Saudi Arabia has restarted its East-West oil pipeline and could resume crude exports from the Red Sea port of Yanbu later on Tuesday, Reuters reported, citing three sources briefed on the matter.
The pipeline was running at a low rate, two of the sources said.
Drone attacks forced Saudi Arabia to shut the pipeline on September 13, halting crude loadings at Yanbu, Reuters reported.
Iranian investigative journalist Yashar Soltani says the middlemen who move Iran's sanctioned oil revenues had a financial motive to wreck the June deal with Washington, and that the tanker attacks weeks later served it. Hardline outlets have answered with accusations of treason.
Speaking on an online program last week, Soltani said networks built to evade oil sanctions stood to lose from the June memorandum between Tehran and Washington, because implementing it would have cut their role in oil sales.
Three Saudi and Qatari tankers were attacked in the Strait of Hormuz less than three weeks after the memorandum was signed. Soltani said the attacks served to derail the agreement and prevent sanctions on Iranian oil from being lifted for good, keeping the networks in business.
The people he described as trustees are not the traders who sell the oil, he said, but the intermediaries who move the money. He named Ruhollah Razavi, son-in-law of Majid Motaghifar, spokesman for the hardline Paydari Party, as one of four who control much of the trade.
The margins are the point. Moving the proceeds of a single tanker carrying about $90 million of oil costs roughly $4 million through these intermediaries, Soltani said. Through SWIFT, the international banking system Iran is cut off from, it would cost about $500.
He also said the four had run monthly debts to the government in the hundreds of millions of dollars while using the money for other business, putting the monthly average attributed to Hossein Shamkhani, son of the late security chief Ali Shamkhani, at about $800 million.
Iranian outlets have recently named Razavi, Shamkhani and two others as the network's main trustees, and asked how they were chosen and how the system works.
The backlash
Fars News Agency, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, said Washington had violated the memorandum, particularly its provision on the Strait of Hormuz, and rejected any suggestion that Iran bore responsibility for its collapse.
"Recent reports, including material published by Yashar Soltani and affiliated media, seek to switch the roles of victim and culprit and portray Iran as responsible for the failure of the memorandum," Fars wrote. "The narrative that vigilantes broke the agreement is simple and attractive, but when placed alongside the successive violations by the United States, it falls apart."
Tasnim, also linked to the Guards, called it performative justice-seeking. "If a nation is told that the war with the United States and Israel is not the product of the wickedness and crimes of these two regimes, but rather the result of the mischief of some people inside the country seeking to continue benefiting economically, what incentive will remain there for unity?" it asked.
The state broadcaster's political program Be Vaght-e Iran argued on social media that no commercial network could have carried out the attacks whatever its motive.
"Trustees have neither a military structure, nor anti-ship cruise missiles, nor links to the command levels of the IRGC and army," the post said. "This type of narrative is not only unprofessional, but also a dangerous and disturbing game aimed at discrediting the defenders of the country's security who have stood by this land for years."
A military analyst in an accompanying video said that while the United States had violated the memorandum, only Iran's wartime command, the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, could have ordered missile strikes.
The accusations
Hardline users have accused Soltani of serving those who want to pressure Iran's armed forces.
Ehsan Hosseini, who edits the hardline publication Khat-e Energy, said Soltani was trying to swap one set of trustees for another: "The project Yashar Soltani has launched is not against the trustees; it seeks to oust some and replace them with other trustees, those who failed to return $13 billion in oil revenues and caused the January protests."
Majid Shakeri, an adviser to parliament speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, called the revelations a propaganda campaign by one group of trustees against another. Both groups, he said, had contributed to two wars and to last year's protests, and anyone attributing Iran's response to the American violation to this rivalry deserved a "field trial for wartime treason."
Journalist Davoud Modarresian put the blame on the government, which he said had neither the nerve to leave the dollar-based financial order nor the ability to control the trustees.
"By implementing currency shocks and releasing the dollar exchange rate in December, they pushed the economy to the brink of collapse and created the conditions for the enemy's military greed," he wrote.
