Tehran widens maritime fight to spread cost of US blockade

Their warnings come amid rising tensions in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz and growing concern that renewed military confrontations could escalate into a broader conflict.

Conservative lawmaker Gholamreza Tajgardoon on Tuesday urged Iranians to be prepared to “pay a price for their resistance.”

But several moderate and reformist figures have argued that years of sanctions, inflation and now war have left ordinary people with little capacity to absorb further economic pressure.

“Right now, in certain border and maritime regions, we are witnessing tension, conflict and military engagements,” veteran reformist figure Mohammad Atrianfar told Khabar Online on Tuesday. “One of the public’s serious concerns is whether these conflicts will lead to a full-scale war.”

Atrianfar said preventing a return to widespread war was an “unavoidable necessity” and called for clear red lines and emergency communication channels to help manage the conflict.

His comments come amid US strikes on Iranian tankers and Iranian attacks on American bases and warships in the region.

Atrianfar argued that diplomatic compromise should not automatically be treated as capitulation, saying the distinction between an honourable compromise and a damaging retreat depended on whether an agreement served national interests and restored stability.

Moderate political figure Mansour Haghighatpour made a similar argument, pointing to inflation and what he described as growing public exhaustion.

While Iran should maintain its ability to defend itself against foreign threats, he said, “the priority should remain securing a peace that guarantees national interests.”

His comments appeared to respond directly to Tajgardoon’s appeal for Iranians to accept the costs of resistance. Expecting people to endure continuing hardship without diplomatic progress was becoming untenable, Haghighatpour said.

Reformist politician Mahmoud Mirlohi focused on the physical and economic risks of a drawn-out conflict, warning that critical infrastructure, including power and petrochemical facilities, could become targets.

“Prolonged war and harsh sanctions have pushed Iranian society to its limits,” he said, arguing that Iranians needed “a chance to breathe.”

Mirlohi also criticised what he described as “extremist rhetoric and maximalist behaviour” at home, saying portraying Iranian political figures as advocates of continued war or nuclear escalation made diplomacy more difficult.

The increasingly public warnings reflect a broader argument within Iran over not only how the war should end, but how much more economic and social pressure the population can reasonably be expected to bear.

Hamidreza Jalaeipour, a reformist political figure generally supportive of the existing system, said Iranians had already endured more than two decades of sanctions, high inflation and stagnant economic growth.

He claimed more than 40% of the population was now below the poverty line and warned that “prolonging a war of attrition exacerbates this severe economic strain and risks severe public fatigue.”

“Iran needs realistic governance rather than radical idealism,” Jalaeipour said, accusing hardliners and partisan media of obstructing the flexibility needed for diplomacy and risking greater social unrest.

Both men have called for an “honourable” end to the war, but Rouhani has gone further, arguing that public opinion should be taken into account in deciding whether Iran continues down the path of confrontation.

“Tell them that our plan is to fight the great powers of the world for another 20 years,” Rouhani said at a recent meeting with former officials. “If the people say they accept this, very well, let us continue. But if the people do not accept it and show us another way, do we not want to accept it?”

The argument has provoked a sharp backlash from hardliners, who say questions of war and national defence cannot be reduced to public opinion while the country remains under attack.

Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the hardline Kayhan newspaper, accused Rouhani and Khatami on Tuesday of distorting reality, saying their calls amounted to “dishonourable and humiliating surrender” and would deliver the United States and Israel what they had failed to achieve through two wars.

The dispute comes amid renewed military escalation, with the United States and Iran again exchanging attacks after a relative lull and diplomatic efforts failing to produce a lasting settlement.

President Masoud Pezeshkian has nevertheless repeatedly argued that Iran should end the conflict while it remains in a position of “power and dignity,” pointing to inflation, sanctions and a sharp decline in foreign trade as reasons to reach a diplomatic understanding rather than prolong the confrontation.

But Rouhani’s appeal to public opinion has taken the debate into more contested political and constitutional territory.

