The United States on Thursday imposed new sanctions targeting individuals and entities in China, India, Russia and Iran accused of supporting Mahan Air, an Iranian airline Washington says has transported Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel, weapons and drones.
The US Treasury Department designated six entities and individuals for allegedly acting as sales agents and support networks for Mahan Air, which is already under US and European Union sanctions, according to a statement cited by Reuters.
Demolished sidewalk planters outside cafes on Sanaei Street in Tehran.
In the quiet hours of Wednesday morning, municipal crews swept through Sanaei Street in central Tehran with sledgehammers, reducing sidewalk planters, benches, and concrete borders outside local cafes to rubble.
Just days earlier, authorities had affixed heavy metal seals to the doors of several cafes that had become popular gathering places for young people - 1401, Theory, Jo Cafe, Dobareh, Sam Cafe, Maan, and Nook. Now, even the physical footprint of these gathering spots was being erased.
The scene along Sanaei is not an isolated urban redevelopment project; it is the visible edge of an expanding domestic front. As the Islamic Republic navigates profound geopolitical vulnerability, military standoff, and international isolation, its security apparatus has turned inward with renewed vigor. The target is the physical fabric of daily life—the informal, everyday spaces where citizens meet, breathe, and quietly subvert official ideology.
The erasure of the 'Patogh'
In Iranian urban culture, the patogh - a hangout spot, whether a neighborhood coffee shop, a shaded bench, or a specific street corner- holds a special resonance. Central Tehran, with its historical universities, cultural venues, and tree-lined avenues, has long served as a sanctuary for students and young professionals seeking conversation away from state surveillance.
Cafes in this district do not merely sell coffee; they operate as vital breathing rooms in a pressure-cooker society. They are spaces where women routinely drop their headscarves, where independent acoustic music plays quietly, and where social networks form organically.
To the security state, these hubs represent something far more dangerous than simple rule-breaking: they are unmonitored incubator spaces for civil defiance.
By dismantling the planters and outdoor ledges where young people once congregated, the state is conducting a campaign of physical depatterning. The objective is simple: raise the friction of gathering, eliminate opportunities for unscripted human interaction, and force citizens back into the isolation of private homes.
The systematic clearing of social life is not confined to central Tehran's bohemian quarters. In the northern district of Tajrish—a bustling commercial hub anchored by its traditional bazaar, the Imamzadeh Saleh shrine, and the thoroughfares leading toward the Saadabad Palace—a parallel push is underway.
Here, the crackdown targets street musicians, artisans, and informal vendors whose presence gives the district its distinctive kinetic energy.
"Plainclothes men carrying two-way radios came up to me last week while I was playing," a young handpan musician who performed near Tajrish Square told Iran International. "They told me bluntly: 'The time for these antics is over. There will be none of this in the streets anymore.'"
For many, performing or vending in Tajrish was not a lifestyle choice, but a last resort. Following the internet blackouts imposed during recent nationwide unrest, thousands of small online businesses, home-craft pages, and digital storefronts collapsed overnight. Young artisans, women-headed households, and unemployed graduates migrated to the pavements of Tajrish to sell handmade goods or play music for passing crowds.
Now, even that economic and social retreat is being shut down. Vendors near the shrine report periodic sweeps by security personnel and vigilantes ordering them to pack up their "sinful stalls" under threat of physical violence.
What makes this campaign so striking to Tehran residents is its stark selectivity.
While young people face sledgehammers and security sweeps for sitting on a sidewalk ledger or strumming a guitar, state-aligned groups enjoy unrestricted access to the city’s major arteries. For months, heavily subsidized groups have set up nightly ideological gatherings, loud ceremonial processions, and roadside stands with full logistical backing from the state.
This spatial double standard reveals the regime's broader urban philosophy: public space in Iran is not a shared civic commodity, but a state monopoly. The streets are permitted to be loud, crowded, and disruptive—provided that noise serves the government's narrative. The moment a street corner becomes a site for quiet civilian autonomy, it is treated as a security threat.
The historical pattern: Internal repression as external defense
This tightening grip on everyday life follows a familiar pattern in post-revolutionary Iran. Historically, whenever the Islamic Republic faces severe external threats or internal crises, its immediate response is to signal total domestic control.
The destruction of cafe seating and the silencing of street performers occur alongside a sharp escalation in judicial violence, including a surge in executions and political detentions. The message directed at society is unified across every medium: the state retains absolute authority over who walks the street, who speaks, and who lives.
