Iran or the dollar? US makes an example of Banque Misr

Rezaei named an end to the regional war, lifting the blockade of Iranian ports, compensation and sanctions relief as Iran’s core conditions. He said the demands had been compiled in response to requests from mediators.

Rezaei has served since August 10 as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and is also the Supreme Leader’s representative on the body, giving his remarks greater institutional weight than those of an individual political or military figure.

Whether the conditions constitute a formally approved negotiating mandate, however, remains unclear. Rezaei’s description suggests an ongoing process of defining Iran’s negotiating position rather than the presentation of final instructions to negotiators.

Since taking over the SNSC, Rezaei has increasingly emerged as one of the principal voices through which Iran’s security establishment frames diplomacy.

The council brings together senior military, intelligence and government officials alongside representatives of the Supreme Leader, who holds ultimate authority over major national security decisions.

Back to MoU

That makes the evolution of Rezaei’s language significant. His movement from advocating an “offensive doctrine” to discussing the terms of a possible agreement has not amounted to an embrace of accommodation with Washington.

But diplomacy is increasingly appearing in his rhetoric as an instrument of Iranian strategy rather than something inherently at odds with it.

Only days ago, Rezaei told Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir that Washington needed to change its behavior and take practical steps to implement the Islamabad MoU. Iranian media, including Press TV, quoted him as saying the United States should return to the June agreement.

That was notable because the Islamabad MoU provided a framework for de-escalation: ending hostilities, reopening the Strait of Hormuz and moving toward a broader agreement.

President Masoud Pezeshkian has also defended the MoU as the best available path while emphasizing adherence to the Supreme Leader’s policy.

Friday’s demands do not necessarily reverse that position. Rather, they fit an evolving sequence in Rezaei’s public stance: initial rejection of the MoU, movement toward reviving the June framework and now a willingness to discuss negotiations while attaching a higher price to them.

Tactical shift

There is an echo here of Donald Trump’s own approach to the conflict. The US president has moved between military pressure, diplomacy, rejection of the MoU, economic pressure and renewed suggestions that an agreement remains possible.

Both sides appear to be using uncertainty itself as leverage: escalating, reopening the door and then raising the terms for walking through it.

That does not mean Rezaei is consciously emulating Trump. But his recent statements suggest a similarly transactional approach in which apparently contradictory positions can coexist.

Negotiations remain possible, while threats and maximal demands are used to improve the terms on which they might take place.

For Rezaei, this represents a change in tactics rather than ideology. He has not abandoned the hardline worldview that has defined much of his political career, nor do his statements yet signal a broader Iranian pivot toward accommodation with Washington.

More significant may be the evolution of the role he is now playing. The former IRGC commander is no longer simply warning against compromise; he is beginning to define its price.

The Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network proposed barring Banque Misr’s six UAE branches from correspondent banking access to US financial institutions, restricting their ability to conduct dollar transactions.

Treasury estimates the branches processed about $1.8 billion in transactions between January 2024 and June 2026 for 103 companies potentially linked to Iran’s shadow-banking networks, describing the operations as a “critical node” in Tehran’s access to US dollars.

“Treasury promised to sever every economic lifeline Tehran has left and finally end the threat of the Iranian regime,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.

“We also warned that Iran’s enablers cannot continue to enjoy access to the US dollar and the global financial system,” he added. “Banque Misr UAE decided to find out the hard way.”

Bessent had previewed a “major announcement” involving secondary sanctions against an international bank earlier this week as he launched what Washington has called an “Economic D-Day” against Iran and institutions that facilitate its trade.

The measure is narrower than Bessent’s warning initially suggested. It applies only to Banque Misr’s UAE branches, leaving its Cairo headquarters and branches in countries including France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Djibouti able to continue conducting dollar transactions.

The proposed restriction is also subject to a 30-day public comment period before taking effect.

The Financial Times said the limited scope highlighted Washington’s reluctance so far to target major Chinese banks and other large financial institutions involved in financing Iranian trade, amid concerns over potential disruption to global markets and retaliation.

China remains particularly important to Tehran. Chinese purchases of Iranian oil account for about 45% of the Iranian government budget, according to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, cited by the FT.

The Treasury separately sanctioned Reza Mohammad Taeedi, general manager of Iran’s Bank Melli branch in Dubai, as well as a Hong Kong-based company it accused of helping launder money for a sanctioned Iranian exchange house.

Banque Misr UAE did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on Friday, while Reuters said it was unable to reach Taeedi.

The measures come as Washington seeks to intensify economic pressure six months into its war with Iran while avoiding measures that could cause wider financial disruption. Iran has urged other countries not to participate in the new US sanctions campaign.

