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“The government of the Republic of Peru has decided to sever diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the Foreign Ministry said.

Lima cited what it described as Iran’s repression of peaceful protests, restrictions on press freedom, discrimination against women and girls, and persecution of political opponents.

“Within the framework of its firm commitment to defending democracy, a fundamental principle of its foreign policy, Peru has observed with growing concern the deterioration of democracy in Iran, as documented by various United Nations mechanisms, particularly regarding the repression of peaceful protests, violations of press freedom, discrimination against women and girls, and the persecution of political opponents,” read the statement.

The ministry said Iranian restrictions and disruptions to international trade through Hormuz since March violated freedom of navigation, harmed energy markets and threatened global supply chains.

“The government of Peru views with deep concern the severe restrictions imposed by the Iranian regime, as well as the disruption of international trade through the Strait of Hormuz since March 2026, because they contravene principles such as freedom of navigation and the right of passage through straits used for international maritime transit, which cannot be subject to unilateral conditions, while also affecting navigational safety, the protection of human life at sea and the preservation of the marine environment, in addition to their repercussions for energy prices and the stability of global supply chains,” the foreign ministry said.

Lima also linked the diplomatic rupture to broader security concerns, accusing Tehran of fueling regional violence and denying UN nuclear inspectors’ access to facilities needed to verify that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons.

“The government of Peru also strongly rejects Iran’s incitement to violence and the escalation of conflicts in the Middle East, as well as its obstruction of the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” it said.

Peru will maintain consular relations to protect the two countries’ citizens and interests. The decision was communicated to Tehran through Iran’s embassy in Ecuador, which also covers Peru.

Iranian authorities did not immediately respond to Peru’s decision.

Branch 23 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court convicted Zarei of “corruption on Earth,” based on alleged acts including extensive political activity, producing false news, propaganda against the establishment, disrupting security and unauthorized entry into and exit from the country, according to HRANA.

The death sentence was communicated to him on August 23, HRANA said.

Zarei, around 27 and from Tehran, was arrested by Intelligence Ministry agents on April 28 after returning to Iran. His case was initially handled by Branch 3 of Tehran Prosecutor’s Office District 33, known as the Security Prosecutor’s Office, before he was transferred to Qezel Hesar Prison in Karaj on June 30.

He is currently being held in Unit 3, Ward 37 of the prison, according to HRANA.

Zarei lost sight in his right eye after being shot during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests. He was later detained in December 2023 while visiting the graves of protesters killed in the crackdown at Tehran’s Behesht-e Zahra cemetery and spent 33 days in solitary confinement in Evin Prison.

He subsequently left Iran and reached Germany on a humanitarian visa.

While in Germany, Zarei appeared on stage at a February 14 rally in Munich held on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference alongside exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi who had called for the gathering.

Iranian authorities have increasingly used the death penalty against protesters and political dissidents. Amnesty International has accused authorities of continuing to “weaponize the death penalty to repress dissent,” saying politically motivated death sentences have followed grossly unfair trials.

Last month, Norway-based Iran Human Rights said 29 people arrested in connection with the January 2026 protests had been executed since March 19, in addition to two protesters from the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom movement. The group said hundreds of protesters were facing the death penalty and warned of an escalation in executions of political prisoners.

The US-based Center for Human Rights in Iran has also said authorities are increasingly using fast-tracked group prosecutions to sentence protesters to death, describing the practice as part of a strategy to punish those who joined protests and deter future dissent.

After Iran launched missiles at US bases in Jordan in response to an American strike on Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz, President Donald Trump promised another response.

“We’re going to hit them hard,” Trump told Fox News. “There will be a response.”

At the same time, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered a different measure of who has the advantage.

“I would think that they are lashing out kinetically because they are losing economically,” Bessent said, arguing that Tehran is feeling the effects of Washington’s expanding pressure campaign.

Iran’s economy does not have to collapse, he said. “We just have to have the regime come to their senses.”

That leaves a central question hanging over the latest exchange: can Iran’s military retaliation actually improve its position as economic pressure mounts?

