Iran-linked attacks on US water systems aimed to project reach and intimidate

President Donald Trump's decision to call off a planned large-scale military strike against Iran has once more exposed a key political faultline in Tehran between advocates of diplomacy and those urging the country to prepare for another war.

President Masoud Pezeshkian moved quickly to defend renewed engagement with Washington, portraying the memorandum of understanding (MoU) not as his own initiative but as the collective decision of Iran's security establishment.

Calling it "the product of the collective wisdom of the members of the Supreme National Security Council," he described the agreement as "the cornerstone of Iran's future foreign relations."

The backlash was immediate. The leadership board of the Assembly of Experts dismissed hopes of an agreement with Washington as futile and urged authorities to take legal action against what it called "voices of surrender."

Although the statement did not mention the government by name, it was widely interpreted as an indirect rebuke of Pezeshkian's diplomatic approach.

Hardline lawmaker Mahmoud Nabavian echoed the criticism, arguing that renewed calls for negotiations amounted to rescuing a weakened enemy.

"After the heavy blows inflicted by the Resistance Front, higher energy prices, dwindling strategic reserves and mounting domestic political pressure in the United States, unfortunately some people in Iran are once again seeking negotiations for various reasons, including rescuing the enemy," he wrote.

"They should know that such negotiations will never be accepted by the loyal and resilient people of Iran."

Uncertainty persists

Trump announced on Sunday that Washington was now pursuing two parallel agreements with Tehran: one to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and another addressing Iran's nuclear program. He said direct negotiations would begin on Monday.

That timetable remains uncertain. Pakistani officials say no date or venue has yet been finalized, with Islamabad and Doha among the leading candidates to host the talks.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar has invited Araghchi to visit Islamabad "at the earliest opportunity," while diplomatic sources told Al Hadath television that Pakistan is preparing formal invitations for both Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf as mediation efforts continue.

Araghchi, meanwhile, spent Monday speaking with regional officials, including Pakistan's army chief, Asim Munir, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi and Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein.

Tehran says negotiations with Oman over arrangements in the Strait of Hormuz are approaching their final stage.

Why diplomacy returned

The renewed diplomatic push also reflects the limits of Washington's military options, analysts say.

Farzin Nadimi, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute, told Iran International that Trump faces a strategic dilemma because the available military options either risk triggering a much broader regional conflict or are unlikely to produce decisive results.

A campaign capable of fundamentally weakening the Islamic Republic would require a much larger operation, potentially including ground forces—an option Trump has consistently sought to avoid, Nadimi said.

Historian Shahram Kholdi said Trump's decision reflected not only Iranian threats against regional infrastructure but also Gulf Arab security concerns, consultations led by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and progress in Qatari mediation efforts.

Together, the assessments suggest that both Washington and Tehran have entered another round of diplomacy not because either side believes the underlying conflict has been resolved, but because the alternatives remain costly.

Public skepticism

For many Iranians, Trump's decision has reduced the immediate risk of war without easing the uncertainty that has dominated daily life for months.

Social media users described a growing sense of limbo as repeated cycles of military threats and diplomatic reversals continued to disrupt daily life and fuel inflation.

One user wrote that the United States had returned to "sanctions, maritime pressure and Trump's empty rhetoric," leaving ordinary Iranians trapped in uncertainty.

Another complained that the recurring cycle of "war, negotiations, war, negotiations" was "destroying people's lives," arguing that prices rise after every military escalation but never fall when tensions ease.

Another user criticized Trump's inconsistent approach, writing that he "neither fights decisively nor truly makes peace," arguing that the current state of "neither war nor peace" hurts ordinary Iranians more than anyone else.

Major state news agencies reported that talks had resumed, while Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi insisted he was traveling to Iraq on a private religious visit and Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei maintained that discussions in Muscat were limited to consultations between Iran and Oman.

Baghaei reiterated that Tehran was not engaged in negotiations with the United States.

Washington has repeatedly acknowledged indirect negotiations that Iranian officials initially denied, only for Tehran to later acknowledge that talks had indeed been taking place through intermediaries. The same pattern now appears to be repeating.

That impression was reinforced over the weekend as Pakistani and Qatari mediators discussed reviving the June memorandum of understanding.

President Massoud Pezeshkian called for the memorandum, which he signed alongside Trump, to once again serve as the foundation of a renewed agreement between Tehran and Washington.

Hormuz returns to the table

The central issue remains the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

After Iran rejected an earlier Omani proposal governing maritime traffic through the waterway, ISNA reported on Monday that Iranian negotiators had submitted a revised technical framework proposing joint Iranian-Omani inspection procedures for commercial vessels.

According to the proposal, military escorts and unflagged vessels would remain barred from designated transit routes under Iranian sovereignty.

Semi-official Iranian media also reported that Tehran is seeking explicit guarantees over banking channels for energy exports before agreeing to clear the growing backlog of commercial tankers anchored off the Gulf of Oman.

If accurate, the reports suggest the negotiations have already moved beyond general political contacts into detailed discussions over implementation.

Divisions inside Tehran

The resumption of diplomacy has again exposed divisions within Iran's political establishment.