Yet, despite the shattered concrete on Sanaei Street and the quieted plazas of Tajrish, Tehran's urban ecosystem remains stubbornly resilient. The urge to assemble, connect, and reclaim small fragments of normal life has repeatedly outlasted physical destruction—proving that while a government can tear up a sidewalk, controlling the social life that flows over it is a far more difficult task.
Three prominent political prisoners held in Tehran's Evin prison issued a joint statement accusing the establishment of using regional war as a cover to escalate domestic repression and attempt to rebuild its lost authority through executions.
Abolfazl Ghadyani, a veteran Islamic Revolution-era official turned fierce critic of Tehran; Mohammad Najafi, a human rights lawyer jailed for exposing a protester's death in custody; and Reza Valizadeh, an Iranian-American journalist and former Radio Farda contributor, issued the joint statement from Tehran's Evin prison.
The three political prisoners said the Islamic Republic was accelerating executions to inflict revenge on defenseless citizens for military setbacks against international adversaries.
"The corrupt regime of the Islamic Republic has once again turned war into a license to kill citizens," the prisoners wrote. "Whatever collapsed of its hollow authority on the battlefield, it is now trying to rebuild on the gallows."
Political prisoners Abolfazl Ghadiani (right), Mohammad Najafi (middle) and Reza Valizadeh
Executions described as 'begging for authority'
Executing protesters following show trials does not represent the administration of justice but rather "begging for authority on a path of blood," the signatories wrote.
They said Iranian authorities were rushing executions to take out frustrations on ordinary citizens that they could not exact on the US and Israel, seeking to crush any protesting voice.
"Today the hereditary regime of Mojtaba Khamenei, who like his father is a bloodthirsty and criminal tyrant who shared and partnered in all his father's crimes and plunder, has fallen from governance to tunnel-keeping," the statement said.
The prisoners added that the regime and its military-security cliques, unable to manage severe economic and social crises, were relying on a triad of "execution, crackdown, and imprisonment" to control the population outside their power centers.
Isfahan hangings spark grief and anger
The statement follows the executions of two young protesters early on Tuesday, Amirhossein Safari and Abolfazl Sepahi, who were hanged in Isfahan amid a heavy security deployment around Alikhani Square.
The two men were among 12 defendants convicted in the Alikhani Square case stemming from clashes during protests in January. Their hangings brought the total number of individuals executed in the case to four, following the executions of Golmohammad Mohammadi and Erfan Esfandiari on July 19. Eight others remain under sentence of death.
The hangings in Isfahan triggered widespread grief, anger, and public defiance across Iranian cities and abroad. Witnesses described crowds gathering near Alikhani Square overnight despite intimidation by security forces, while messages across social media described the executions as a crime that hardened public resolve rather than suppressed dissent.
UN human rights experts led by Special Rapporteur Mai Sato had urged Iranian authorities on Monday to halt the executions, warning that closed-court trials based on televised confessions violated basic international legal standards.
The joint statement from Evin prison comes amid a broader surge in death sentences and executions across Iran over the past year, particularly following the January protests and escalating regional conflict.
Data compiled by Iran International shows that the Iranian judiciary has executed more than 50 political prisoners since the beginning of the current Iranian year, with dozens more facing execution.
Rights groups and civil society leaders have issued repeated warnings over the escalation. Amnesty International reported that at least 60 people, including three individuals under the age of 18 at the time of their alleged offenses, face imminent execution in Iran.
The three Evin prisoners concluded their statement by warning that no government achieves security or legitimacy through "the accumulation of corpses and a fear production line," adding that if the ruling establishment fails to yield to the public will, "Iran will become more ruined."
Iranian security agents allegedly cut away skin bearing tattoos of Reza Shah and an imperial crown before killing a 21-year-old protester before later shooting him dead, according to sources close to his family.
The sources told Iran International that Amirhossein Nobakht Pardasti was wounded by pellet fire and detained during the January protests at around 10 p.m. on January 8 near 30-Metri Street in Bagher Shahr, south of Tehran.
They said he was taken to hospital, where agents used blades and box cutters to remove skin and flesh bearing the tattoos before shooting him dead in what they described as an execution-style killing.
Nobakht Pardasti had previously been arrested during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, when he was 16.
‘Signs of torture’
His family said they received no information about his whereabouts after his detention.
When they eventually recovered his body from Kahrizak, they found extensive signs of torture, according to the sources, including severe bruising across his face and body and apparent fractures to his jaw, nose and shoulders.
The section of his arm bearing the tattoos of Reza Shah and an imperial crown had been cut away, with skin and flesh removed, the sources said.
They added that Nobakht Pardasti also had the word "Iran" tattooed on his throat and that pressure marks consistent with strangulation or restraint were visible around his neck.