Not all of it was hostile. "If oil is sold without obstruction or sanctions by the ministry under the memorandum, and its money returns through transparent channels, the profits of the trustees and the IRGC will be cut," one user wrote, arguing that this pointed to collusion between the two.
Diplomatic efforts around the Iran war intensified in New York as Western and regional governments pushed to restore Hormuz shipping, curb Houthi attacks and lay the groundwork for renewed talks with Tehran.
The push gathered pace around the UN General Assembly, where Qatar said it was trying to secure even a short-term agreement between Iran and the United States that could reopen negotiations. Doha said restoring navigation through Hormuz and removing the threat of military action would be necessary for meaningful talks.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, meanwhile, arrived in New York and spoke by phone with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres about the General Assembly agenda and efforts to advance international peace and security, according to the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim news agency.
The diplomacy is taking place as Persian Gulf Arab states increasingly discuss not only how to stop the fighting but what a future security arrangement with Iran could look like. Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have called for greater regional dialogue, with Qatar advocating a common security framework involving Tehran and Persian Gulf states. The Financial Times reported that Saudi Arabia has also discussed a possible non-aggression pact with Iran. The FT described the war as prompting Persian Gulf states to reassess their approach to regional security.
That effort is closely tied to the disruption around Hormuz, which has become one of the war’s central economic pressure points. French President Emmanuel Macron said after meeting US President Donald Trump in New York that France and the United States would work together to protect critical Middle East energy infrastructure and freedom of navigation through the strait. They would also seek a moratorium on strikes against energy infrastructure. Macron had warned earlier that disruption around Hormuz and attacks on alternative routes were putting global energy markets under severe pressure.
Washington is also looking beyond the immediate shipping disruption. The Trump administration has proposed contributing $5 billion to a fund to rebuild damaged regional energy infrastructure and reduce reliance on Hormuz, with eight Middle Eastern partners asked to provide matching contributions for a potential $10 billion fund. The Wall Street Journal reported that some regional officials questioned whether rebuilding could begin safely without a peace agreement with Tehran, given the risk of renewed attacks.
The economic consequences are already being felt beyond Iran. Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi said Tehran had prevented Iraqi tankers from passing through Hormuz despite Baghdad considering Iran a regional partner, and said Iraq had lost about $60 billion in revenue since the war began. US Central Command, meanwhile, said its forces had redirected 110 commercial vessels as part of Washington’s blockade against Iran.
Pressure is also spreading westward toward the Red Sea. Britain agreed to provide Saudi Arabia with limited defensive air-to-air refueling support after intensified attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis, while G7 foreign ministers meeting in New York called on Iran to stop arming and supporting the group. They warned that continued Houthi attacks threatened civilian shipping, international trade and wider stability.
At the same time, Tehran has continued to signal military readiness. An IRGC deputy commander said Iran was strengthening its missile, drone, cruise missile, cyber, electronic warfare and air-defense capabilities, underscoring the tension between the diplomatic activity in New York and the continuing risk of renewed escalation.
The diplomatic push is unfolding as the war continues to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, strain regional energy supplies and widen security concerns across the Middle East.
Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity in suppressing nationwide protests in January while two US strikes on civilian sites in February amounted to war crimes, the UN fact-finding mission on Iran told the Human Rights Council on Monday.
The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran said the Islamic Republic’s response to protests that began in December 2025 amounted to a widespread and systematic attack on civilians involving unlawful killings, torture, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances and severe restrictions on freedom of expression.
“The Iranian Government’s repression of the recent protests has led the Mission to find Iran responsible for gross human rights violations,” mission chair Sara Hossain told the council in Geneva, saying many amounted to crimes against humanity, including murder, imprisonment, torture and other inhumane acts.
The mission said the crackdown marked a significant escalation from previous patterns of repression, citing the scale of killings and violence, internet shutdowns, mass arrests and the use of the death penalty. It said it could not independently verify the overall toll but believed the number of people killed and injured was likely far higher than the government’s figures of 3,038 deaths and 25,000 injuries.
Classified government documents, field reports and accounts from medical workers, witnesses and victims’ families reviewed by Iran International’s Editorial Board showed that more than 36,500 people were killed by security forces on January 8 and 9 alone.
