publish a list of vital infrastructure across the region, particularly in the United Arab Emirates, and strike the targets if the United States attacks Pickaxe Mountain.

The outlet said Iran should not wait for an attack before responding and urged officials to present a practical plan for withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Trump’s warning followed an Israeli intelligence assessment, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, that Iran moved thousands of uranium-enrichment centrifuges into Pickaxe Mountain last fall.

Israel shared the assessment with Washington, but the allegation has not been independently verified, and neither country has publicly disclosed the evidence supporting it.

If accurate, the reported transfer would make Pickaxe one of the most strategically important surviving sites in Iran’s nuclear program.

Centrifuges enrich uranium by spinning uranium hexafluoride gas at extremely high speeds and are essential for producing nuclear fuel or weapons-grade material.

“When you assemble centrifuges like that, the next step is to put them in an enrichment plant,” David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, told Iran International.

Iran began building Pickaxe Mountain after an explosion in 2020 damaged an above-ground advanced centrifuge assembly facility at Natanz in an attack widely attributed to Israel. Tehran said the underground complex would replace the damaged assembly plant.

Satellite imagery has shown years of continued construction. Albright said the underground complex appears significantly larger than would be required for centrifuge assembly alone, leading his institute to assess that it could eventually also house a uranium-enrichment plant.

If centrifuges are being stored there, experts say the facility could provide Tehran with a pathway to restore uranium enrichment despite months of US and Israeli military strikes.

A difficult target

Its depth also makes Pickaxe one of Iran’s most difficult nuclear facilities to attack.

Andrea Stricker, deputy director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Nonproliferation Program, said the facility is estimated to sit roughly 300 to 450 feet beneath a granite mountain, potentially placing it beyond the reach of conventional US bunker-buster bombs.

“Essentially, Pickaxe is where Iran could reconstitute a nuclear weapons pathway,” Stricker told Iran International.

Rather than attempting to penetrate the mountain itself, experts say military planners could seek to disable the facility by targeting its tunnel entrances, ventilation systems and electrical infrastructure.

“You don’t look to get a bunker buster to pass through the mountain. I mean, that’s just not possible,” Albright said.

But he added that the complex was “not immune from destruction or shutting it down.”

“If they have centrifuges in there and they can’t use them, then that is a step forward to try to keep Iran from building nuclear weapons,” he said.

Stricker said another option would be to destroy access through the eastern and western tunnel entrances, preventing Iran from re-entering the complex while allowing the site to be monitored for renewed activity.

Preventing reconstitution

For Rebeccah Heinrichs, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, Pickaxe represents a different phase of the military campaign.

While Washington still has conventional military targets it can strike from the air, Heinrichs said Pickaxe presents a more complex challenge because of its depth and its potential role in rebuilding Iran’s nuclear program.

If Trump concludes that airpower alone cannot prevent Iran from restoring its nuclear capabilities, Heinrichs said any use of US forces on the ground would more likely involve a limited special-operations mission than a conventional invasion.

"This would be a special operations mission on the ground," she told Eye for Iran, suggesting any such operation would likely be conducted alongside Israel to secure or remove sensitive nuclear material.

There is no public evidence that Washington is planning such an operation.

Heinrichs also suggested that the United States may have deliberately avoided striking Pickaxe so far to preserve the possibility of entering or securing the complex, although Washington has not publicly indicated that this was its reasoning.

Whether Trump ultimately orders an attack remains uncertain, and his warning may be intended partly to deter Iran from activating the facility.

But the president’s remarks, the Israeli intelligence assessment and mounting concern among nuclear experts have placed Pickaxe Mountain at the center of a broader strategic question: how to prevent Iran from rebuilding its nuclear program after months of military strikes.

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.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot had already confirmed that two members of the French embassy were detained for several hours on Sunday, calling the episode "serious and unacceptable" and warning it "cannot go without consequences."

"One of them was physically abused," Barrot said, describing the detention as an "extremely serious act of intimidation" and a "flagrant violation of diplomatic immunity."

According to a source familiar with the matter who spoke to Iran International, Iranian security forces detained the two diplomats, took them to an undisclosed location and interrogated them. Both were subjected to psychological pressure during their detention and questioning, and that at least one was physically assaulted, the source said.

The episode has heightened concern among staff at the French embassy in Tehran, with several employees asking to return to France before completing their assignments, although their postings have not officially ended, according to the source.

