US sanctions crypto exchange linked to Iranian tycoon Babak Zanjani

Vantor Technologies imagery from September 13 shows extensive construction at Taleghan 2 in southeastern Tehran, with Iran erecting a large tarp over the destroyed underground structure that obscures work beneath it from satellites and aerial reconnaissance, the Institute for Science and International Security said in a report published Thursday.

The imagery shows dump trucks, bulldozers, concrete pump trucks, mixers and cranes operating across the site, according to the institute. Iran has also added concrete reinforcement on one side of the facility, while a similar structure identified in July appears to have been completed on the other side, measures the institute said would provide additional blast protection against aerial attack.

Repair work began in June, initially focused on sealing three penetration holes left by bunker-buster weapons used in an attack three months earlier. High-resolution imagery reviewed by the institute in June and July showed the holes being excavated, covered with reinforcing steel and prepared for permanent concrete caps.

The reconstruction marks Iran's second effort to rebuild Taleghan 2 in less than two years.

The original facility was destroyed in an Israeli strike in October 2024. Iran began rebuilding it in May 2025, eventually constructing a reinforced structure encased in concrete and covered with earth. By early 2026, the site had effectively become a hardened bunker, with additional defensive features including concrete barriers and protection against drones.

In November, satellite images of the reconstruction showed a large cylindrical object inside the facility resembling a high-explosive containment chamber. The institute estimated it at about 36 meters long and at least 12 meters wide and said such a chamber could be used for explosive experiments relevant to nuclear weapons development, though imagery alone could not establish its purpose.

The rebuilt facility was struck again in early March 2026. Satellite images afterward showed three large penetration holes over the portion of the buried structure where the suspected cylindrical chamber had been installed. The Institute for Science and International Security assessed that the internal structure and probable chamber were likely destroyed.

The institute said the pace of the latest reconstruction raises questions about why Tehran has repeatedly restored a facility with a history tied to work relevant to nuclear weapons.

Ties to past nuclear weapons research

Taleghan 2's significance predates the recent attacks. The institute says the facility was used during Iran's AMAD Plan, a program that Western governments and nuclear experts have linked to work on a nuclear explosive device in the early 2000s.

According to the institute's reconstruction of material from Iran's nuclear archive, Taleghan 2 once housed a specially designed high-explosive chamber and flash X-ray equipment used to study explosive compression.

It says a scaled-down test of a multipoint initiation system — technology relevant to triggering an implosion-type nuclear weapon — was conducted there in 2003. The institute says the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) never inspected the Taleghan 2 building itself.

The IAEA's own 2015 assessment found that before the end of 2003 Iran had an organizational structure capable of coordinating a range of activities relevant to developing a nuclear explosive device.

Information available to the agency indicated that those activities became concentrated in the early 2000s under projects known as the AMAD Plan and were halted in late 2003.

The IAEA found that some related activities continued afterward but were not part of a coordinated effort. Iran denied both that it had a coordinated nuclear weapons program and that the AMAD Plan existed as such.

The agency revisited Iran's past nuclear work in a comprehensive safeguards assessment last year. It concluded that Lavizan-Shian, Varamin and Marivan, along with potentially related locations, had been part of an undeclared structured nuclear program until the early 2000s and that some activities involved undeclared nuclear material.

At the same time, the IAEA said it had no credible indications of an ongoing undeclared structured program of that kind. Tehran rejected the findings and maintained that it had declared all nuclear material required under its Safeguards obligations.

IAEA not able to monitor Iran’s nuclear program

The renewed work at Taleghan 2 comes as the IAEA says its ability to monitor Iran's current nuclear program has deteriorated sharply.

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said this week that the agency had conducted almost no in-field verification in Iran for more than six months, apart from an inspection of the Bushehr nuclear power plant in June.

The agency has also been unable for more than a year to maintain continuity of knowledge over previously declared stocks of enriched uranium at facilities affected by military strikes.

Before losing access, the IAEA estimated that Iran possessed 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched to as much as 60% purity. The agency has been unable to verify how much remains or its current location and has also said it still cannot establish the status of Iran's fourth declared enrichment facility at Isfahan.

Grossi called the lack of information and access a “serious proliferation concern” requiring urgent action.

