Trump says he has no timetable for Iran war or talks - Al Jazeera

For nearly half a century the Islamic Republic has reproduced the image of its leaders everywhere: on the walls of schools and government offices, in theatres, cinemas and concert halls, behind officials at podiums, on television screens. Visibility was not vanity. In a system built on the authority of one man, the leader had to be seen for the state to demonstrate that it existed.

Before the war with the United States and Israel, that was the rule. Now the same system publishes messages from its new leader without being able, or perhaps without wanting, to show him.

In the first weeks after his appointment by the Assembly of Experts, the clerical body that selects Iran's supreme leader, intelligence services and media inside and outside the country waited for one thing: his Nowruz address. The Persian new year, which falls around March 20, brings the leader's most closely watched speech of the year, and a video would have answered the essential questions at once. He would have been demonstrably alive, apparently well, and visibly in charge.

No video came. The absence stopped looking like a security precaution and started looking like a condition.

The record since has only deepened the ambiguity. There is no photograph, no audio, no film.

Written statements have appeared, attributed to his office rather than demonstrably from his hand. The absence of anything verifiable, no image, no voice, no signature, has weakened the official account of his health and strengthened the theory that he was gravely wounded.

• 

  Iran leader’s absence gives war camp room to shape policy

The effect on the state has been visible. Officials who held together in the first days of the war have since split over what comes next, and the fault line runs through the war-or-negotiation question: the state broadcaster has censored the government's own negotiators, while hardline outlets have claimed the leader opposed the process that produced the Islamabad agreement. Both camps invoke him. Neither can produce him.

So the question is whether any of this can work in the system's favor.

Absence as possibility

Consider what visibility would cost. If Mojtaba Khamenei appears and the marks of injury or incapacity are apparent, the Islamic Republic must concede that its leader is diminished. If his death is confirmed, the succession fight begins. If he turns out to be healthy and active, he must accept responsibility for the decisions of the past six months, including a war.

Absence suspends all three. He can be alive, wounded, incapacitated or dead, and the machinery of the state can go on issuing orders in his name.

Uncertainty, which ought to be the government's problem, becomes its instrument.

While the leader's status remains unresolved, no faction can settle the succession, and no official has the standing either to accept defeat or to wind the system up. Commanders and institutions can continue to say they take their orders from the center, a center that may exist but cannot be seen.

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That has a second edge, and it cuts the other way. The same fog that prevents anyone from declaring the system finished also prevents anyone from commanding it. An absent leader cannot arbitrate between the men arguing over war and diplomacy, which is very likely why they began arguing in the first place. Ambiguity buys the system time by denying it direction.

Still, on this reading, even the collapse of the state's outer structure would not necessarily be the end. A network of the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij, the intelligence services, financial channels and allied forces across the region could carry on in the name of an absent leader. What would survive, in that case, would no longer be a government. It would be an underground organization.

From state to network

The comparison that follows is about mechanics, not equivalence. The question is narrow: how does a network continue after it loses its territory or its leader disappears? On that specific question, two cases are instructive, and neither is offered as a moral parallel to a state that has governed 90 million people for nearly five decades.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the Islamic State's caliphate from a mosque in Mosul in July 2014 and did not appear on camera again for almost five years, though audio messages attributed to him continued to circulate. In that period the group lost nearly all its territory and became a network of clandestine cells. After he was killed in 2019, a US Defense Department inspector general assessment found his death had produced no immediate decisive effect on the group's operations.

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Osama bin Laden spent almost a decade in hiding while releasing video and audio messages. His evasion of capture became, for his followers, evidence of invulnerability. Killing him destroyed that impression but did not destroy a network that had already devolved into regional branches.

The Islamic Republic is far better equipped for that kind of afterlife than either. It has governed for close to half a century. It has trained personnel, security intelligence, economic resources, religious institutions and cross-border networks. Driven underground, it would not be starting from nothing.

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A familiar pattern of absence

Absence also carries a particular charge in Shia religious culture, and this is where the Islamic Republic has a vocabulary ready to hand.

Twelver Shia Muslims believe the twelfth imam, who vanished in the ninth century, is alive but hidden and will one day return. During the period known as the Lesser Occultation, roughly 874 to 941, his instructions are said to have reached his followers through four successive deputies who spoke on his behalf. The Greater Occultation, in which he remains hidden and has no named deputy, has continued ever since.

This is not a claim about religious rank. Mojtaba Khamenei holds no such standing for Shia believers, and the comparison is not about status. It is about the function of absence: a person who cannot be seen can still be treated as present. Intermediaries speak in his name, and waiting takes the place of proof.

