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The roughly three-minute report focuses on Barron Trump and portrays attempts to identify ways of reaching him, using stylized graphics depicting surveillance, online activity and people in his surroundings.

The segment displays locations and online platforms purportedly associated with the effort and depicts attempts to map social connections around the president’s son and penetrate layers of Secret Service protection.

Iran International could not independently verify the operational claims made in the broadcast, which relies heavily on dramatized graphics and provides no evidence that any attempt to reach Barron Trump has succeeded.

But the decision to air such material on Iranian state television is significant in itself. Threats against Trump and other current and former US officials have featured for years in Iranian political rhetoric, state-linked media and rallies, alongside alleged assassination plots that US authorities have attributed to Tehran.

Similar videos have been broadcast before targeting Trump and his wife, Melania.

US prosecutors have previously accused members or associates of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards of plotting to kill former senior American officials, including former national security adviser John Bolton, in retaliation for the 2020 US killing of Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani.

Trump himself has also been the subject of alleged Iranian assassination plots. US prosecutors said in 2024 that Tehran had tasked an operative with developing a plan to kill him, while Iranian threats have contributed to heightened security around the president.

Such rhetoric has intensified dramatically since the war began on February 28, when US-Israeli strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other senior Iranian military and political figures.

Calls for revenge have since become a prominent feature of hardline messaging. Hundreds of thousands attending Khamenei’s funeral chanted against the United States and Israel, while some hardliners openly called for Trump’s assassination.

The latest broadcast marks a potentially significant escalation in that rhetoric by shifting the focus from Trump and US officials directly involved in policy toward Iran to the president’s family.

Toward the end of the segment, the narrator asserts “many would be willing” to take the $10 million reward connected to efforts targeting Barron Trump.

President Masoud Pezeshkian said Friday that it would be better to end the war now, while Iran remains in what he called a position of “power and dignity.” Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf was more blunt about the stakes of a deteriorating economy.

“No matter how much military power we have, we won't survive if people are hungry and we don't have financial turnover, economic growth and national production,” Ghalibaf said, according to Iran’s official news agency IRNA.

Raz Zimmt, director of the Iran and Shiite Axis Research Program at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, believes the statements reflect growing recognition in Tehran that the current situation is unsustainable.

But he says there is a potentially dangerous gap between recognizing that reality and deciding to compromise.

“If they have to make a choice between taking the risk for a new round of war with the United States or making concessions which they consider to be full capitulation to the United States... I think it’s very clear that they are not going to give up,” Zimmt told Iran International’s Eye for Iran podcast.

The dilemma comes as Washington prepares to intensify the pressure. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has promised the “toughest sanctions in history,” alongside a naval blockade already squeezing Iranian trade.

Iran entered the war with high inflation and a weakened currency. By July, annual inflation had reached 66 percent and food prices were 128 percent higher than a year earlier, according to official data.

‘Reasons to resist’

Zimmt says Iran’s ability to use Hormuz as leverage could also erode as the United States makes military gains in opening a corridor through the strait. But he sees no evidence yet of a consensus in Tehran for a change of course.

Iran’s calculation, he argues, is shaped by what happens after any agreement as much as by what happens now. Its leaders do not appear convinced that concessions would guarantee a permanent end to the war.

Instead, they may fear reopening Hormuz and surrendering leverage in exchange for a ceasefire that Washington could abandon after the US midterm elections in November.

Washington’s own messaging may be reinforcing that distrust.

Bessent said Thursday that the combination of the blockade and new sanctions could “collapse this regime,” even as he argued that successful economic pressure could reduce the likelihood of another large-scale military campaign.

From Tehran’s perspective, Zimmt argues, such statements can strengthen those who ask why Iran should make concessions to an administration that is simultaneously talking about its collapse.

The war itself may have given Tehran another reason to resist concessions.

“The conclusion in Iran is that the United States and Israel don’t have the capability to force Iran into major concessions,” Zimmt said.

‘Escalation before negotiations’

Hormuz provides Tehran with another source of leverage. After decades of threatening to close the strategic waterway, Iran has demonstrated its ability to severely disrupt it. Only seven commodity vessels passed through on Thursday, compared with more than 130 a day before the war, according to Kpler data.