“We must, according to the overwhelming majority of the people, end the war with dignity so that we can build the country …so that we can have hope for the future,” he said.

Rouhani did not explicitly call for a referendum, but his remarks revived one of the most sensitive arguments in Iranian politics: whether major questions of national policy should be put directly to voters.

Article 59 of Iran’s constitution allows the exercise of legislative power on major economic, political, social and cultural issues through a referendum and direct consultation of voters.

No referendum under the provision, however, has ever been held.

Former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei rejected calls for referendums to resolve major national disputes in 2023, arguing that ordinary people were not equipped to analyse complex political, economic and international questions.

That divide is now being reframed around the war.

Tabnak, a website close to Supreme National Security Council secretary Mohsen Rezaei, rejected Rouhani’s argument by recasting the choice itself.

“If a referendum is to be held, the question must be precise and honest: ‘Are the people in favour of defending the country against foreign attack?’ or ‘Do you allow the country to surrender?’” it wrote.

“The difference between these two questions is the difference between political analysis and playing with words.”

Tasnim, a news agency linked to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), similarly attacked Rouhani as a symbol of a political current that had “simplified complex issues such as negotiations, peace and war.”

It accused the group of “naivety and wishful thinking,” arguing that they believed “a few legal clauses and two signatures” could resolve decades of tensions between Iran and the United States.

Kayhan argued that proposing a referendum during wartime would weaken Iran’s position and that turning the defence of territorial integrity into a factional issue amounted to shirking national duty and assisting the enemy’s pressure campaign.

The attacks have extended beyond the media. At a nightly gathering in a public square, one speaker said that with the Supreme Leader and the Supreme National Security Council in place, Rouhani had no right to take a position on the issue.

Hardline cleric and eulogist Mehdi Salahshour said on X that asking the public whether the war should continue or stop would “only destroy national resolve and sow seeds of doubt in the hearts of fighters on the battlefield and in the streets.”

The response has not been uniformly hostile.

Conservative news website Khabar Online noted that, with the exception of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has been largely silent in recent years, Iran’s other living former presidents had chosen to intervene at a critical moment.

“These days Khatami speaks of ‘honourable peace’ and Rouhani of a ‘dignified end’,” it wrote.

Moderate website Rouydad24 contrasted their interventions with what it described as the relative silence of reformists serving inside Pezeshkian’s government, arguing that Rouhani was articulating a position many Iranians had expected to hear from their representatives in government.

Mohammad Ali Sobhani, a former Iranian ambassador to Qatar, Jordan and Lebanon, also backed Khatami’s position, arguing that Iran could not leave the conflict suspended indefinitely.

“We must change the situation, bring the playing field towards dialogue and compromise so that the world supports us and we can impose peace on the other side,” he told Khabar Online.

“Look at how the enemy has managed to promote that decadent Western lifestyle in our society. Look at the hijab issue itself. Because of the war conditions, for now we cannot enter this front the way we should,” Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, a member of Iran’s Expediency Council, and Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s father-in-law said at a gathering of student associations.

The effects would be visible in schools, making the authorities’ task “much harder than in 1981, when we started working,” Haddad-Adel added.

His comments came a day after an official representing supreme leader in Iranian universities announced that mandatory hijab instructions for universities had been drafted and would soon be issued by the ministries of science and health.

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Universities prepare hijab rules

Existing hijab regulations were already sufficient but needed renewed attention, Saeed Karami, the cultural and political deputy of leader’s representative body in universities, told Mehr news agency Tuesday.

“We certainly will not see the bitter occurrences in universities that we sometimes see on the streets,” Karami said.

The new rules should be described as “instructions” rather than a “hijab charter,” Karami added.

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Lawmaker Mohammad-Taghi Naghdali also criticized the government Tuesday for what he called a “retreat” on hijab and for failing to promulgate legislation known as the Chastity and Hijab Law.

Parliament would continue pursuing the issue, Naghdali added.