The Islamic Republic itself was built on a theology of absence. Its constitution justifies the rule of a jurist explicitly as an arrangement for the era of the hidden imam, which means the state has spent 47 years governing on behalf of a leader nobody can see. Its propaganda apparatus therefore has both the language and the precedent to convert the absence of Mojtaba Khamenei into a kind of hidden presence.

That possibility is not indefinite. The longer the absence lasts, the harder it becomes to distinguish a genuine order from a manufactured one, the sharper the competition among those claiming to speak for the leader, and the more insistent the question: who is actually giving the orders in Tehran?

Mojtaba Khamenei's absence will probably not save the Islamic Republic from military defeat, economic collapse or social unrest. It may, however, allow it to go on existing after such a collapse.

As long as the fate of the absent leader remains unclear, the system's followers can treat the fall as temporary, the defeat as unfinished and the return as possible. Because sometimes governments continue not because they are still standing, but because their death has not yet been proven.

The reserves, intended to cushion severe shortages and emergencies, have been tapped at a pace in recent weeks that has prompted warnings from experts within the state about the consequences of continuing, the sources said.

Remaining fuel stocks could be depleted within several weeks if withdrawals continue at the current rate, limiting the government's ability to offset disruptions to domestic production or imports and prevent widespread supply stoppages, according to the sources.

The growing reliance on strategic stocks has also opened a dispute between the government and the Revolutionary Guards over how long withdrawals should continue, they said.

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  Iran keeps finding gas. Getting it out is the problem

Revolutionary Guards officials oppose unrestricted use of the reserves, while government officials want to keep drawing on them to keep filling stations operating and contain public concern over shortages and higher prices, the sources added.

Daily shortfall strains supplies

Iran produces about 120 million liters of gasoline a day but consumes around 135 million liters, leaving a daily deficit of about 15 million liters.

Ali-Akbar Saghab Esfahani, head of Iran's Energy Optimization and Strategic Management Organization, put the daily gasoline shortfall at 14 million to 15 million liters on August 15.

Before the shortage intensified, imports covered about half the gap, much of it through fuel supplies from Russia, the sources said.

A US maritime blockade, Ukrainian strikes on Russian refining infrastructure and the closure of the Caspian Sea supply route have sharply restricted Iran's ability to maintain those imports, according to the sources.

Iranian diplomatic efforts to secure alternative fuel supplies from allies and neighboring countries have yet to produce an agreement.

Britain and Qatar have meanwhile backed a new US economic campaign against the Islamic Republic, as Washington seeks to restrict its financial, shipping and energy trade routes.

Fuel moved to reopen Tehran stations

Gasoline shortages have reached Tehran, forcing some filling stations to close, according to information obtained by Iran International.

Authorities have ordered fuel transferred from neighboring provinces to reopen some stations in the capital, but dozens of others remain at risk of closure, the sources said.

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  Iran weighs gasoline rationing as fuel deficit widens

Videos and messages sent by citizens have also documented long lines, station closures and difficulties obtaining gasoline in Tehran, Alborz, South Khorasan and Razavi Khorasan provinces.

The Tehran regional manager of the National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company attributed temporary closures at some stations to a sudden rise in demand and congestion along fuel transportation routes.

Reports from citizens suggest the disruption is also affecting transportation costs. Several people told Iran International that fares charged by ride-hailing services Snapp and Tapsi had risen sharply as fewer drivers accepted trips.

“Gas stations are crowded, GPS doesn't work and you can't work for Snapp. Fares have gone up, but there are no drivers to accept the trip. We're left without money and without gasoline,” a Tehran resident told Iran International.

Another citizen said the cost of a regular Snapp journey had risen from 1,000,000 rials last month to 3,200,000 rials, while a resident of Shiraz described steep increases in ride-hailing fares despite no gasoline shortage there.

A Snapp driver said fuel consumption from running air conditioning for passengers required him to refill about every two days, but his quota had been exhausted and purchases outside the quota were limited to 25 liters.

Other messages sent to Iran International accused authorities of deliberately restricting supplies before a possible price increase.

“When they want to raise the price of cooking oil, they say there isn't any. When they want to raise the price of rice, they say there isn't any. But after the price goes up, everything is available,” a resident of Mashhad said. “Now it's gasoline's turn.”

The Mashhad resident said filling stations were not receiving enough gasoline but predicted supplies would become readily available if authorities raised prices.