Last week, the IAEA Board of Governors also reported Iran to the UN Security Council over safeguards non-compliance, after the agency said Tehran had failed to provide inspectors with information and access necessary to account for nuclear material. Iran called the move politically motivated and has argued that US and Israeli attacks on its facilities have made normal inspections impossible.

The Institute for Science and International Security said the purpose of the new Taleghan 2 facility still cannot be established from satellite imagery alone. But after two attacks and two reconstruction campaigns, it said Iran's continued investment in the site demonstrates its determination to restore the facility despite its sensitive history.

Instead, the latest speculation fits a pattern that has followed Pezeshkian since taking office in 2024: recurring calls for resignation or impeachment that intensify during periods of political, economic or geopolitical pressure.

The latest round was partly triggered by cryptic comments from Qom MP Mojtaba Zarei referring to a possible “coup” or coordinated political move against Pezeshkian.

Rouydad24 examined whether hardline networks, particularly Sharyan—the Persian acronym for the Strategic Network of Islamic Revolution Supporters—and allies of Saeed Jalili, Pezeshkian’s rival in the 2024 presidential election, were seeking early presidential elections.

The outlet presented no formal evidence of such a plan but pointed to repeated calls by radical lawmakers to invoke Article 89 of the Constitution, under which parliament can declare a president politically incompetent.

Mohsen Gharavian, a seminary and university lecturer, described the campaign to portray Pezeshkian as politically incompetent as a “targeted political conspiracy” and a soft “coup.”

Writing for Khabar Online, he argued that ultra-conservatives angered by their 2024 electoral defeat were using political networks and sustained media pressure to weaken the government.

In a separate Khabar Online report, moderate politician Hassan Rasouli criticised proposals to impeach Pezeshkian or transfer executive authority to First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref.

Rasouli said such moves, particularly amid heightened national security pressures, amounted to “a direct attack on high-level governance cohesion.” He dismissed comparisons with the 1981 removal of Iran’s first president, Abolhassan Banisadr, as political theatre rather than a serious legal pathway.

Threats to use parliament against sitting presidents have a long history in the Islamic Republic.

During Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s second term from 1993 to 1997, conservative opponents mounted sustained pressure on his government, including the impeachment of cabinet ministers.

Hassan Rouhani also faced repeated impeachment threats during his presidency, particularly from opponents of his diplomatic engagement with Washington.

The only successful precedent remains Banisadr in 1981. Parliament declared him politically incompetent during the Iran-Iraq war, after which Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini formally dismissed him.

Banisadr’s removal has since become a recurring reference point in disputes over presidential authority. Hardline lawmakers have invoked his case in attacks on Pezeshkian, particularly over diplomacy, economic policy and the conduct of the war.

But invoking Article 89 and successfully removing a president are different things. There is currently no indication that Pezeshkian’s opponents have assembled the parliamentary support required to declare him politically incompetent.

Opposition to Pezeshkian has nevertheless persisted since he took office following Ebrahim Raisi’s death in 2024. Calls for his resignation, comparisons with Banisadr and threats to invoke Article 89 have resurfaced during periods of economic turmoil, currency volatility and war.

The repeated threat of impeachment can serve a political purpose even without enough votes to remove the president: keeping his competence under question and constraining his room for manoeuvre on economic and diplomatic policy.

This week’s talk of a “coup” and renewed debate over presidential competence therefore appears less a new escalation than the latest iteration of a political struggle that has accompanied Pezeshkian for much of his presidency.

Four years have passed since Zhina Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who had travelled to Tehran to visit family, died after being detained by the morality police.

She could never have imagined how her name would appear on walls, streets and university campuses, or on the lips of millions of Iranians, or how three simple words, “Woman, Life, Freedom,” would become one of the most enduring slogans in Iran’s modern history.

The story of 2022 is not only the story of a slogan. It is the story of the price thousands paid to break through the wall of fear.

Zhina’s death on September 16, 2022, sparked protests across Iran. Human rights organizations documented live ammunition and pellet fire, mass arrests, torture, sexual violence and the killing of protesters. HRANA later recorded protests in all 31 provinces, 160 cities and 143 universities, and reported at least 530 people killed, including 68 children and teenagers.

Nika Shakarami and Sarina Esmailzadeh were both sixteen. Kian Pirfalak was nine, remembered for “In the name of the God of the rainbow” and the small boat he built with his own hands. Khodanour Lojei, a 27-year-old Baluch man, lives on in videos of him dancing, alongside the haunting image of him with his hands tied to a pole and water placed before him while in detention.