A review of grave listings in Tehran found a three-tier plot in sections 39 and 72 of Behesht-e Zahra, the vast cemetery on the southern edge of the capital where Iran's war dead and the founder of the Islamic Republic are buried, offered at 30 billion rials, about $15,000. Tiered graves are stacked burials sold as a single right, allowing several family members to be interred in one plot over time.

The official 2026 tariff for reserving the same three tiers in that part of the cemetery is 3.47 billion rials, roughly $1,740. The asking price in the listings is more than eight and a half times the state rate.

Set against wages, the figures become clearer. Iran's minimum base wage is about 166 million rials a month, around $83. The advertised grave is equivalent to more than 180 months of that wage: a worker on the minimum would have to save every rial for more than fifteen years, spending nothing at all, to reach the asking price. Even the official tariff comes to nearly 21 months of wages.

The market is not confined to the capital. At the Bagh-e Ferdows cemetery in Kermanshah, listings reach 34 billion rials, about $17,000. Two-tier graves at the Saheb al-Zaman cemetery in Kerman are advertised at up to 20 billion rials, some $10,000, and plots at 10 billion rials, around $5,000, appear in Karaj and Yazd.

In Mashhad, family tombs at Behesht-e Reza are priced at up to 18 billion rials, roughly $9,000, and published reports have put burial inside the shrine of Imam Reza, the holiest Shia site in Iran and a place many families regard as a religious privilege, at as much as 14 billion rials, about $7,000.

The bill for a last farewell

A grave is only one of the costs of dying. Transporting the body, ritual washing and the shroud, the burial itself, the headstone, a mosque, flowers, catering and the ceremonies each carry a separate charge.

Under Tehran's official 2026 tariff, basic services run from hundreds of thousands to several million rials. A private hearse costs 50 million rials, about $25, for the first three hours.

Adding the grave, cemetery services, a temporary headstone, a mosque or hall, flowers, catering and other costs, a burial and urban funeral for around 100 people can come to between 1.2 and 1.8 billion rials, roughly $600 to $900. A more expensive plot, a costlier stone, a full meal or several ceremonies can push it far higher.

For many families, though, the question is not whether to buy an expensive grave or an elaborate headstone. It is how to pay for an ordinary burial at all, a cost that pushes them to shrink the ceremonies, drop the traditional third-day and seventh-day gatherings, or find somewhere cheaper to bury their dead.

What has actually changed

Prices inside Behesht-e Zahra vary by zone and section, and the state rates rise every year. In rials the climb is steep: three tiers in the older sections cost 825 million rials in 2022 against 3.47 billion today, a fourfold increase.

Measured in dollars, though, the official price has barely moved. It was worth about $1,700 in 2022 and about $1,740 now, because the city council raises the tariff by a fraction of what the currency loses each year. What has collapsed is the ability to pay: Iran's minimum wage has fallen from more than $230 a decade ago to around $83.

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That gap between a suppressed official price and what the market will bear is where the private trade lives. The cemetery's managing director said in 2023 that grave sales are the organization's main source of income, that capacity was running out and three new cemeteries were planned, and that each national identity number was now limited to a single plot, a rule introduced to stop what he called brokering and the emergence of "grave sultans." Such brokering, he acknowledged, exists.

Cemetery officials also dispute the highest figures in circulation. A previous managing director said the most expensive grave ever sold there had gone for a fraction of the sums now advertised. The listings reviewed for this report are advertisements placed by private sellers, not transactions recorded by the cemetery.

When a burial right becomes an asset

Iran International contacted three people who had advertised graves for sale in Tehran and Kermanshah, presenting itself as a prospective buyer. None is named here.

One, in Tehran, was selling an unused tier of his father's grave, a space the family had kept for his mother.

"Thank God our mother is alive, and right now we need this money more," he said.

In Kermanshah, another seller had listed his mother's grave, in Bagh-e Ferdows for about 40 years. He counted its position near the car park among its advantages, and said that whenever a buyer needed it, he would come to complete the transfer once the money had been paid, so that the grave could be given to them as a "gift."

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A third seller in Kermanshah had bought a plot beside his brother's years earlier, intending to be buried next to him. He has put it up for sale. Finding a grave in Bagh-e Ferdows has become difficult, he said, but the money matters more for now: he is still alive, and he would rather use it for what his children need than worry about how easily they will be able to visit him later.

In this market, even a place kept to lie beside a father, a mother or a sibling can lose out to something more urgent: the money a family needs today.

Graves at auction

Burial rights are not only offered as assets in private listings. Court enforcement records show they can be seized and auctioned to settle debts.