“Keep firing on Jordan, keep firing on Kuwait and Bahrain and UAE, but does that solve your problem at home?” Kamran Bokhari, Strategic Forecaster and Senior Resident Fellow with the Middle East Policy Council in Washington, told Iran International.

Bokhari believes Washington has little incentive to escalate into a larger war when it can respond to specific Iranian actions while maintaining the blockade and economic pressure.

“Keep the blockade,” he said. “If they try to mine, do what they did yesterday, but don’t escalate anything, and just keep the pressure up on the economic front.”

In that scenario, Iran retains the ability to retaliate, but its attacks do little to relieve the broader pressures facing the Islamic Republic.

Can economic pressure lead to something bigger?

Ali Dadpay, an Iranian American economist from Texas, said Washington’s stated objective is to change the Islamic Republic’s behavior rather than openly pursue regime change.

“Right now, they officially and legitimately say change of behavior,” Dadpay said.

But he argued that the economic deterioration Iran is experiencing could ultimately produce a more consequential outcome than Washington’s stated goal.

Dadpay pointed to the Soviet Union, East Germany and communist Poland as examples of political systems that collapsed without being invaded by a foreign power.

“A similar set of socio-economic factors can create a similar outcome,” he said of Iran.

Dadpay also said the combination of military and economic pressure could alter calculations among groups within the Islamic Republic and push the system toward what he described as a “new equilibrium.”

The immediate question is how far Washington is prepared to go with that economic pressure.

Max Meizlish, a former senior policy adviser at the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, said a key test will be whether the US targets financial institutions facilitating Iranian trade with China.

Iran may still have oil to sell. The bigger question is whether Tehran can get paid. Unless financial channels through Hong Kong, the UAE and elsewhere are constrained, Meizlish said, “the regime is still going to have pathways for rearming itself.”

The pressure reaches ordinary Iranians

The expanding campaign is also having consequences beyond the regime. On August 24, OFAC suspended General License G, which had permitted certain educational services and academic exchanges involving Iranians.

ETS told Iran International it has since paused TOEFL and GRE testing inside Iran. Iranian nationals can still take the tests outside the country.

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  Iran sanctions reach education: Duolingo blocked, TOEFL and GRE in doubt

Dadpay called the impact on testing a “side effect” of the broader restrictions. Meizlish said the administration may be trying to prevent regime-linked individuals from using educational opportunities abroad.

But he acknowledged the wider cost.

“There could be an unintended effect here where ordinary Iranians are caught in the crossfire, so to speak,” Meizlish said.

Iran’s missiles have shown Tehran can still strike back. What remains unclear is whether those attacks can ease the pressure building on the Islamic Republic — or whether Washington’s economic squeeze can change the regime’s behavior without increasingly hurting the Iranians it is meant to pressure Tehran on behalf of.

Iran International has obtained information about three alleged recruits and an operation being developed by Unit 4000, the Special Operations Division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Intelligence Organization.

According to the sources, the unit recruited the three individuals through Shiite clerics in Thailand and Indonesia and has begun planning attacks in the Malacca and Bangka straits, as well as at Tanjung Priok Port in Indonesia and the Ningbo-Zhoushan and Shanghai ports in China.

The operations are being overseen by Brigadier General Rahman Moghaddam, commander of Unit 4000, according to Iran International’s sources.

Moghaddam was reported killed in an Israeli strike in Tehran on March 3, during the opening days of the war. Israeli security agencies identified him among senior Iranian intelligence figures killed in Israeli attacks.

Two days later, drones struck Nakhichevan in Azerbaijan in an attack Baku blamed on Iran, although Tehran denied responsibility. CNN later reported that Iranian officials believed the drone attack was retaliation for Moghaddam’s killing, which Tehran suspected had been carried out with Israeli assistance from Azerbaijan.

Iran International has now obtained information indicating that those reports of Moghaddam’s death were incorrect. According to the new information, he survived the strike and is now overseeing what the sources describe as a new phase of Unit 4000’s overseas maritime operations.

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Moghaddam, a former deputy coordinator at the Defense Ministry’s Protection and Intelligence Organization, took charge around three years ago of Unit 4000, which has been linked to assassination and sabotage operations targeting opponents of the Islamic Republic and Israeli interests abroad.