Another citizen questioned why a gasoline deficit of 10% to 20% was causing such widespread disruption and accused authorities of deliberately making fuel scarce to make consumers more willing to accept higher prices.

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“Many gas stations are either closed or have no gasoline to distribute,” a Tehran resident said, also accusing the government of diverting fuel for foreign currency earnings.

Another message accused authorities of using the shortage as justification for a gasoline price increase and manipulating distribution to create congestion at filling stations and reduce resistance to higher prices.

“Half of Pakdasht's gas stations have no gasoline and the rest are extremely crowded,” a resident said. “They are trying to force people to accept higher gasoline prices.”

Government weighs three options

The government is considering three responses to the shortage: limiting gasoline supply to domestic production levels, reducing subsidized quotas and selling additional consumption at the unrestricted price, or shifting fuel quotas from vehicles to individuals.

Concern that higher gasoline prices could trigger protests has encouraged the government to use strategic reserves to buy time, the sources said.

Fuel price increases have been politically sensitive in Iran. A sudden rise in gasoline prices in November 2019 triggered nationwide protests followed by a deadly state crackdown.

The attempt to delay harder choices by drawing on emergency stocks is now creating another problem, according to Iran International's sources: the buffer intended to protect Iran during severe supply disruptions may itself be only weeks away from exhaustion.

Iran allegedly plotted to assassinate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s eldest son, Yair, while he was living in South Florida, Newsmax reported on Wednesday, citing a US law enforcement source familiar with the matter.

Israeli intelligence learned of the alleged plot in December and alerted US authorities, according to the source. Iranian operatives were believed to be in the Miami area and to have conducted surveillance of Yair Netanyahu’s home and movements.

The 35-year-old, who lived in Hallandale Beach and was accompanied by an Israeli security detail, was reportedly instructed to leave immediately. He departed without collecting his belongings and returned to Israel, where he now lives.

Israel’s Channel 12 reported that some news organizations had known about the alleged plot for months but were prevented from publishing details by Israeli military censorship.

Benjamin Netanyahu first disclosed the alleged assassination attempt during an interview with Israel’s Channel 14 on Monday but did not identify which of his two sons had been targeted.

“There is something here that is unbelievable. Iran targeted one of my sons. Iran tried to murder him, tried to murder one of my sons,” Netanyahu said while defending government-funded security for his family.

In July, Israel extended Shin Bet protection for Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, and his sons, Yair and Avner. The two sons are expected to retain protection for five years after Netanyahu leaves office, Newsmax reported.

The alleged plot emerged amid longstanding US accusations that Iran has pursued assassination operations abroad in retaliation for the US killing of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in January 2020.

US prosecutors charged an alleged Iranian asset, Farhad Shakeri, in 2024 over what they described as an IRGC-directed plan to assassinate Donald Trump.

In 2022, the Justice Department charged IRGC member Shahram Poursafi with offering $300,000 to arrange the killing of former US national security adviser John Bolton.

Iranian state television also recently broadcast a video threatening Trump’s son Barron and claiming that his movements and security arrangements had been monitored.

The US Secret Service said it was aware of the broadcast and investigated threats against those under its protection.

Lindsay and Craig Foreman ended prolonged hunger strikes but have lost significant weight and are trying to regain their strength, the family said in a statement.

"The Embassy is back in Iran. So where is the action? Where is the urgency?" said Joe Bennett, Lindsay Foreman's son and the family's spokesperson.

First call in three months

Bennett said he had spoken properly with his mother for the first time in three months in a 12-minute call, their first official conversation since the couple ended their hunger strikes.

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"After three months, just hearing Mum's voice properly again was an enormous relief," Bennett said. "They have both lost a lot of weight and they know that rebuilding their health isn't going to happen overnight."

He said his mother had described some of the lowest points of the hunger strikes but sounded mentally strong and remained convinced that the detention was temporary.

The family said the couple had not received proper medical examinations after the hunger strikes and called on British officials to visit them in person.

"They have been seen by the Embassy only once this year. After everything they have been through, that is not good enough," Bennett said.

Family seeks meeting with foreign secretary

The family also called for a meeting with British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband and urged the government to use diplomatic and legal channels to secure the couple's release.

"We have had a phone call. That matters enormously to us. But a phone call is not enough," Bennett said.

• 

  British couple sentenced to 10 years in Iran for espionage, family says

The Foremans, both in their 50s, were arrested in January last year while traveling through Iran by motorcycle on a journey from Europe to Australia. They deny espionage charges for which they were each sentenced to 10 years in prison in February.