In 2022, a single tier of a grave in section 36 of Behesht-e Zahra was put up for auction. In June 2025, so was a grave in section 62 of Bagh-e Ferdows in Kermanshah.

Open trade in graves is not permitted in many Iranian cemeteries, and transfers of burial rights are supposed to go through official channels. In Tehran, the right of use must be registered through the Behesht-e Zahra organization.

The restrictions have not ended the market. Listings continue to appear, and some transfers are dressed as gifts, as the Kermanshah seller described.

The result is a market with almost no transparency: there is no comprehensive official record of how many such deals are done, no clarity on the prices finally paid, and no certainty that a right advertised in a listing can lawfully be transferred at all.

The migration of the dead

Another consequence is visible in the villages around some Iranian cities.

Reports from areas near Mashhad and Gorgan describe urban families moving the bodies of relatives to village cemeteries, where burial is free or cheap, to reduce costs.

One described a rise in city families turning up at rural graveyards. In another village, residents built a fence around the cemetery to stop outsiders being buried there.

Similar accounts have emerged from other cities. There are no official figures, but the cases suggest the price of a grave is now capable of redrawing the geography of burial.

Prices are not driven by inflation alone. Older cemeteries are running short of capacity, families want to be buried alongside relatives, and the religious standing of certain sites carries a premium of its own.

The pressure works in both directions at once: one family drives a body out of the city to save money while, in the same period, a burial plot in an old cemetery becomes an asset worth the equivalent of years of work.

Mourning under financial and security pressure

For some families the difficulty of burial is not only economic.

Reporting on those killed in protests and on people executed in Iran shows that the release of a body, the place of burial and even the holding of a funeral can fall under the control of security institutions. In some cases that pressure has come with a demand for money.

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The family of Babak Pourmazaheri, a 37-year-old protester killed in Alborz province, received his body after three days and a payment of 4 billion rials, about $2,000.

In the case of Jamshid Momeni, 16 billion rials, roughly $8,000, was demanded for the return of his body; when the family said they could not pay, they were asked instead to present him as a "martyr of the state."

In the case of Esmail Fekri, the family was not told where he had been buried, and a security officer demanded 1.5 billion rials, some $750, to reveal the location of the grave.

Here the cost of death is no longer the price of a plot and a ceremony. Money has become entangled with control over the body, the burial and the right to grieve.

Two sides of the market

In a market where a burial right can be worth years of wages and can be auctioned to settle a debt, some families are selling the very place they had kept for themselves or their relatives, in order to pay for living.

In Kermanshah, a man bought a grave beside his brother's years ago. He has now put it up for sale.

He says he needs the money for his children more than he needs somewhere to be buried.

The activity is an early test for Operation Economic Outcast, the Trump administration’s campaign to cut Iran off from global finance, trade, aviation and shipping. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has warned that foreign entities continuing to deal with Tehran could face US penalties, while Washington has initially given governments and companies a short period to wind down ties.

Yet the Journal found little visible change in Dubai this week.

Bank Melli Iran, which Bessent specifically called on foreign governments to close, was still operating its two Dubai branches. At its multistory Deira location, about a dozen tellers continued serving Persian-speaking customers after the US announcement.

Employees said they had received no order to close. Bank Melli has operated in the UAE since 1969, before the country was established, and Dubai’s ruler inaugurated its first branch.

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“We put our trust in God on what happens next,” one employee told the Journal.

Iranians in Dubai said they were preparing alternatives if banks eventually close, including the centuries-old hawala system, which moves money through trusted intermediaries without conventional cross-border transfers. So far, they said, that has not been necessary.

The situation contrasts with a crackdown earlier in the war, when the UAE closed the Iranian Hospital and Iranian Club, temporarily barred Iranian passport holders from entering or transiting the country and canceled some visas, including those of long-term residents traveling abroad.

The hospital and club remain closed, but Iranians told the Journal that widespread visa cancellations appear to have stopped and some visas have been restored.

Iranian airlines also continue regular direct flights to the UAE. Emirates, Etihad and FlyDubai are not flying directly to Iran, although some services use Iranian airspace. Iranian restaurants and cafes in Dubai remain open.

That activity sits uneasily with the UAE Foreign Ministry’s announcement last week that it was halting trade, commercial exchanges and financial transactions with Iran.

The UAE was Iran’s second-largest trading partner before the war, with bilateral trade of around $27 billion annually, about 80% of it Emirati exports to Iran.

The relationship extends far beyond official trade. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians live in the UAE, particularly Dubai, gaining access to global finance and freedoms unavailable under the Islamic Republic while bringing billions of dollars in Iranian capital into the Emirates.

Those links have survived despite Iran firing more than 2,800 missiles and drones at the UAE during the war, according to the Journal.