Their stories were different, but each became part of the collective memory of Woman, Life, Freedom.

Then came the gallows. Mohammad Mehdi Karami, a 22-year-old karate champion, was executed after being sentenced in connection with the fortieth-day commemoration for Hadis Najafi. Seyed Mohammad Hosseini, who worked at a poultry farm and taught martial arts to disadvantaged children for free, was executed the same day; human rights reports say his confessions were obtained under torture. Majidreza Rahnavard, executed only 23 days after his arrest, asked before his death that people not cry at his grave but celebrate and play happy music.

These names are reminders that behind every statistic was a family.

The repression did not end with the street protests. Students, schoolchildren, journalists, artists, athletes and activists were arrested. Families sometimes went weeks or months without news. Some detainees appeared in televised “confessions” that human rights organizations said were tainted by torture. Families seeking the truth about those killed also faced pressure. Others eventually left Iran after imprisonment, threats and persecution, carrying the cost of the uprising into exile, lost careers, interrupted education and separation from family.

And yet one of the movement’s deepest legacies is visible in an ordinary scene: a woman walking down an Iranian street without compulsory hijab.

The state responded with fines, vehicle seizures, arrests, flogging, business closures, cameras and surveillance. But women’s defiance continued. Four years after Zhina’s death, a woman without compulsory hijab is no longer the exceptional image it was in September 2022; it has become part of Iran’s social reality.

That is also where the connection to Dey 1404 (December 2025 and January 2026) becomes important.

The new protests began amid the collapse of the currency, inflation and protests by Tehran bazaar merchants, but quickly moved beyond economic demands. According to HRANA data cited in a UK government report, by January 27 at least 656 gatherings had been recorded in 201 cities across all 31 provinces, compared with 160 cities during the 1401 protests.

There are no reliable data to compare total participation, but the later uprising was documented across more cities and had a far higher reported toll. By March 2026, HRANA had recorded information on more than 7,000 people killed and more than 53,000 arrested in connection with the Dey and Bahman protests, far above the Iranian government’s figures.

HRANA described the confirmed cases as the minimum it could verify, with thousands more still awaiting review. Internet shutdowns, pressure on families and the lack of independent access inside Iran made the full scale harder to establish.

But the difference was not only scale. The society that entered January 2026 was not the same society that had existed before September 2022.

Iranians had lived through a national experience of disobedience, broken taboos, solidarity, bullets, prison, executions, migration and grief.

Abolfazl Hajizadegan’s research on “The Lives of Dey,” based on the social-media traces of 957 of those killed, found people from widely different professions and backgrounds, from baristas, repair workers and sports coaches to lawyers, professors, filmmakers and musicians.

The uprising also entered families in ways that made the breadth of the upheaval painfully visible.

Mehdi Shafiei, 44, and his 18-year-old son Mani were killed in Eslamshahr less than two hours apart. In Bushehr, 37-year-old nurse Mansoureh Heydari and her husband, Behrouz Mansouri, were both killed, leaving behind two children. Elsewhere, fathers and daughters were arrested together.

This does not mean that the 1401 and 1404 uprisings were identical, or that all protesters shared one ideology, leader or vision of Iran’s future. Their immediate triggers were different. But something had changed in society’s relationship with fear.

Repression continued, but the memory of disobedience could not simply be erased. Hajizadegan’s research suggests that those who came into the streets in 1404 did not acquire their anger overnight. Their earlier posts showed dissatisfaction and protest stretching back through previous protest waves, including the November 2019 protests and the 2022 uprising.

Dey 1404 was therefore not simply the explosion of an economic crisis. It was part of a longer accumulation of experience. Perhaps this is one of the most important legacies Woman, Life, Freedom left behind: not a single organization or leadership, but a social experience of the possibility of saying “no.”

The government’s response in Dey 1404 was severe. From January 8, the internet was almost completely shut down. Amnesty International reported widespread killings, mass arrests, enforced disappearances, torture and systematic pressure on victims’ families.

Yet behind every new number was another life: Hamid Mahdavi, Mohammad Jabbari, Mehdi and Mani, Mansoureh and Behrouz, just as Nika, Sarina, Kian and Khodanour had been lives, not statistics, four years earlier.