French authorities are now considering whether to end some diplomatic assignments early and reduce the embassy's presence in Tehran, the source added.

Paris seeks answers

Iran International has sent a formal request to the French Foreign Ministry seeking comment on the condition of the two diplomats, Paris' planned response and the possible impact on embassy operations in Tehran.

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The ministry had not responded by the time of publication.

Barrot said he had raised the matter directly with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, telling him the detention represented a serious breach of diplomatic immunity protected under international law.

According to Barrot, the two diplomats were responsible for French programs supporting Iranian civil society, particularly artists and scientists. Both were released and are expected to return to France.

Relations deteriorate

The detention comes as relations between Paris and Tehran continue to worsen over Iran's nuclear program, regional policies and the imprisonment of French nationals.

France has said it opposes lifting sanctions on Iran unless Tehran abandons its nuclear program and changes what Paris describes as destabilizing regional policies. Paris has also called for a broader European role in negotiations over Iran.

The dispute follows years of friction over French nationals held in Iran. Paris has repeatedly called for the release of Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, who have been detained since 2022, describing their imprisonment as arbitrary and accusing Iran of using foreign detainees to seek diplomatic concessions.

Earlier this year, France brought a case against Iran before the International Court of Justice over alleged violations of consular rights.

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  France accuses Iran of assaulting diplomat, warns of consequences

The detention of accredited embassy staff broadens the dispute from French citizens held in Iran to diplomats protected under international law, adding another point of strain in relations between Paris and Tehran.

Iranian authorities had not publicly commented on the case by the time of publication.

Amini, a father of two, was detained during nationwide protests in January 2026.

His relatives and other sources who spoke to Iran International could not be named for fear of retribution by Iranian authorities.

Iran’s judiciary-affiliated Mizan news agency announced on July 15 that Amini had been executed after being convicted of moharebeh, or “waging war against God,” and corruption on Earth over allegations that he set fire to the governor’s office and damaged public property in Dehaghan county, Isfahan province.

His family said authorities had earlier accused him of involvement in a separate arson attack on a Bank Mellat branch in Dehaghan. They rejected the allegation, saying he was at home when the fire occurred and played no role in it.

Amini, who was from Dehaghan, was the father of 13-year-old Raha and one-year-old Mahva. His relatives described him as quiet and someone who kept out of trouble, adding that his wife and two daughters were the focus of his life.

He was executed two weeks before his 38th birthday.

Arrested after IRGC summons, denied legal representation

Amini received a telephone call on the evening of January 19 asking him to report to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to provide an explanation, his relatives said.

“We have a video of you,” officers told him, sources told Iran International.

Amini was arrested after reporting to the IRGC and never returned home.

His family hired a private lawyer, but the lawyer was not allowed to meet Amini or given full access to the case file, his relatives said.

After the death sentence was issued, the family’s lawyer said he had appealed. But when relatives contacted the Supreme Court, they found that no appeal had been registered, the family said.

When the lawyer sought an explanation, the Dehaghan prosecutor told him: “There was no need for you to be informed about this.”

The family said it believed judicial authorities deliberately concealed the death sentence to deprive them of the opportunity to appeal or pursue other legal avenues.

Tortured into false confession

Amini was severely beaten during interrogations and tortured with an electric stun device to force him to make a false confession incriminating himself, his relatives said.

The family also said that he was given insufficient food and held in unhygienic and poor prison conditions.

During the first weeks of his detention, Amini was in poor physical and psychological condition and struggled to understand what was happening around him, his relatives said.

Several days before his execution, he was transferred to solitary confinement.

‘Tell everyone I am innocent’

During their final prison visit, his relatives said they saw him in a critical condition.

He was unable to walk, and officers had to hold him under his arms to bring him into the visiting room. His body was trembling, and he appeared to have almost no strength left.

“Tell everyone I am innocent,” Amini told his family during the visit.

After the execution, Iranian authorities refused to allow his body to be buried in his hometown of Dehaghan, his family said.

He was instead buried under government supervision at Isfahan’s Behesht-e Rezvan cemetery, with only a small number of close relatives permitted to attend the funeral.

Amini remained hopeful until the final days of his life that he would be released, sources told Iran International.

He had received a certificate recognizing his good conduct and called his wife from prison every day.

Amini asked her to record videos of their younger daughter, Mahva, so that after his release he could watch the moments of her childhood that he had missed.