Craig Foreman was given an additional two-year sentence in July after Iranian authorities accused him of speaking to the media from prison, according to his family.

UN special rapporteurs have called for the couple's release, saying their detention and trial raised concerns over basic fair-trial guarantees. Britain has said it is working to secure their release and that their welfare remains a priority.

The name is not decoration. "In the Second World War, D-Day marked the historic beginning of a campaign with our allies to target and drive the enemy from its positions, including those in third countries," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Monday, announcing Operation Economic Outcast. "Today, in that same spirit, we are launching an economic onslaught against Iran's financial connections around the globe."

Those four words, including those in third countries, are the operation. The first wave named nearly 60 entities, individuals and vessels tied to oil trading and transport, military procurement, financial networks and cyber operations. More consequentially, it expanded the sectors in which any foreign company can now be sanctioned: digital assets, technology, gold, aviation and shipping.

Asked whether that includes China, which buys the overwhelming majority of Iran's exported oil, Bessent gave a nine-word answer: "No one is above the reach of US sanctions." Then he widened it. "It is now time for world leaders to make a decision between America and Iran."

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Beijing answered on Tuesday. China's cooperation with Iran is conducted within the framework of international law and should not be interfered with or disrupted, foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said, adding that China is monitoring developments closely and will take all necessary measures to safeguard its rights and interests.

What is actually new

Iran has been under American sanctions for 47 years, so the reasonable question is what any of this adds.

The answer is enforcement against everyone else. Washington froze Iranian assets during the 1979 hostage crisis, designated Iran a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984, and banned essentially all trade and investment under Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s.

The 2010 to 2012 escalation went further, pushing Iranian banks out of the international messaging system that moves money between institutions and pressing Iran's oil customers to cut purchases. The 2015 nuclear deal suspended much of it; Donald Trump's withdrawal in 2018 restored it under the label of maximum pressure.

Through all of that, one restraint held. Successive administrations, including Trump's first, largely declined to sanction the Chinese banks and refineries that keep Iranian oil revenue moving, wary of the retaliation that would follow.

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Bessent's explanation for abandoning that restraint is the clearest statement of the strategy: "For decades, this regime has drawn strength from a calculus that regards Iranian retaliation as certain and American enforcement as negotiable. That era is over."

How the mechanism works

The Office of Foreign Assets Control issued five sectoral determinations under Executive Order 13902, covering digital assets, technology, gold, aviation and shipping. They sit alongside existing determinations on Iran's financial, petroleum and petrochemical sectors.

This does not automatically sanction every foreign company active in those sectors. It gives Washington the authority to designate people and firms that operate in them, or that provide supporting services.

The distinction that matters is between primary and secondary sanctions. Primary sanctions bar Iran-related transactions involving US persons or other American jurisdictional links. Secondary sanctions reach non-US parties for business conducted entirely elsewhere, using access to the American financial system as leverage. A company in Dubai or Mumbai can be cut off from the dollar for a deal that never touched the United States.

Operation Economic Outcast pairs that authority with government-to-government pressure. Treasury said US teams are approaching foreign counterparts with defined timelines to shut down Iran-related activity that Washington has identified. It has not disclosed those deadlines.

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Each sector was chosen for a documented evasion route. Treasury says Iranian authorities increasingly use cryptocurrencies to move money, including for the Revolutionary Guards. The technology determination targets access to advanced and dual-use equipment.

Gold, Treasury says, has become a hedge against inflation and a prop for the rial. Aviation is named because Iranian carriers have moved weapons, sensitive technology, gold and cash. Shipping potentially casts the widest net of all, exposing anyone providing vessel management, brokering or refueling to Iranian maritime networks.

Where Washington struck first

Monday's designations trace the plumbing rather than the politics, and they map onto four functions.

Procurement. A Hong Kong-based network centered on Sweet Ocean Industrial Limited was accused of buying laser optics for Iran's Malek Ashtar University of Technology, an accelerometer with missile and aircraft applications, actuators and US-origin laboratory equipment for Iranian defense institutions. Other Hong Kong companies were named over transfers connected to that network and to Iranian exchange houses, and Chinese and Hong Kong logistics firms over shipments to Iran's Organization of Defensive Research and Innovation, which reports to the defense ministry.

Oil shipping. Syrian national Mohammad Ahmed Suhil Fattouh, based in the Emirates, was sanctioned for brokering vessels for the National Iranian Oil Company and military-linked entities, along with his Dubai company Amdeh Ship Management and Operation. Ukrainian national Ivan Obukhov, also UAE-based, was designated over what Treasury says is more than $100 million in cryptocurrency payments since 2023 to facilitate oil sales for the Quds Force. In Singapore, Azure Shipping was named over ship-to-ship services for sanctioned vessels working with the National Iranian Tanker Company.