Chatham House associate fellow Neil Quilliam told the Journal that UAE economy is ”so closely integrated and intertwined with the Iranian economy, you can’t just simply sever economic trade and activity overnight.”

The US has long focused on Dubai’s role in Iranian finance. Former Treasury official Matthew Levitt said the UAE has the second-largest number of US-sanctioned individuals and companies linked to Iran after China.

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A US Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network study cited by the Journal found Dubai-based companies moved $6.4 billion in potential Iranian shadow-banking funds in 2024, accounting for 71% of the global total identified.

The first Operation Economic Outcast sanctions targeted nearly 60 Iran-linked people, companies and vessels operating across countries including the UAE, China, Singapore and Switzerland.

Washington nevertheless faces its own dilemma. The UAE is a major US security partner, provides military basing access, invests heavily in sectors including artificial intelligence and was a principal Arab signatory of the Abraham Accords with Israel.

Dubai, unlike oil-rich Abu Dhabi, also depends heavily on trade, finance and foreign capital.

“There will be some in the UAE who say, ‘Whatever the price of calm, that is what we need to do,’” Levitt told the Journal, suggesting some officials may regard continued Iranian access to banking and supply chains as preferable to greater confrontation.

Iranians in Dubai also fear the prolonged war could weaken the UAE economy, cost them their jobs and force them back to Iran. Some have already moved to third countries.

The latest US pressure goes beyond broad restrictions on oil exports, increasingly targeting middlemen, front companies, financial channels and other mechanisms Tehran has relied on to keep foreign currency and goods flowing under sanctions.

Ehsan Movahedian, an international affairs analyst, described the approach as an attempt to choke Iran’s access to foreign currency, fuel inflation and deepen internal economic instability.

Other analysts writing in the moderate outlets Fararu and Donya-ye Eghtesad argue that with those traditional workarounds under growing pressure and no comprehensive alternative in place, Tehran may increasingly be forced to turn inward: tightening budgets, reducing subsidies, rationing scarce resources and curbing consumption.

But austerity presents the government with its own political dilemma. Measures that conserve resources and help Iran withstand sanctions would also transfer more of the cost of the confrontation to a population already struggling with inflation and utility shortages.

Iranian governments have long been wary of abruptly reducing subsidies for precisely that reason. A sudden increase in gasoline prices in November 2019 triggered nationwide protests that were met with a deadly crackdown, leaving authorities acutely aware of the political risks attached to measures that sharply increase household costs.

President Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have made clear that economic pressure will remain central to Washington’s Iran strategy.

In Tehran, the campaign is broadly perceived as an attempt to force capitulation rather than genuine negotiations, even though President Masoud Pezeshkian has repeatedly said the two sides must eventually resolve their differences through talks.

Former diplomats Fereydoun Majlesi and Jalal Sadatian describe the current trajectory of Iran-US relations as one of strategic ambiguity and economic attrition, with neither an imminent diplomatic breakthrough nor a clear route out of the confrontation.

That uncertainty has sharpened disagreement over whether diplomacy can relieve the economic pressure before Tehran is forced to impose still greater costs at home.

Former ambassador Mohsen Pakaeen argued that the recent stream of regional mediators visiting Tehran was focused on the wrong capital.

The obstacle, he said, was Washington’s insistence on Iranian capitulation without offering credible concessions, meaning mediators seeking a breakthrough should concentrate their efforts on the United States.

Hardline voices, including the editor of the ultraconservative daily Kayhan, reject talks under economic pressure and push for a more confrontational posture capable of raising the costs for the United States and its regional partners.

The disagreement leaves Tehran confronting two related calculations: whether it can economically outlast Washington’s pressure campaign, and how much domestic hardship it can impose in doing so.

For advocates of greater economic resilience, austerity could preserve scarce government resources while buying Tehran time. But analysts also warn that the same measures could weaken domestic stability and ultimately undermine the negotiating position they are intended to protect.

China offers Iran its most important external economic lifeline, but also an uncertain one.

Majlesi and other observers argue that intensified US enforcement against buyers of Iranian goods increasingly overlaps with Washington’s wider economic competition with Beijing.

China remains crucial to Iranian trade, but Tehran cannot determine how much economic or political risk Beijing will ultimately accept on its behalf.

That leaves Iran with few easy alternatives. Informal trading networks can soften sanctions, regional diplomacy may eventually produce negotiations and austerity can stretch limited resources, but none provides a clear exit from a prolonged economic confrontation.

Austerity may therefore buy Tehran time, but not necessarily leverage. But the question is not only how long Iran’s economy can withstand Washington’s pressure, but how much more pressure its government believes Iranian society can bear.