The comments are part of a renewed push by officials for greater enforcement after years of disobedience by women against compulsory veiling.

Officials press for tougher enforcement

The secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution said Wednesday that mandatory dress rules were not being observed in some government offices and pharmacies.

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“In some government offices, hijab is not observed, and in some pharmacies things have gone beyond not wearing hijab,” Abdolhossein Khosropanah said at a meeting of university faculty members in Hamedan.

Government agencies and public-service institutions, including offices and facilities such as pharmacies overseen by ministries, were required to monitor compliance with regulations, Khosropanah added.

The Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution had adopted “comprehensive and sufficient” measures on hijab over the past two decades, meaning new measures were unnecessary, he said.

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Other officials have made similar calls in recent weeks.

Hossein Akbari, the Revolutionary Guards commander in North Khorasan province, announced Saturday that groups tasked with verbally warning people about their dress would be revived and reorganized to promote mandatory hijab.

Lawmaker Mostafa Moeini Arani has called for action against women deemed improperly veiled and urged parliament speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf to promulgate the hijab law.

Kayhan, a newspaper overseen by a representative of Khamenei, has also urged the government to address what it described as a failure to enforce hijab requirements.

Government supporters have staged demonstrations in several cities. They formed a human chain in Qom on August 29 demanding enforcement, while Friday prayer attendees demonstrated outside the South Khorasan governor’s office in Birjand a day earlier.

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A video sent to Iran International showed a group of women supporting the government demonstrating in Isfahan on August 24 and chanting for the hijab law to be implemented.

Women continue to defy mandatory hijab

Women have continued to appear without mandatory hijab in public despite pressure from authorities, extending a form of civil disobedience that expanded after the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

Citizens have sent Iran International videos and messages criticizing renewed enforcement efforts at a time of rising prices and economic hardship.

They have described mandatory-hijab advertisements in Mashhad, confrontations with women in the streets, warnings issued to shops and cafes and the closure of dozens of businesses in cities across the country.

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CNN reported in August that authorities had increased pressure on women over mandatory hijab but were avoiding widespread direct street enforcement because of concern that it could trigger another wave of protests.

Authorities were instead relying on legal measures, business closures and economic pressure while women continued their civil disobedience, CNN reported.

Haddad-Adel’s reference to “war conditions” comes as the Islamic Republic faces continuing military conflict alongside a worsening economic crisis and growing pressure on household finances.

The doubling of Iran’s highest petrol price tier has also increased official concern about public discontent and possible protests.

In the early hours of July 9, cruise missiles hit the Aq Tekeh Khan railway bridge near Aqqala in Golestan province, in Iran's far north-east. The Revolutionary Guards' regional corps and state media attributed the strike to US forces. Damage was limited, as it has been at other bridges hit in the war, and trains were running again within days. Washington has not commented, which is common for many strikes in this conflict.

The bridge sits on the Gorgan–Incheh Borun line, one of two railways connecting Iran's network to Central Asia through Turkmenistan. Iranian outlets described the strike as an attack on the corridor linking Iran to China through Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, a reading that spread widely.

What the line actually carries

Iran's official statistics are opaque and frequently incomplete, and under nearly five decades of sanctions the state has had every incentive to blur figures that touch on trade, let alone anything with a military dimension. But even taken at face value, the numbers do not support the corridor claim.

Iran has two main rail gateways to Central Asia: Sarakhs, in the north-east, and Incheh Borun. Shortly before the war, in early 2026, the head of the Khorasan railway said 75 percent of all rail transit into and out of the country passed through Sarakhs, which handled 1.27 million tons in the ten months to late January. The Incheh Borun line's entire nominal capacity is around 500,000 tons a year, and how much of that is actually used is unknown.

Rail was never central to Iranian trade in any case. Before the war, the bulk moved by sea and road, with high-value, low-weight goods going by air.