Zimmt believes Iran’s leadership may therefore calculate that it can inflict enough economic pain on its Persian Gulf neighbors and the global economy to improve its position before negotiating.

He points to Iran’s behavior after Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal during his first presidency. Tehran initially responded to maximum pressure with what it called “strategic patience” but escalated as the economic damage mounted, including through attacks on Persian Gulf shipping and the downing of a US drone.

He sees the possibility of the same logic asserting itself again.

“If the Iranians reach the conclusion that they can’t resist or they can’t handle the growing economic pressure,” Zimmt said, “their decision would actually be to escalate things even further before returning to negotiations.”

The pressure may be working. The unanswered question is what Tehran chooses to do because of it.

You can watch Eye for Iran on YouTube or listen on any podcast platform.

Haruki Murakami’s latest novel has yet to receive an official English translation, but at least six Persian versions have already been published or are in preparation in Iran—with some translators relying on an unofficial English text and artificial intelligence.

The Tale of KAHO was published in Japan on July 3. Within weeks, three Persian translations had reached the Iranian market and at least three more were on the way.

Iran is not a party to the Berne Convention on international copyright, allowing publishers to release competing translations of foreign books without securing exclusive Persian-language rights.

But the latest race to translate Murakami has added a new element to Iran’s already unruly publishing market: AI.

Some translators have worked from an unofficial English version of the novel whose provenance is unclear and which, according to Barseghian, showed signs of having been generated using AI.

That raises the prospect of Persian editions based not directly on Murakami’s Japanese original or an authorized translation, but on an AI-generated intermediary text of uncertain origin.

‘Transparency and responsibilty'

The published versions are by Ali Mojtahedzadeh for Vazn-e Donya, Araz Barseghian for Milkan and Yasmin Davoudi for Chitra. Sahar Bastam is preparing a translation for Didavar, Kazem Kamrava for Sandoghcheh and Amir Behrouz Ghasemi for Kheyzaran.

Mojtahedzadeh told Iranian economic newspaper Donyaye Eqtesad that he obtained an unofficial English translation from a website specializing in such material and completed his Persian version in less than two weeks.

Barseghian said he bought the official Japanese Kindle edition and used an unofficial English version that appeared to have been generated with AI, comparing the texts with AI tools and checking issues including meaning, pronouns, point of view and paragraphing.

“The main issue for me is not whether artificial intelligence is used, but transparency and the translator’s responsibility,” Barseghian told Donyaye Eqtesad.

He said AI served as a tool for comparison and comprehension rather than as the final translator, with questionable passages checked against the Japanese original.

‘It’s only the beginning’

The speed and methods behind the competing editions have drawn criticism on Persian-language social media, particularly over copyright and the use of unauthorized source material.

“The translator proudly says I downloaded the book file from an illegal website and translated it. He doesn’t even seem to think there is anything wrong or ugly about it,” an X user named Milad wrote.

Others argued that AI was accelerating a problem that long predates the technology.

“The main problem is that none of them sees any need to buy the translation and publication rights from the original publisher,” X user Tiro Whakatika wrote. “Otherwise, the rights would normally go to one publisher and we wouldn’t see six simultaneous translations of one book.”

“Artificial intelligence has now reduced the cost and time of translation and turned this unregulated market into a race to publish bestselling books immediately,” the user added. “This is only the beginning, and it will probably get much worse.”

Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said Washington had demonstrated that adherence to the global nuclear non-proliferation system offered countries little protection from military attack.

“The whole world is saying, ‘Wait a minute. So the NPT has no effect?’” Rezaei said in an interview broadcast by Iranian state television.

“When America is waging such a war, people naturally ask: Why shouldn’t we pursue nuclear weapons ourselves?”

Rezaei, a former commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Guards, stopped short of saying Iran had decided to build a nuclear weapon. But his remarks were unusually explicit for one of the Islamic Republic’s most senior security officials.

Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful and has rejected the development and use of atomic weapons.

Rezaei argued that Iran had subjected itself to extensive international monitoring, joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and ultimately accepted the 2015 nuclear agreement, known as the JCPOA.