IRNA and Mehr portrayed Araghchi as leading an intensive regional diplomatic effort to consolidate support for Tehran's position on Hormuz, even as his public schedule raised questions about his direct role in the Muscat talks.

Critics argue that Araghchi's previous diplomatic initiatives have repeatedly coincided with renewed IRGC attacks on commercial shipping, raising questions over how much authority civilian diplomats exercise over military decisions.

The Revolutionary Guards have no formal diplomatic channel of their own. While they can derail negotiations through military action, they have no direct means of conveying their demands to mediators or Washington.

Whether that institutional divide explains Araghchi's apparent distance from the Muscat talks is a question few officials in Tehran are prepared to address publicly.

Hardline daily Kayhan urged officials not to "confirm or validate Washington's narrative" that negotiations were progressing.

Editor Hossein Shariatmadari described Trump's shift from military threats to diplomacy as a psychological operation designed to manipulate oil markets and extract unilateral concessions from Iran.

He also criticized Pezeshkian's description of the memorandum as the cornerstone of future diplomacy, warning that Iranian negotiators must not compromise what he called the country's maritime sovereignty under the guise of technical inspection arrangements.

Writing in the moderate daily Shargh, commentator Ahmad Zeidabadi offered the opposite conclusion.

He argued that sections of Iran's political establishment were living in a "parallel universe" that ignored both economic deterioration and growing public frustration.

Reviving the Muscat process and reaching a practical navigation framework, he argued, offered Iran its best chance of stabilizing the economy and preventing further social deterioration.

The chaotic gathering at the luxury shopping complex, where teenagers and young adults—predominantly from Generation Z and Generation Alpha—assembled to meet content creator Nima Tekedo, triggered widespread debate across Iranian media and academic circles.

Although officials were forced to confront Generation Z during the nationwide protests of 2022, several sociologists argue that Generation Alpha remains almost entirely outside the state's field of vision.

Moderate daily Shargh and centrist newspaper Sazandegi both argued that the surprise surrounding the Iran Mall incident reflected a deeper failure to understand younger Iranians.

They warned that repeatedly overlooking new generations had already left authorities unprepared for successive waves of unrest since 2017 and cautioned that the same blind spot persists today.

The gathering had been publicly announced on YouTube, Telegram and Instagram, yet authorities appeared unaware that thousands would attend.

A parallel universe

Sociologist Nima Shojaei told Shargh that over the past two decades traditional forms of political participation, including elections, campaigns and party politics, had steadily lost their appeal among young Iranians, while their social lives increasingly unfolded beyond the state's view.

He argued that reference groups had shifted dramatically, leaving the government unable to understand the evolving identities of younger generations.

Shojaei also pointed to the contradictions of a state that continues to portray all Iranian youth through an ideological lens—via state media, school textbooks and Friday prayer sermons—as devout Muslims committed to official values.

Believing its own narrative, he argued, the state gradually lost sight of the society it sought to govern.

The Iran Mall gathering, Shojaei said, was neither a political protest nor an act of resistance. Rather, it reflected a generation retreating into everyday life after losing faith in conventional politics.

‘Gen Z charting its course’

Another sociologist, Foad Habibi, criticized commentators who responded by blaming or mocking teenagers instead of examining broader social change.

"Attacking powerless youth is the cheapest form of analysis because it carries no personal cost, whereas criticizing state power does," he said.

Habibi agreed that the problem lay not with young people themselves.

"Generation Z has not erred; it has simply charted its own course and moved forward. The failure lies with policymakers and social scientists," he said.

Sazandegi argued that the incident highlighted a broader shift in cultural authority from formal institutions to decentralized online networks.

The paper pointed to similar episodes that had repeatedly caught authorities off guard, including a large gathering in Tehran Pars in 2024 to see hip-hop artist GodPouri.

Unlike traditional mobilization built around parties or hierarchical organizations, the newspaper argued, today's youth assemble rapidly through shared online interests and peer-to-peer communication.

What appears to older generations as a spontaneous crowd is, in reality, a highly networked social world capable of mobilizing thousands within hours.

For Sazandegi, the Iran Mall gathering was therefore less about a celebrity appearance than a glimpse of a generation that no longer looks to political parties, religious institutions or state media for authority, but chooses its own communities, its own heroes and increasingly, its own way of life.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Iran had considered retaliating by striking a Ukrainian port before diplomatic efforts helped defuse the crisis, reinforcing the impression that, despite its rhetoric, Tehran is seeking to avoid opening another front.

Establishment figures have largely portrayed the attack as part of a broader US and Israeli effort to widen the conflict, warning Tehran against responding in a way that would play into that strategy.

Mohsen Sani, a member of parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, argued that the attack on the Iranian vessel and recent strikes against Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces should be viewed within the same strategic framework.

"The United States is trying to pursue its objectives through proxy actors such as Ukraine and Saudi Arabia," he told the conservative news website Tabnak.

‘International dimension’

Former Iranian ambassador to Kuwait Mohammad Irani likewise accused Israel of encouraging Kyiv to open a new front against Tehran.