Nor does the line point at China. Opened during Hassan Rouhani's first term as the Iranian section of a 930-kilometre Kazakhstan–Turkmenistan–Iran railway, completed in 2014 at a cost of about $1.4 billion, it was designed to link Russia and the Caspian region to warm-water ports through Iran, connecting northward toward Astrakhan and the Russian network.

The natural, cheaper route for Chinese rail freight is Sarakhs. Chinese traffic on the Incheh Borun line is not zero, with some reports counting several dozen freight trains from China over the past year, but it is marginal, and the line matters far more to Russia and Turkmenistan, notably for minerals, than to Iranian trade with the east.

Which leaves the question. If the bridge was not hit for what it carries for Iran, one possibility is what it carries for someone else.

Where Russia and Iran meet

Turkmenistan's neutrality is written into its constitution and recognized by the United Nations, and it has taken no side in Iran's wars. It has also become, since the US naval blockade closed Iran's ports, one of the country's principal overland routes to the east. That gives a small, closed and rarely reported state an unusual position: the place where Iranian and Russian logistics physically meet.

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  A remote bridge shows how US-Iran war is expanding

The Islamic Republic has a long, documented history of military exchanges with Russia and China. Alongside the rail and road routes, which carry their own risks, combined routes for moving equipment are routine.

Ashgabat's airport is the nearest major airfield to Iran's north-eastern border. Iran International reviewed data on roughly 6,500 flights that landed there between the start of November 2025 and early July 2026, a window running from before the war through the ceasefires and the resumption of strikes.

The review has limits, and they should be stated first. Flight-tracking data depends on aircraft transmitting their position and on receivers within range picking it up, so gaps occur. The pre-war portion of the window is short, less than four months. And a change in what tracking systems record after a war begins may reflect changed behavior across a whole region rather than anything specific to one airport.

One category in the data carries more meaning than it might appear to. Scheduled passenger and cargo flights file public flight plans, so their origin and destination almost always appear in tracking records.

Flights that show no origin at all are therefore disproportionately state, military and private operations, which do not file in the same way. The category cannot tell a military transport from a government delegation or a private charter, and some freight operators also fall into it, but it does separate the traffic that files paperwork from the traffic that does not.

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The Antonov from China

The most concrete item is a single flight. On April 13, an Antonov An-124, the largest transport aircraft in regular service, landed at Ashgabat from Urumqi in western China, paused, and left early the same day for Cairo. Nothing like it appears elsewhere in the nine months of data.

The aircraft belongs to Volga-Dnepr Airlines, which is designated by the United States, the European Union, Britain, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Ukraine and France. Britain listed it in June 2024 for "the provision of heavy airlift capacity to the Russian Armed Forces."

The EU, listing the group's owners and directors the same month, said Volga-Dnepr has been "playing a crucial role in servicing Russia's military-industrial complex and providing air transportation services for Russian military purposes," importing electronics and communications equipment for the war on Ukraine and receiving Russian government subsidies for doing so. The US designation carries a secondary sanctions risk, which applies in principle to any third party that does business with the airline, including by servicing its aircraft.

The specific aircraft carries the registration RA-82074. A Ukrainian investigation named it among Volga-Dnepr An-124s that sharply increased flights to countries friendly to Russia, including China, after the 2022 invasion, in transport the investigators linked to sanctioned goods and military products.

The website openDemocracy reported in 2023 on the company's role in carrying equipment critical to the Russian military from China. Only three of the company's An-124s are currently active.

There is an ordinary explanation available. Egypt is a major destination for commercial heavy cargo, and an An-124 routing from China through Central Asia to Cairo is consistent with legitimate project freight. Egypt is also a longstanding Russian arms customer. Volga-Dnepr has said it stopped carrying military cargo in 2018; Western governments that have examined its record disagree, and the Islamic Republic has spent more than four decades perfecting the art of moving sensitive goods under commercial cover.

The pattern around it

Around that flight, several categories of traffic rose after the war began.