Plans to target ships in Indonesian and Chinese waters

Two sources familiar with the IRGC’s activities said Moghaddam is overseeing a new program aimed at expanding Unit 4000’s operations into East Asian waters.

The sources said the unit is considering attacks on commercial, military and privately owned vessels transiting the Malacca Strait, one of the world’s most important shipping routes, as well as the Bangka Strait.

Operatives recruited by the unit have also developed plans targeting Tanjung Priok, Indonesia’s busiest port, and the major Chinese ports of Ningbo-Zhoushan and Shanghai, the sources said.

The plans would represent a significant geographical expansion of Iran’s maritime pressure campaign.

Since the war began on February 28, Iran has sought to restrict shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, while the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen have disrupted maritime traffic around the Bab al-Mandab and the Red Sea.

In June, Mohsen Rezaei, then a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader and now secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, told CNN that Tehran could expand the conflict if the war and US naval blockade continued.

“If the war continues and the naval blockade is not lifted, we will drag the war to the Indian Ocean, the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean,” Rezaei said.

Around the same period, Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani said a new “security belt” of Iran’s so-called resistance front would extend from the Strait of Hormuz to Bab al-Mandab and from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea.

Sources identify recruitment links in Thailand and Indonesia

Iran International’s sources said Unit 4000 had been seeking non-Iranian recruits for its East Asian maritime operations, allowing Tehran greater deniability if an operation was exposed.

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The recruits were brought to Iran for training before being assigned to operations in East Asia, according to the sources.

For recruitment in Thailand, Moghaddam approached Seyyed Momen Saketicha, a prominent figure in the country’s Shiite community, the sources said.

Saketicha was part of a Thai delegation that travelled to Tehran in 2023 and met Hamas representatives in efforts to secure the release of Thai nationals taken hostage during the October 7 attack on Israel.

The sources described Saketicha as a close associate of prominent Thai Shiite cleric Seyed Sulaiman Husaini, who heads the Al-Mahdi Foundation in Thailand and serves as imam of the Ruhollah Mosque in Nakhon Si Thammarat.

Husaini also has ties to Al-Mustafa International University, an Iran-based institution sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2020 over what Washington described as its role in facilitating recruitment for the IRGC Quds Force.

In 2012, after explosions in Bangkok that Thai and Israeli officials said were part of a plot targeting Israeli diplomats, Husaini blamed Mossad. A Thai court later convicted two Iranian men over the bomb plot. Iran denied involvement.

Focus on Indonesia

The bulk of Unit 4000’s planned East Asian maritime activity is centered on Indonesia, according to Iran International’s sources.

The sources said Moghaddam used two Indonesian clerics to identify potential recruits.

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One is Zahir Yahya, chairman of Ahlulbait Indonesia, a national Shiite organization. Iran International’s sources described Yahya as an intermediary who introduced potential operatives to Unit 4000.

The second is Abdullah Saqqaf, whom the sources identified as head of the Amir al-Mu’minin seminary in Bogor and as having links to Al-Mustafa International University.

According to the sources, Saketicha, Yahya and Saqqaf introduced potential recruits to the IRGC, while two Unit 4000 figures — Mohsen Aghazadeh and Vahid Yekeh-Dehqan — were responsible for recruitment and training.

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Three alleged recruits identified

Iran International has identified three individuals its sources say were recruited by Unit 4000 for covert maritime operations in East Asia.

The first, Pandu Yudhawinata, is an Indonesian operative who has previously been linked in counterterrorism reporting to Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence.

Yudhawinata was implicated in a failed 1994 Hezbollah plot to bomb the Israeli Embassy in Bangkok. Counterterrorism reporting has said he underwent training in Iran and later worked with Hezbollah networks in Southeast Asia.

Iran International’s sources also linked him to attacks in Sri Lanka.

The sources said Yudhawinata and two other Indonesian nationals, Ardiyanta Mutoha and Mohammad Hossein, travelled to Tehran for training intended to prepare them for covert operations at ports and waterways across East Asia.