From September 2022 to January 2026, the names and faces changed and the sparks were different, but each chapter left something for the next: memory, wounds, language, courage and sometimes hope.

Zhina is not only the name of a young woman, and Woman, Life, Freedom is not merely the name of a few months of protest. It became part of the social and political language of a generation that paid an extraordinarily heavy price and emerged with a different understanding of choice, dignity and the possibility of standing firm.

Zhina and thousands of others killed in Iran’s protest movements are no longer with us. But something of them remains: in the hair of a woman who chooses not to cover it; in a mother who refuses to let her child’s name be erased; in a father who rejects the official account of his son’s death; in a family that dances at a loved one’s grave despite threats; and in a generation that has not abandoned its questions about freedom, dignity and the future.

Repression can empty the streets for a time, but it cannot erase what a generation has lived through.

The footage shows several uniformed officers surrounding the teenager as he is struck and subjected to sexual humiliation. At one point, an officer appears to expose or touch the boy's buttocks as other officers watch.

The atmosphere captured by the camera has become almost as central to the outrage as the physical treatment itself. The officers can be heard joking during the encounter.

“We haven't seen his buttocks yet,” one voice says in Iranian Turkish during the recording. Another uses a homophobic slur against the teenager.

East Azarbaijan province police confirmed that the confrontation occurred in Tabriz on June 4 after the person was detained following a street fight, according to the police account carried by state media.

The police said "the officers responsible for the improper treatment" of the teenager are in custody. It said it took "internal disciplinary action against the officers as soon as it learned of the incident, but added that this does not preclude judicial proceedings against them."

Dadban, an Iranian legal rights group, argued that the images should not be reduced to “improper behavior” or an internal disciplinary issue.

The beating and humiliation of a detainee by state officers can carry criminal liability under Iranian law, Dadban said. If the person shown is a minor, the sexual conduct would also fall under legal protections covering children and adolescents and should trigger an immediate, independent criminal investigation, the group said.

‘What happens behind closed doors?’

The images quickly produced a torrent of anger online, much of it centered not simply on the violence but on how openly it appeared to take place.

“If they sexually assault a child in front of a camera, what is happening in detention centers?” one social media user wrote, invoking the death of Mahsa Amini after her detention by morality police in 2022.

“When this happens publicly and with this degree of impunity, there can be no guarantee about people's safety in detention centers and behind closed doors,” another reaction said.

Another user returned to the same fear in starker terms: if this can happen to a teenager in front of a camera, “what is happening in detention centers?”

“If we die from this pain, it would be understandable,” another wrote.

Some demanded that the footage be circulated widely enough for every officer involved to be identified.

Another video fuels the anger

The footage emerged only days after another video from Tabriz circulated widely online, showing a police officer holding two young men's heads close to the loud exhaust of their vehicle.

The apparent purpose was to force them to experience the noise their car had been making.

That video drew significant engagement on social media after appearing online.

Dadban argued that even if the men had committed a traffic offense, police had no authority to invent a roadside punishment. Officers could document an offense, take measures permitted by law and refer suspects to the appropriate judicial authority, the group said.

The two recordings circulation within days of each other has intensified an online argument about police power, humiliation and accountability.

Bonuses sharpen anger

The videos have surfaced just as reports of new bonus payments to members of Iran's armed forces have spread online, adding another source of anger over the treatment of security personnel.

Reports published said a presidential bonus linked to service during the recent war had been deposited for armed forces personnel, with 100 million rials ($43) for staff personnel and 150 million rials ($65) for operational personnel.

Normal military personnel generally earn about 300 million rials ($130) a month, according to figures circulating with reports of the payments.

The timing has drawn a darker interpretation from some government critics on social media. They portrayed the payments as an effort to keep security forces loyal and ready to use greater force should another round of anti-government protests erupt.

That fear comes against a charged backdrop. Security forces were deployed in cities across Iran before a gasoline price increase took effect on September 8, with police, special units and Basij forces reported on streets and around fuel stations in cities including Tabriz, Tehran, Mashhad, Shiraz and Isfahan.

For critics circulating the police videos, the combination is combustible: footage they see as evidence of officers abusing their authority arriving at the same time as reports of authorities rewarding members of the security apparatus.

One reaction to the teenager's treatment went further, questioning why people had previously objected to police stations being destroyed by Israel during the war.