However, independent verification has been impossible amid communications restrictions and government pressure.
The unrest began on December 28 with protests over worsening economic conditions before spreading nationwide and turning into a broader challenge to the Islamic Republic.
In her Monday speech, Hossain said Iranians were now confronting both continued domestic repression and the large-scale US-Israeli military campaign that began on February 28.
She said Iranian authorities had also used the war to intensify persecution of protesters, describing the conflict as “a pretext for and accelerator of repression.”
Iran rejected the mission’s findings about its own conduct. Ambassador Ali Bahreini argued that economic pressure against Iran, combined with what Tehran describes as foreign manipulation and militarization of domestic unrest, amounted to crimes against humanity and accused the mission of ignoring those issues.
US war crime
The mission then turned to two US strikes carried out on the opening day of the war.
The United States and Israel launched attacks across Iran on February 28 in an operation Washington said was intended to severely weaken Iran’s military and prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon. President Donald Trump said at the outset that US forces would destroy Iran’s missile industry and navy, while Tehran denies seeking nuclear weapons. The attacks triggered Iranian retaliation against Israel and US-linked targets across the region.
Against that wider military campaign, the mission examined a US strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, Hormozgan Province.
Hossain said two cruise missiles hit the school, killing 157 people, including 123 boys and girls, according to sources the mission considered credible. She described it as a readily identifiable civilian building and said investigators found reasonable grounds to believe the strike amounted to the war crime of making a civilian object the object of an attack.
The school was adjacent to an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval complex, but investigators found no evidence that the building itself was being used for military purposes. The mission said the United States had failed to update information about the school in its targeting databases or adequately establish that it was a military objective, conduct it said amounted to more than mere negligence.
The mission reached a separate war-crimes finding over a US strike on a sports center in a residential area of Lamerd, Fars Province. Local authorities said 22 people — 10 women and 12 men — were killed. Investigators concluded there were reasonable grounds to believe the strike constituted an indiscriminate attack resulting in civilian deaths or damage to civilian property.
Hossain said repeated airstrikes and threats of further attacks continued to endanger civilians, destroy homes and livelihoods and disrupt access to education and healthcare. She called on all sides to conduct independent investigations into alleged violations of international humanitarian law, specifically urging Washington to investigate the two strikes and provide accountability and reparations where warranted.
Washington’s reaction
Washington rejected the conclusions. The Pentagon said its own investigation remained underway and that it had nothing further to announce, while White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly dismissed the Human Rights Council’s work and said Iran was the only party in the conflict to have committed war crimes.
US officials have maintained that American military operations comply with the law of armed conflict.
US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz also said Trump was expected to challenge the findings when he addresses the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, saying the president would continue to “call out the ridiculous.”
Travel to and from Iran is becoming harder as major foreign airlines, including the flag carrier of Turkey, a key affordable hub for Iranians, suspend services and new US sanctions threaten remaining international routes operated by Iranian carriers.
For Iranians visiting relatives abroad, returning home has become increasingly uncertain. For those living outside the country, reaching parents, children and other loved ones in Iran is becoming just as difficult.
The disruption has left travelers trying to determine which flights are still operating, whether future bookings can be relied upon and what alternatives remain if they cannot fly.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday that US sanctions would effectively shut Iranian airlines out of international operations from September 23, warning foreign companies against providing them with fuel, ground services or ticket sales.
“All the Iranian airlines will be shut down around the world,” Bessent told CNBC. “If they land, you cannot provide them with fuel, you cannot provide them with landing services, you cannot sell them tickets, or you will be knocked out of the dollar system.”
The warning does not itself close foreign airspace to Iranian aircraft, but raises the risk of US penalties for companies and financial institutions that continue doing business with sanctioned carriers. The practical impact will depend on how governments, airports and service providers respond.
Iran International contacted multiple international airlines and four travel agencies specializing in travel to Iran to establish what options remain for passengers.
Which flights are still available?
Options are increasingly limited and can change at short notice.
Turkish Airlines has suspended all flights to Iran until at least March 2027, a company representative told Iran International by phone, adding that no services are currently scheduled before then and there is no guarantee they will resume in March.