Local callsigns in the 795 series, searchable under identifiers such as 795M12 and 795A01, were rare before the war and rose sharply from April: 11 in April, 7 in May and 15 in June. Most were logged with no recorded origin or as Mil Mi-8 military transport helicopters, sometimes several times in a day.

On July 6, three days before the bridge was struck, three such flights were logged. One caveat matters here: the same callsign sometimes appears several times within minutes, which may mean genuine repeat flights or may mean several ground receivers logging one signal, so these counts may be inflated.

Flights with no recorded origin rose from a single instance in January to 8, 6, 4, 9 and 7 in the months from February to June, with two more in the first nine days of July. Given what that category captures, this is the closest the data comes to a measure of non-commercial traffic, and it went from one a month before the war to an average of nearly seven a month after it began.

Callsigns in the RSD series, used by Russian state and military flights, together with Tupolev Tu-204 and Ilyushin Il-96 aircraft, increased noticeably in May. Ilyushin Il-76 heavy transports arriving from within Turkmenistan were logged twice in February and twice in May, with none in the pre-war months. Three AgustaWestland AW139 helicopters, a type used in government and military roles, landed in May and June, though similar flights also appeared in November.

None of this is evidence of military transfers through Ashgabat. There is no official statement or document to that effect, and the relative rise in irregular traffic could have explanations that have nothing to do with the bridge 100 kilometers to the south.

What the data does show is a change in the rhythm of arrivals at Turkmenistan's main airport that coincides with the intensification of the war, and that was building in the weeks before a railway line to Russia was hit.

Iran International has asked US Central Command to confirm the strike and explain the choice of target. It had not responded at the time of publication; this report will be updated if it does.

But the fighting is also showing why a weakened axis can remain dangerous: it does not have to win territory to impose costs on Iran’s adversaries.

Yemen’s Houthis dramatically escalated their attacks on Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, striking four southern cities with missiles and drones. The group targeted a Saudi airbase in Khamis Mushait and Saudi Aramco assets in Abha, Najran and Jazan, setting oil installations ablaze. Saudi authorities said 73 people were wounded, including women and children.

The attacks also threatened to widen the war’s economic impact beyond the Strait of Hormuz, where the US-Iran conflict has already disrupted energy flows. Brent crude briefly touched $99.46 a barrel on Tuesday, its highest level since July 24.

“They’re not really fighting five separate wars, they’re just using five instruments of the same coercive strategy,” Fatima Abo Alasrar, a researcher and author on Yemen and Iran and founder of The Ideology Machine, told Iran International.

The timing, Alasrar said, matters.

Iran is exerting pressure around the Strait of Hormuz while the Houthis can create another pressure point around Bab al-Mandab, forcing Iran’s adversaries to contend with threats near two of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints.

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  From Hormuz to Bab el-Mandeb, conflict converges on vital shipping lanes

“The lesson that the Houthis appear to have learned is that escalation produces leverage,” she said, even without territorial gains.

That leaves Saudi Arabia with a difficult choice: escalate in an effort to substantially weaken the Houthis and risk a wider war or seek a political exit that could reinforce the belief in both Sanaa and Tehran that military pressure can ultimately produce concessions.

Houthis called Saudi Arabia’s bluff

Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemeni-American geopolitical analyst and risk adviser who heads the Washington DC-based Basha Report, said the Houthis helped bring about the renewed war by assuming Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s internationally recognized government would avoid a return to full-scale fighting.

“The Houthis were hoping to call a bluff — a Saudi and a government bluff,” al-Basha told Iran International.

Asked whether they miscalculated, he replied: “Of course, of course.”

Yet al-Basha said the Iran war has also reinforced the Houthis’ belief in the value of escalation.

“They feel that the best way for you to get what you want is to use force,” he said.

The confrontation follows an earlier dispute over an Iranian aircraft carrying a Houthi delegation back from Tehran following the funeral of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Analysts told Iran International at the time that the flight may have been an opening move in an effort to establish an air bridge into Houthi-controlled Yemen and rebuild the group’s strategic capabilities.