Against nationalist symbols
Nobakht Pardasti's case is not the first in which Iranian authorities have been accused of targeting tattoos carrying nationalist or royalist symbolism.
One of the best-known cases was Majidreza Rahnavard, a protester executed in Mashhad on Dec. 12, 2022.
Rahnavard had a Lion and Sun emblem tattooed on his left forearm. Images published after his arrest showed the tattooed arm badly injured and immobilised in a cast and bandages.
A person close to Rahnavard told Iran International that agents repeatedly struck the arm with batons and stun guns because of the tattoo, eventually breaking it.
While the accounts cannot independently establish an official policy, the similarities between Nobakht Pardasti's case and earlier reports suggest security forces may have deliberately targeted tattoos depicting pre-revolutionary Iranian symbols as a form of punishment, humiliation and torture.
A US Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopter takes off at an undisclosed location in the Middle East in this image posted by US Central Command on X on July 25, 2026.
US President Donald Trump's most likely response to the conflict with Iran will be to intensify air strikes against a broader range of targets rather than withdraw or launch a ground invasion, former senior Pentagon official David Des Roches told Iran International TV.
Speaking on Iran International's Titre Aval (The Lead) program on Wednesday, Des Roches said the United States had limited military options after adopting an air campaign and argued Trump was unlikely to accept the political cost of ending the operation without achieving his objectives.
Three options
"The United States went in with an air power-only strategy," said Des Roches, now an associate professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Security Studies.
"That usually is flawed because once you do that, and if you look historically at how we've used an air power-led strategy in Korea, Vietnam, even World War II, but I think the illustrative point is Kosovo."
"If you don't achieve your strategic goals initially against a small target set, your options are to either introduce another element of warfare, and we don't have time to do that. To have a credible ground invasion force would take a year to build up, or you bomb more intensively."
"You widen the target list to include dual-use infrastructure, like bridges, the power grid, the national communications, television, and radio. This is what the US did against Serbia to stop the massacre of Muslims in Kosovo, or you leave."
"Those are really your three options, and I think that President Trump does not relish the prospect of leaving. That's too close to Joe Biden."
David Des Roches (left), associate professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Security Studies, speaks with Iran International TV presenter Niusha Saremi during the network's Titre Aval program on July 29, 2026.
More strikes likely
Des Roches said he believed the White House was most likely to increase military pressure rather than expand into ground operations.
"So I think, you know, he doesn't really have the ability to introduce another domain of warfare," he said.
"But really, I think his main option is to try to increase pain on the regime, and I think that that will mean an expansion into the targets towards dual-use targets and an expansion of intensive bombing to include not just areas adjacent to the Persian Gulf, but also areas inland, and especially the capital Tehran."
Asked about reports that Trump had been advised against escalating the conflict because of concerns about US weapons stockpiles, Des Roches said he believed political and economic factors were more important than military constraints.
"Some, but I think it's not really driven by military action or missile inventories," he said.
"I think it's political and economic. So we have midterm elections coming up. The Islamic Republic knows this. The leaders within the Islamic Republic know it, and they have calculated that if they can draw the war out, keep gasoline prices high, that President Trump will be in a worse position, or may even be impeached and removed."
"I think that they're kind of overplaying their hand."
Des Roches said recent Iranian actions might not reflect a unified government position.
"I'm not sure if the actions we're seeing reflect a unitary position of the Iranian government, but rather the actions of different factions of the Iranian government, probably the Revolutionary Guard, who are vying for supremacy and are trying to wreck any possibility for negotiations."
He argued that an end to the conflict would shift public attention inside Iran toward domestic issues.
"Obviously, if peace breaks out, then the focus within Iran goes from a national rally around the flag, oppose the Zionist entity and the Great Satan, towards looking at things like where has all the money gone over the year? Why is Tehran running out of water when the Revolutionary Guard controls the major construction companies in the country, and why are their children driving Lamborghinis in Spain and ours are having a hard time getting water in Tehran?"
"So it's a challenging period, but I think the hardliners, particularly in the Revolutionary Guard, are at risk of severely overplaying their hand."
Asked whether regime change had become part of US strategy, Des Roches said he believed Trump was pursuing a different approach from previous US interventions.
"My view is President Trump's theory of victory is not that the US will impose a new regime the way we did, for example, in Iraq, because that didn't work out well."
"I think he feels that economic pressure will lead the Iranians to have their own regime change."
Des Roches said Trump appeared to believe the anti-government protests in late 2019 had brought Iran close to internal political change.