The alleged plans come as Washington seeks to increase pressure on Iran’s oil exports while helping move energy shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week that the United States had helped move 130 million barrels of oil through the waterway over a two-week period while preventing Iranian exports.

Asia is particularly exposed to any expansion of maritime disruption. The International Energy Agency estimates that around 80% of oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz is destined for Asian markets.

The plans described to Iran International suggest that Unit 4000 may now be seeking to threaten another critical section of the energy and commercial shipping network serving Asia — extending the potential reach of Iran’s maritime campaign from the Middle East into some of the world’s busiest waters.

“Give us a $3,000 salary and sell gasoline for 750,000 rials ($0.36) a liter. No problem,” one person wrote in response to Mohammad Jafar Ghaempanah, President Masoud Pezeshkian’s executive vice president.

Ghaempanah questioned the sustainability of selling gasoline for 15,000 rials per liter, less than one US cent at the current exchange rate, when he put its value at 700,000 rials ($0.33).

“You cannot buy gasoline that costs 700,000 rials per liter for 15,000 rials. No sound mind accepts this,” Ghaempanah said.

His comments drew responses comparing gasoline prices with wages, food, cars and the exchange rate, with several people questioning why international pricing should apply to household costs but not incomes.

An average monthly income of around 200 million to 250 million rials amounts to just $95 to $119 at an exchange rate of 2.1 million rials to the dollar, sharpening the contrast between earnings and prices increasingly measured against international market rates. At that income level, gasoline priced at Ghaempanah’s 700,000-rial ($0.33) valuation would make a 50-liter tank cost 35 million rials ($16.67), equivalent to about 14% to 18% of a month’s income.

‘Income in rials, expenses in dollars’

A worker writing from Tabriz turned Ghaempanah’s argument back on the government, questioning why wages remained so low if selling gasoline below its assessed value was unsustainable.

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“We workers also ask why a worker whose wage should actually be $4,000 is paid $100,” the person wrote.

Another response focused on the exchange rate, questioning why Iranians must pay more than 2.1 million rials for one US dollar while the government objects to selling domestically produced gasoline for 15,000 rials per liter.

“You can’t have income in rials and expenses in dollars,” another person wrote.

Others compared wages with what they described as the poverty line.

“You can’t have a salary of 200 million rials ($95) when the poverty line is 1.5 billion rials ($714),” one person wrote.

Cars and food enter the comparison

Cars were another recurring point of comparison, with people questioning the gap between domestic vehicle prices and those in international markets.

“But we can buy a car worth five billion rials ($2,381) for 50 billion rials ($23,810)?” one person wrote.

Another called for cars to be offered at international market prices if officials want to apply similar logic to energy, saying consumers should not have to depend on Iranian and Chinese manufacturers.

Food prices also featured prominently in the reactions.

“It’s possible to make 400,000-rial rice cost six million rials, three-million-rial meat cost 30 million rials, and a two-billion-rial salary become 200 million rials. But gasoline has to become more expensive,” one person wrote.

Ghaempanah said food prices had risen 123%. The latest figures cited from the Statistical Center of Iran also put point-to-point food inflation above 128%, almost twice the roughly 67% rate for non-food goods.

Other messages described households cutting back on basic purchases as prices rise.

One person said their 75-year-old father, a pensioner receiving 160 million rials ($76) a month and paying rent, could no longer afford meat or chicken and had long since stopped buying fruit.

Another said they wanted to buy apples for their son but could not afford the price of 1.5 million rials ($0.71) per kilogram.

Government says budget deficit drives money printing

Ghaempanah also said the government’s budget imbalance forces it to create money to cover shortfalls, contributing to inflation.

“Because our budget is unbalanced, we are forced to print money. When money is printed, it itself creates inflation,” Ghaempanah said.

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The executive vice president attributed 67% of inflation to the banking sector, arguing that lenders issue loans that are not repaid and accept collateral without sufficient underlying value.

Banks then seek money from the Central Bank to cover their deficits, prompting further money creation, according to Ghaempanah.

He also described Iran’s economic conditions as poor and said ordinary people were bearing the greatest pressure.

“The bitter reality is that the country’s economic conditions are not good and the greatest pressure is being placed on the people,” Ghaempanah said.