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  One flight, two chokepoints: why Iran wants an air bridge to Yemen

“The alliance is no longer secretive or covert, it’s very public,” al-Basha said of the Iran-Houthi relationship.

Can battlefield gains change the equation?

Forces loyal to Yemen’s internationally recognized government have now launched counterattacks across several fronts, with officials openly declaring their intention to eventually recapture Sanaa.

But al-Basha cautioned against assuming the Houthis are close to defeat. He said losing strategically important territory, rather than simply patches of ground, could eventually push them toward negotiations.

One place to watch is Hodeidah, whose port al-Basha described as “the lung that the Houthis breathe from.” The group’s position around Hodeidah, Bab al-Mandab and the Red Sea is central to its ability to threaten maritime traffic.

Alasrar, however, said territorial losses do not necessarily eliminate Houthi leverage.

“They can lose ground and still increase their regional leverage,” she said.

The Houthis have threatened further attacks against Saudi economic and military infrastructure, raising the prospect of greater disruption around Bab al-Mandab while the Iran conflict continues to put pressure on Hormuz

A ‘win-win’ for Tehran?

Danny Citrinowicz of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies sees that predicament as advantageous for Iran.

“For them it’s amazing. So it’s a win-win for them,” Citrinowicz told Iran International.

If Saudi Arabia backs down, he argues, Iran gains room to strengthen the Houthis. If Riyadh keeps fighting, instability around Bab al-Mandab creates another source of economic pressure while Iran contests Hormuz.

“It definitely worked in the Iranian favor,” he said. “The Iranians are learning from that, unfortunately.”

But it leaves Saudi Arabia with two costly options. Citrinowicz said the Houthis have “crossed the Rubicon” and are unlikely simply to retreat. As Saudi-backed forces approach areas the group considers critical, he expects Houthi attacks against the kingdom to intensify.

A moment of truth for the Mecca Defence Alliance

The escalation is also posing an early test for the Mecca Defence Alliance, the collective defense pact signed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan on August 7.

The agreement stipulates that an armed attack against any one of the three countries is to be regarded as an attack against all three.

Yet neither Turkey nor Pakistan has so far entered the fighting militarily on Saudi Arabia’s behalf.

Citrinowicz calls it “a moment of truth” for the alliance, with neither country so far entering the fighting militarily.

Will Washington hold Iran responsible?

The United States is now explicitly pointing toward Tehran.

“The Houthis in many ways are agents and proxies of the Iranians. I think behind some of this is clearly the Iranian hand,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters when asked about the attacks on Saudi Arabia.

Rubio said Washington has a strong defensive military relationship with Riyadh and is closely watching developments.

His comments revive a warning President Donald Trump issued on July 23.

Trump said then that Washington would hold Iran responsible if the Houthis resumed attacks, describing the group as a “Surrogate and/or Proxy of Iran” and warning of “major military punishment” against Iran and the Houthis.

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The Houthis have now resumed major attacks against Saudi Arabia. Rubio has publicly pointed to an Iranian hand, but Trump has yet to publicly repeat the threat he made in July.

That leaves a consequential question as the conflict widens: if Washington considers the Houthis an Iranian proxy, how far is it prepared to go in holding Tehran responsible for what they do?

The coming days and weeks are likely to bring advances and retreats on both sides, with territory changing hands and apparent victories proving temporary. The battlefield remains highly fluid, and both sides appear determined to keep fighting, making it too early to draw sweeping conclusions from any single development.

But even without a clear Houthi victory, Iran may stand to gain. As long as the fighting forces Saudi Arabia to expend resources, keeps pressure on Bab al-Mandab and stretches the attention of Tehran’s adversaries, the Houthis can continue to provide Iran with leverage even while under pressure themselves.

The conflict has a long way to go for now and consequences reverberate from Yemen across an already destabilized region.