"I think he feels that in December that was about to happen. It was only the violence of the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij, the massacres of between 1,300 and 4,000 Iranians - we don't know the exact number - that would have done it."
"I think that's why we're here now. It's not because Netanyahu led it. It's because, in the face of what he saw as a vindication of his policy, I think he believes that had he remained president after 2020, regime change would have been accomplished from within by about 2022."
An image released by citizen journalist Vahid Online purports to show missiles launched from central Iran toward Jordan early Wednesday, July 29, local time
Iran's ballistic missile strike on US forces in Jordan and its seizure of three oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz have dealt a fresh blow to efforts to preserve last month's Iran-US understanding.
After Iran fired several ballistic missiles toward a US military base in Jordan early Wednesday Tehran time, US President Donald Trump vowed to hit back hard.
Hours later, the naval arm of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced it had struck and detained three "offending" oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.
Several analysts said the combination of the Jordan strike and Tehran's actions in the Strait of Hormuz suggested Iran was no longer content to react to US pressure but was instead trying to seize the initiative and reshape the course of the confrontation.
Political analyst Ruhollah Rahimpour told Iran International the overnight missile launches and the Hormuz operation reflected a deliberate strategy of escalation.
"I think last night's missile operations in Jordan and the Strait of Hormuz are part of the Islamic Republic's strategy of escalating tensions and trying to accelerate a full-scale war with the United States and Israel, forcing them into conflict before they are fully prepared," he said.
‘Ready for broader conflict’
Despite the latest escalation, Trump insisted talks with Tehran would continue. A day earlier, he told Fox News negotiations were progressing well but warned that if no agreement was reached, Washington could strike Iran's underground facilities, bridges and power plants.
The strike also marked the first time Iran had targeted a US military installation without first coming under direct US attack, although Tehran has repeatedly argued that the continuing US maritime blockade itself constitutes an act of war.
Political analyst Shahir Shahid Saless argued Tehran appears to have concluded that maintaining the current status quo is no longer strategically sustainable while Iran remains under severe economic pressure and a maritime blockade.
According to Shahid Saless, Iranian leaders believe that if Washington's strategy is to prolong a "no war, no peace" situation indefinitely, Iran will gradually be worn down while the United States enjoys the benefits of an undeclared ceasefire.
"From Tehran's perspective, this situation must be disrupted, even if the cost is a broader conflict," he wrote.
He added that renewed attacks carry only a limited risk of triggering all-out war while serving a more important strategic objective: demonstrating to Washington that it cannot unilaterally determine when conflict begins or ends.
Hormuz complicates diplomacy
The military escalation has unfolded alongside increasingly difficult negotiations over navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.
Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said Tuesday that Oman had proposed dividing responsibility for a new shipping lane equally between the two countries, but insisted the arrangement failed to address Iran's concerns.
Former Israeli intelligence official Danny Citrinowicz argued the latest attacks reflected what he described as a post-Khamenei doctrinal shift, with Tehran now prepared to initiate offensive operations rather than relying primarily on deterrence.
"Today Iran is also prepared to initiate offensive moves and to rely deeply on its missile array, drones and regional proxies,” Citrinowicz wrote on X.
"The leadership in Tehran is prepared to take significant risks because it sees the current confrontation as a decisive battle over its regional status and its ability to shape the security reality in the Middle East."
Former Iranian diplomat Kourosh Ahmadi argued Oman has little room to accommodate Tehran because of its obligations under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and pressure from Washington and regional states.
"The problem now is that the Strait of Hormuz has become an issue of prestige for both Iran and the United States, making it unlikely that either side will easily accept the other's conditions."
Regional conflict widens
Saudi Arabia announced Tuesday that it had intercepted several drones launched from Iraq towards Saudi oil facilities, blaming Iran-backed groups.
In response, Saudi and US forces jointly bombed positions held by the Iran-aligned Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq for the first time, reportedly killing numerous fighters..
The US Central Command and Saudi officials described the operation as retaliation for more than 30 drone attacks over three days targeting US forces and Saudi energy infrastructure, allegedly carried out by Iraqi groups aligned with Iran under IRGC direction.
Iran's state broadcaster IRIB quoted an unnamed military official as denying any Iranian involvement in projectiles launched from other countries towards Saudi Arabia and calling claims linking Tehran to such attacks "a major miscalculation."
Commenting on the broader trajectory of the crisis, social media commentator Tohid Javadi warned that a much larger confrontation could lie ahead.
"A major—perhaps very major—conflict may be approaching. Under the current circumstances, neither the Islamic Republic can surrender nor does Washington appear willing to reach an understanding without extensive bombing and breaking a few of Iran's bones."