"The coming together of Netanyahu and Zelensky, in my view, represents the formation of a new front of confrontation or preparations for a new regional order," he told ILNA.

Irani nevertheless argued that Tehran should avoid creating conditions that would draw additional countries into the conflict.

"Because of pressure from Trump, Israel's hands are temporarily tied. They therefore want to bring another party into the confrontation so that the conflict expands beyond the region and acquires an international dimension," he said.

"If an immediate response is considered, every possible consequence and every option that could be used against us must also be taken into account so that the opposing side does not achieve greater cohesion."

A Western trap

Nour News, a media outlet closely aligned with Iran's Supreme National Security Council, argued that Ukraine's actions formed part of a coordinated US strategy stretching "from Yemen to the Caspian Sea," designed to increase pressure on Iran while allowing Israel time to recover militarily and politically.

In a separate editorial, the outlet argued Kyiv's subsequent diplomatic outreach—including Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha's assurances to Abbas Araghchi that Ukraine sought no escalation—reflected concern over Iran's deterrence capabilities rather than a genuine attempt at reconciliation.

The conservative daily Resalat likewise argued Washington was attempting to use Ukraine as another proxy against Iran while warning that escalation in the Caspian Sea could ultimately draw Russia more directly into the conflict.

The moderate conservative newspaper Jomhouri-ye Eslami similarly urged Tehran not to fall into what it described as a Western trap, arguing that reducing tensions with Kyiv would better serve Iran's interests than opening another front.

Little appetite for escalation

Javid Ghorbanoghli, Iran's former ambassador to South Africa, said another Ukrainian attack was unlikely, arguing that Tehran had already signalled it would respond to any repeat incident.

"It is highly unlikely that Tehran seeks to expand the war," he said. "Iran prefers not to allow its already tense relations with European countries to deteriorate even further."

He added that Iran's political establishment was trying to avoid opening new fronts that could generate additional political and economic pressure.

Russia analyst Rouhollah Modabber argued the attack was intended to disrupt the International North-South Transport Corridor and undermine Iran's economic cooperation in the Caspian region.

He also claimed President Volodymyr Zelensky publicly accepted responsibility in an effort to secure additional US military and financial support.

The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) has refused to comply with a ruling by the IRIB Supervisory Board ordering it to stop censoring President Massoud Pezeshkian, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, Parliament Speaker and chief nuclear negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

The dispute has drawn criticism from government officials and reformist and moderate newspapers while prompting little public sympathy.

Instead, many Iranians mocked the complaints, saying state television had long ignored ordinary people and was now simply extending the same treatment to members of the political establishment.

Before the Supervisory Board issued its ruling, government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said the public expected the national broadcaster to uphold professional ethics, democratic principles and the national interest.

"All tastes and viewpoints must be reflected in the national broadcaster's narrative," she said.

Little public sympathy

On social media, many users joked that it was refreshing to see senior officials finally experiencing the neglect ordinary citizens had long endured from state television.

A Tehran-based journalist summed up the mood more bluntly, saying most people did not care whether politicians appeared on television; they wanted to see themselves and their own problems reflected instead.

For years, many Iranians have complained that IRIB neither reflects their lives nor represents their concerns.

Critics say television dramas rarely portray people like themselves, while supposedly spontaneous interviews on political and social issues feature only carefully selected voices. Others note that cooking programmes routinely feature meals beyond the reach of many families.

Meanwhile, IRIB responded to Araghchi's complaint with a sarcastic remark, saying it was "impossible to give him 24/7 coverage."

A watchdog without teeth

Earlier this week, the IRIB Supervisory Board formally warned the broadcaster over its repeated censorship of senior officials.

Board secretary Mohammad Mirzaei said "necessary cautions were issued" and that IRIB had pledged to implement reforms and prevent similar incidents from recurring. Deputy political director Hassan Abedini also publicly promised fairer coverage of officials' remarks and activities.

Yet the broadcaster showed no sign of changing course, declining even to report the Supervisory Board's meeting—a story carried by nearly every major Iranian news agency.

Established under Article 175 of Iran's Constitution, the Supervisory Board brings together representatives of the executive, parliament and judiciary to oversee IRIB's editorial conduct.

It can issue warnings, but ultimate authority over the broadcaster, including appointing its chief, rests with the Supreme Leader.

Current IRIB chief Payman Jebelli and his management team have long faced criticism over partisan editorial policies, discrimination and censorship directed at both ordinary citizens and politicians outside the ultraconservative camp.

Leadership under scrutiny

Jebelli's five-year term expires in less than a month, raising questions over whether Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei will retain the current management or appoint a new leadership team.

The latest dispute comes amid an unusually coordinated campaign by media close to the Pezeshkian administration.

Last week, the reformist dailies Etemad and Shargh, together with the government's own newspaper Iran, accused IRIB of systematically censoring senior officials and promoting voices at odds with government policy.

Iran newspaper also alleged that the broadcaster censored remarks by Judiciary Chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei praising Pezeshkian.

The episode has exposed more than a dispute over television coverage. It has highlighted the growing gap between Iran's formal institutions and the centres of authority that increasingly operate beyond their reach.