Petrochemical buyers. State Department measures reached Indian importers, including Sadashiva Overseas over about $69 million in Iranian petroleum products and a customs broker accused of clearing Iranian petrochemicals, and Turkish firms including Huzur Plastik over $28 million in Iranian polyethylene.

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Commodity trading. Switzerland-based Wellbred Trading SA was sanctioned over links to Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani, the oil trader son of Iran's late security chief Ali Shamkhani. Its French subsidiary, a cooking oil refinery bought in 2024, was designated for being under its control. In Britain, Estanica Trading was named as operator of a Gambia-flagged tanker Treasury says carried hundreds of thousands of barrels of Iranian crude.

The Strait of Hormuz

The change with the widest reach for global shipping concerns the waterway itself.

OFAC warned US and non-US parties about dealing with three Iranian bodies involved in managing passage: the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, the Persian Gulf Marine Insurance Company and the Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority.

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The strait authority was created in 2026 to run Tehran's permit system for passing ships. It is an Iranian institution, not an international maritime body, and Iran's asserted jurisdiction over international shipping there is contested.

The exposure goes well beyond paying a toll. OFAC says accepting insurance or other services, or even answering information demands in exchange for guarantees of safe passage, can create sanctions risk. Payment can take forms other than bank transfers: digital assets, offsets, informal swaps, government arrangements and some in-kind deals all count. Maritime firms were urged to establish who arranged a vessel's passage, not merely what it was carrying.

Tehran's answer came immediately, and it was aimed at the same audience as Bessent's. Mohsen Rezaei, Iran's security chief, warned that if the countries around Iran join the American economic campaign, "not a drop of oil will leave the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz." On Tuesday, Ebrahim Rezaei of parliament's national security committee said any country cooperating with US secondary sanctions would face an Iranian response in the strait, calling it "an official and operational warning."

What it means inside Iran

For Iranians, the campaign is arriving on top of an economy already breaking.

The rial hit a record on Tuesday at about 2,050,000 to the dollar, roughly seven percent weaker than a few days earlier. That slide alone rewrote household arithmetic. Iran's minimum wage of about 166 million rials a month is now worth around $81, and typical earnings of 200 to 300 million rials come to about $98 to $146. Food inflation stands at 128 percent year-on-year against general inflation of 88 percent.

The clearest illustration is the government's own remedy. The central bank proposed raising the monthly food coupon to 12.3 million rials, worth about $6.44 when it was announced days ago. At Tuesday's rate it is worth about $6.00. It lost seven percent of its value before anyone could spend it.

One element of the sanctions package touches Iranians directly rather than through markets. OFAC suspended several general licenses that had permitted certain remittance payments and Iranian access to parts of the American cultural and academic system. Remittances here mean non-commercial personal transfers, money sent between family members rather than payments for goods or investment. Some transfers previously allowed may now need separate authorization or be barred outright. It is not a blanket ban, and the effect depends on the type of transfer and the institutions involved, but for families split between Iran and the West, and for students, the practical result is fewer legal routes to move money.

Does every company trading with Iran now face sanctions?

No, and the distinction matters commercially.

The nearly 60 targets named on Monday are sanctioned now. Everyone else operating in the five sectors is exposed to being sanctioned later.

Exemptions and OFAC authorizations still cover some activity, so risk depends on what the business is, who it involves, and under which authority.

What comes next

Monday was the opening round. Bessent said Treasury has "mapped every node, every facilitator, and every network" Iran uses to move oil and evade sanctions, and that the campaign "will gather force with every day that follows."

He framed it as a choice: "Iran now faces a very clear choice, with only two paths before them: complete global isolation and a subsistence economy, or a path back to normalcy with an opportunity to rejoin the global economy."

The timing matters. The war reaches its six-month mark on Friday, talks are stalled, and Washington has signaled it prefers economic strangulation to renewed strikes; Bessent said earlier that maximum economic pressure makes a large-scale military restart less likely.

The campaign's premise is that isolating an economy changes a government's calculations. That is a theory, and the last 47 years offer arguments on both sides.

The measure of whether this round differs from the last 47 years will not be the length of the sanctions list. It will be whether Washington is willing to enforce against targets that can hurt it back, the step every administration has drawn short of. Chinese refiners and a small Chinese bank have been designated before. One of China's major banks has not.