Trump says Iran is ‘not the bully of the Middle East anymore’

Iran’s leadership recently approved pardons or reduced sentences for 2,577 prisoners. The announcement came with the usual ceremonial packaging: a religious occasion, a request from the head of the judiciary and a generous act of compassion from above.

It is an impressive number. Large enough to make headlines and perhaps create the impression that something in Iran is becoming softer.

At almost the same time, the Revolutionary Court in Isfahan sentenced ten people arrested following the January protests to death. So much for the softer side.

These ten sentences are shocking, but they are not an isolated story. They were handed down in the middle of an execution campaign that has already taken hundreds of lives this year.

Iran Human Rights recorded at least 532 executions in the first eight months of 2026, including 82 in August alone. Only 77 of those 532 executions were announced by official sources. The rest were documented through the organization’s network and verified using independent sources.

In other words, while the Islamic Republic publishes its pardons, most of its executions happen with considerably less enthusiasm for publicity.

Iran Human Rights recorded at least 1,639 executions in 2025, a 68 percent increase from the previous year and the highest annual figure the organization has documented since 1989.

Many were sentenced to death for murder or drug-related offenses, often after proceedings criticized for serious violations of due process. But that distinction does not make the wider execution spree irrelevant to political repression.

The gallows create their own atmosphere. When a state executes people on such a scale, often without public acknowledgment, every new death sentence against a protester carries a very clear message.

At least 31 protesters had been executed by the end of August, according to Iran Human Rights. Twenty-nine of them had been arrested in connection with the January protests.

Amnesty International has also warned that dozens of protesters and dissidents remain under death sentences or at risk of execution.

The ten defendants in Isfahan are therefore not the entire story. They are the latest names added to a much larger campaign.

The case is known as the “Isfahan Shohada Square case.” According to matching reports by HRANA and Hengaw, those sentenced to death are Taraneh Rahimi, Navid Elyasi, Abolfazl Dadgostar, Mehdi Mansouri, Ahmadreza Saeidi, Mehrdad Boveyri, Mohammad Mehdi Asadi, Armin Gholami, Parsa Jafari and Mehdi Jafari, also known as Mehdi Jafari Khosravi.

All ten were also sentenced to 11 years in prison. Six other defendants received terms ranging from 16 to 36 years. Together, the prison sentences imposed on the 16 defendants amount to 256 years.

The charges include moharebeh, usually translated as “waging war against God,” allegedly through carrying bladed weapons, as well as destruction of public property, assembly and collusion, and propaganda against the state.

Two people died during the events around Shohada Square: a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a homeless man. Yet the indictment reportedly did not charge the defendants directly with killing either of them.

According to HRANA and Hengaw, no documented evidence was presented establishing their responsibility for those deaths.

One detail is especially difficult to forget. A video found on the phones of some defendants reportedly shows Taraneh Rahimi, the only woman among the ten sentenced to death, trying to stop people from beating the homeless man.

She was reportedly attempting to prevent violence. The court sentenced her to death.

The defendants’ lawyers were denied access to significant parts of the case files and were not given sufficient time to review the evidence, according to the two organizations. The hearing was held inside Dastgerd Prison rather than an ordinary public courtroom.

During the proceedings, Ahmadreza Saeidi told the judges that an investigator had tortured him with electric shocks to his neck and genitals. There is no public indication that the allegation led to an independent investigation or caused the court to reconsider evidence obtained during his interrogation.

The full judgment has not been published, leaving no way for independent observers to examine the evidence or understand how the court justified ten death sentences without directly charging the defendants over the two deaths at the center of the case.

The verdicts are preliminary and can still be appealed. For the families, it offers limited comfort. They now have to wait while the same judicial system accused of denying the defense proper access to the case decides whether their loved ones should live.

This is what makes the pardon announcement so revealing.

Clemency is real for those who receive it. A prisoner returning home is not a public relations statistic to the family waiting at the door. A reduced sentence can restore years of someone’s life, and none of that should be dismissed.

But selective clemency should not be mistaken for a change in direction, especially while executions continue at this scale.

The 2,577 pardons offer the public one image of the state. The hundreds of executions offer another, one that receives considerably less official attention. Political defendants are being placed inside a system of capital punishment already operating at extraordinary speed.

The Isfahan case shows how that machinery can be directed against protest. A broad charge such as “waging war against God,” limited access to evidence, an allegation of torture and a closed hearing inside a prison can lead all the way to the gallows.

The pardons are meant to be seen. Most of the executions are not. Behind the official display of mercy, the machinery has not slowed down. Ten more people have now been placed in its path.

Nour News, a website close to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said Wednesday that the latest escalation showed signs of reversing the logic of the blockade.

“The US naval blockade was supposed to target Iran’s economic resilience by cutting or restricting its export routes,” it said.

But with both sides now attacking tankers and military vessels and traffic through Hormuz again sharply reduced, “the cost of the blockade is no longer distributed solely on the Iranian side.”

The Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) said Wednesday that Iranian forces had responded to US attacks on five Iranian tankers by targeting two US warships and eight oil tankers, as well as 10 “violating vessels” attempting to pass through Iran’s restricted zone in Hormuz.

The US denied that its warships had been hit.

‘An eye for an eye’

Iran is now threatening to widen that confrontation geographically.

IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebbi said a new restricted area would extend from the direction of Chabahar through parts of the Gulf of Oman and Arabian Sea along routes leading towards Hormuz. Its precise coordinates have yet to be announced.

The IRGC has also warned tankers and other vessels at ports and anchorages in Kuwait and Bahrain to leave, threatening those that remain.

Ships entering without Iranian permission would be placed on a sanctions list and denied maritime, insurance and other services, Mohebbi said, including during future passages through Hormuz.

Conservative political activist Amir Chizari, who is close to parliament speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, advocated going further, calling for Iran to prevent ships from using ports in Persian Gulf countries hosting US military bases.

“Head for head, eye for eye—that means all these ports will be blockaded by Iran,” he wrote on X.

Nour News said the significance lay not simply in creating another restricted zone but “in changing the logic of confrontation with the blockade.”

“Tehran does not necessarily need to seize a ship to change the behaviour of an actor; it is enough for the cost of interacting with a vessel or network to rise so that the other side retreats in advance,” it said.

Diplomacy narrows

The increasingly expansive strategy comes as prospects for reviving diplomacy appear to be shrinking.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tuesday that a US return to its commitments and the Islamabad understanding would “pave the way for a return to normality.”

But Middle East Eye reported Wednesday, citing two sources close to the Iranian government, that President Donald Trump had conveyed through Pakistani and Qatari officials that Washington would not return to the previous understanding.

The absence of a diplomatic route raises the stakes of Iran’s strategy: Tehran is betting that making the blockade more expensive for Washington, commercial shipping and regional states will eventually create pressure to ease it.

A costly gamble

Inside Iran, critics warn that the same strategy could inflict enormous damage on the country itself.

Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, a conservative former chairman of parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, accused hardliners of risking Iran’s tanker fleet.

“The National Iranian Tanker Company is the largest tanker company in the world. They are setting the country’s unparalleled wealth on fire. This Iran-burning must end,” he wrote on X.

Hardliners counter that such economic calculations make little sense when they believe Iran faces an existential threat.

One user responding to Falahatpisheh asked what guarantee Iran had that peace would last if it compromised now, or that the United States would not attack again months later.

The costs of escalation are already becoming apparent. Brent crude rose above $100 a barrel Wednesday, while flows through Hormuz fell as low as two million barrels a day after reaching eight to nine million before fighting resumed.

In Iran, the dollar rose above 2.33 million rials on the foreign exchange market, another record low for the national currency.

Iran’s strategy amounts to a gamble that widening the geographic and economic costs of the blockade will eventually make it harder to sustain. But the deeper Tehran extends the confrontation beyond Hormuz, the greater the risk that those costs return to Iran itself.

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.

The resolution was spearheaded by the United States and the E3 (Britain, France and Germany) after the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran had failed to provide inspectors with access to nuclear facilities and information needed to account for its enriched uranium stocks.

It is the first time Iran has been reported to the Security Council by the IAEA since 2006, when an escalating confrontation over Tehran’s nuclear activities moved from the Vienna-based watchdog to the UN body and eventually led to a series of Security Council sanctions.

The latest referral comes in radically different circumstances. Iranian nuclear facilities have been heavily damaged in US and Israeli strikes, and inspectors have not returned to the affected sites since the attacks began in June 2025.

The IAEA says it has consequently lost track of Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 60% purity, which before the strikes stood at 440.9 kilograms.

Iran maintains that its nuclear program is peaceful and has argued that the US and Israeli attacks themselves made continued inspections impossible.

Tehran’s mission to international organizations in Vienna said on X that the resolution would facilitate the “further erosion and ultimate collapse of the proliferation regime as a whole,” intensifying Tehran’s criticism of the IAEA as politically driven.

China and Russia joined Iran ahead of Wednesday’s vote in opposing the Western-backed resolution, saying the referral “lacks a legal basis” and would aggravate the crisis rather than aid diplomacy.

The three countries described the finding of Iranian non-compliance as “politically motivated and far-fetched” and argued that US and Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities were the primary reason Tehran had subsequently denied the IAEA access.

The vote adds another layer of diplomatic pressure as Iran faces an intensifying war with the United States and widening economic sanctions.

Britain this week unveiled tougher restrictions targeting Iran’s access to its financial system, trade and shipping, following the reimposition of UN sanctions under the snapback mechanism initiated last year by Britain, France and Germany.

What happens at the Security Council is less certain. Russia and China both hold vetoes, making substantive action against Iran difficult even as the referral returns the nuclear dispute to the UN body for the first time in two decades.

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.