George Floyd comparison resurfaces

One social media response to the teenager's video pointed directly to the contrast with the Iranian leadership's reaction to police violence abroad.

“If American police had committed such a crime, what would the Islamic Republic be doing now?” the user wrote.

It is a comparison with a documented precedent.

After Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd in May 2020, former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei used Floyd's death to criticize the United States and its treatment of Black Americans.

Khamenei described Floyd's killing as revealing the “nature” of the US system and invoked Floyd's dying words, “I can't breathe,” in arguing that they reflected broader grievances against Washington.

Iranian officials and state media devoted extensive attention to Floyd's killing and the demonstrations that followed.

The comparison adds another layer to the anger surrounding the Tabriz footage: For those sharing the teenager's video, the camera has now turned inward.

And beneath the insults, abuse, laughter and blows, one question has persisted across the reaction: if officers can do this while somebody is filming, what happens when nobody is watching?

The House approved the sweeping sanctions legislation by a vote of 262-159 on Wednesday, after the Senate passed it 86-11 last month. Fifty-eight Democrats supported the bill, while seven Republicans opposed it.

The legislation would authorize the president to impose tariffs of up to 100% on the largest purchasers of Russian oil and natural gas and sanction senior Russian officials, oligarchs, banks and financial institutions. At Trump’s request, lawmakers also expanded the measure to include sanctions targeting Iran’s energy and weapons sectors.

Republican Representative Joe Wilson welcomed its passage and said lawmakers were looking forward to Trump signing it into law.

The measure could affect major importers of Iranian and Russian energy. India said Thursday that it had noted the bill’s passage while emphasizing that it remained committed to securing energy supplies through diversified sourcing and in response to changing market conditions.

The sanctions push came alongside indications that Washington and Tehran may be exploring a path toward ending the war. Trump said on Wednesday after arriving in North Carolina that he hoped the conflict was nearing its conclusion, adding that Iran was seeking an agreement.

“Well, hopefully we’re toward the end of the war,” Trump told reporters. “Iran is very much wanting to make a deal. We’ll see how that works out.”

Trump is also expected to meet leaders or foreign ministers from the six Persian Gulf states on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York next Tuesday, Axios reported. The meeting is expected to address the next phase of the war and US proposals for a postwar strategy.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, meanwhile, said consultations during his visit to China had been successful and endorsed Chinese President Xi Jinping’s proposals for ending the conflict.

China’s Foreign Ministry said Araghchi told Foreign Minister Wang Yi that Iran did not want the hostilities to continue and hoped to return to diplomacy. Wang urged Iran and the United States to revive the negotiating framework established under the Islamabad memorandum, called for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and backed dialogue between Iran and Persian Gulf states.

Araghchi also held separate telephone calls from Beijing with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, to discuss regional developments.

A parallel diplomatic channel emerged in Oman, where US officials met senior representatives of Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis over the weekend, Reuters reported. The Houthis said they had no intention of attacking American vessels and remained committed to their 2025 ceasefire with Washington, according to the report.

Two sources told Reuters that the group promised not to target US ships. A Yemeni source said the Houthis also pledged not to attack Israeli or other commercial vessels, with the exception of Saudi ships.

The discussions took place against a backdrop of continued fighting between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia. Riyadh said it intercepted a Houthi drone near Mecca this week, an allegation the group denied. Saudi Arabia has also sought air-defense assistance from France, Britain, Pakistan and Egypt as its interceptor stocks decline, the Associated Press reported.

Houthi-run media said Saudi strikes in Yemen on Thursday hit telecommunications towers in Taiz and killed one person in Abs. The Houthis also released footage they said showed the downing of a Saudi F-15, a claim that Saudi Arabia had not confirmed.

Maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remained severely constrained despite the diplomatic activity. Only three commodity vessels transited the waterway on Wednesday, down from 12 a day earlier and far below the 10-day average of about 17, Reuters reported, citing preliminary ship-tracking data.

US Central Command maintained that commercial traffic was still moving and that Iran did not control the strait. Its spokesperson said US forces had helped vessels carrying more than 900 million barrels of crude pass through the waterway since early May and had cleared mines from internationally recognized shipping lanes.

The sanctions bill, diplomatic contacts and continuing disruptions at Hormuz and in Yemen left Washington applying further economic pressure while testing whether negotiations could reduce the regional fighting.