“The level of safeguards and inspections carried out in Iran over the past two decades has been unprecedented anywhere else in the world,” he said.

Yet Iran and its nuclear facilities were ultimately attacked, Rezaei said, arguing that this had changed the calculation around nuclear deterrence.

“Why shouldn’t we develop a nuclear weapon so that nobody can attack us?” he said, describing the question he said countries were now asking.

The comments come at an especially volatile moment in the US-Iran confrontation, with diplomacy following the war and subsequent ceasefire largely stalled and Washington shifting its focus towards intensified economic pressure.

Trump has announced what he described as a sweeping new economic campaign against Iran, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Washington would impose the “toughest sanctions in history.”

US officials have presented the pressure campaign as a way of forcing Tehran towards an agreement while reducing the need for another large-scale military offensive.

Iranian officials have rejected the threats, while maintaining that Tehran remains open to diplomacy.

The 60-day negotiating period associated with the US-Iran memorandum expired last week without a breakthrough, leaving the two sides at odds over sanctions, Iran’s nuclear program and the Strait of Hormuz.

Rezaei, who recently took over as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, has adopted an increasingly confrontational posture, saying Iran would move towards a “fully offensive” military strategy if diplomacy failed.

In the TV interview, he went further, explicitly contrasting the cost of a nuclear deterrent with conventional military power.

“If a country possesses a nuclear weapon, it can be cheaper and more effective than having hundreds of F-35s and spending enormous amounts of money on other military capabilities,” he said.

Rezaei blamed Trump for undermining the wider non-proliferation system.

“Trump has made a mistake by attacking Iran … Many countries are now looking for ways to reconsider the international nuclear order,” he said. “Wasn’t that foolish?”

The US dollar reached 2 million rials on Iran's open market, crossing a threshold it had approached rapidly in recent days.

“We saw revolution, war, sanctions, rising prices and hardship,” one person told Iran International. “Now that we are over 50, we worry about our children, their jobs, their future, education, university and marriage costs. Pressure from outside, pressure from inside. How much can one endure?”

The dollar stood at around 1.865 million rials at the beginning of last week, putting its rise at more than 7% in less than a week. It has more than doubled from around 958,000 rials during the same period last year.

The British pound climbed above 2.72 million rials, while the euro approached 2.34 million rials. Rates can vary between sources because open-market trading is informal and fragmented.

Iranians describe pressure from all sides

The currency's latest fall comes days after US President Donald Trump announced what he called the “most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country,” warning of unprecedented economic isolation and consequences for countries whose financial institutions, businesses or government entities continue providing Tehran with an economic lifeline.

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  Can Iran's fragile economy survive Trump's 'Economic D-Day'?

“Oil smuggling, swap lines, cash transfers, exchange houses, ship registries, front companies – it all needs to stop NOW,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, calling on US allies to join the campaign.

Messages sent to Iran International in response to a question about US economic pressure largely focused on the burden borne by ordinary people rather than its effect on the Islamic Republic.

“Iran has been under sanctions for nearly 50 years and the Islamic Republic is still governing,” one person said. “These measures do not work. They only leave the Iranian people poorer and hungrier, without medicine, healthcare or housing.”

Others questioned whether greater economic pressure could force authorities to change course.

“I don't think the government will come under pressure because it covers its budget deficit from people's pockets,” another respondent said. “The tip of the sanctions spear is aimed directly at the people; healthcare, nutrition, education and sports are all at risk.”

Rial's decline compounds daily hardship

Market participants point to high inflation, growing demand for foreign currency, declining foreign-exchange revenues and concern over sanctions as factors driving demand for dollars.

Political uncertainty, disruption to regional oil exports and the deadlock between the Islamic Republic and the United States have added to inflation expectations.

The currency slide comes alongside electricity and water shortages that have disrupted production and daily life. Further rial depreciation can raise the cost of imported raw materials and essential goods, adding to pressure on household budgets.

• 

  Iran leaders sound economic alarms under Trump’s Economic D-Day

Some Iranians who contacted Iran International argued that economic pressure would be more effective if directed at assets held abroad by officials and their relatives.

“When they can freeze the foreign accounts of officials and their children, then you can call it pressure on the government,” one respondent said. “Seize their assets.”