Emirates said it is no longer operating flights to Tehran, while Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines confirmed that flights to and from Iran are suspended until at least October 24, 2026.
Both Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines said they were monitoring the situation and could not guarantee that flights would resume after that date.
Qatar Airways told Iran International that its flights to Iran are currently suspended because of airspace restrictions. Services are tentatively scheduled to resume on November 29, but the airline said that date could change depending on conditions.
Four travel agencies specializing in Iran travel said they were also unable to book operating services on airlines from Russia, China and Oman, as well as Turkey’s Pegasus Airlines and carriers serving routes from Armenia, at the time they spoke to Iran International.
One agency said it had seen Pegasus continue to accept some bookings for Iran routes that were later cancelled at short notice, forcing passengers to change their travel plans.
Iran International found some Pegasus itineraries between Turkey and Iran displayed on booking platforms from November 29, but the listings do not guarantee that the flights will operate.
Iran also did not appear as a destination option in searches on Flydubai’s or Expedia’s booking systems. Other routes checked by Iran International produced no available itineraries before March 2027.
Those searches provide only a snapshot of what booking platforms were displaying at the time and do not establish when international services will resume or whether other routes may remain available.
How are people getting to and from Iran?
The travel agencies, which requested anonymity, said their businesses had been severely affected as passengers looked for alternatives to flying directly into Iran.
They said some travelers arriving from Western countries were flying to Turkey and then taking a roughly 17-hour bus journey to Van, near the Iranian border.
From there, travelers could cross into Iran and continue by road. The agencies estimated that reaching Tehran from Van could take another 16 to 17 hours by bus or car.
That can mean more than 30 hours on the road alone, excluding the initial flight, border crossings and waiting times.
The agencies said Mahan Air had already stopped operating from Turkish airports after losing access to ground-handling services.
The disruption followed the US Treasury’s September 8 sanctions package, which designated all Iranian airlines and also targeted three Turkey-based companies accused of providing services to Mahan Air. Treasury described the 27 sanctioned carriers as Iran’s remaining airlines not already covered by US sanctions.
Other Iranian carriers were still operating through Turkish airports as of September 21, the agencies said, but they expected those services to come under increasing pressure after September 23 as companies assessed the risk of continuing to service sanctioned aircraft.
What changes on September 23?
The US Treasury sanctioned 36 targets connected to Iran’s aviation sector on September 8, including 27 Iranian airlines. Treasury accused the aviation sector of being used to transport weapons, military personnel and illicit cargo.
Bessent said on September 21 that the restrictions would effectively shut Iranian airlines out of international operations from September 23 by targeting the foreign services they rely on.
The sanctions do not automatically prohibit Iranian aircraft from entering every country or close foreign airspace to them. But airlines need access to airports, fuel, ground handling, ticketing, banking and other services to operate internationally, giving Washington significant leverage over their ability to continue flying abroad.
Some countries have already moved to restrict Iranian carriers.
Flights by US-sanctioned Iranian airlines to Georgia stopped from September 21 after the affected carriers operated their final services the previous day, according to Georgian media. Georgia’s Civil Aviation Agency had earlier said it takes US and European sanctions mechanisms into account when granting foreign airlines access to its aviation market.
Iraq is moving even earlier than Bessent’s September 23 deadline. Two Iraqi government sources told AFP that Baghdad would suspend flights operated by Iranian airlines from dawn on Tuesday, September 22.
One official said Iraq would implement the restriction in accordance with the US Treasury decision and warned that countries failing to comply risked sanctions. A second source confirmed the decision.
The suspension could particularly affect Shiite pilgrims travelling from Iran to the Iraqi holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, as well as families and other passengers who rely on flights between the two countries.
For travelers, the central problem is that schedules displayed today may offer little certainty about what will actually operate in the coming weeks. With foreign airlines withdrawing and Iranian carriers facing new barriers abroad, travelling both into and out of Iran is increasingly dependent on a shrinking number of routes — or long overland journeys through neighboring countries.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned they would widen the battlefield and use new weapons if US attacks resume, as two tankers were hit in the Strait of Hormuz and Qatar said it seeks a short-term deal aimed at reviving talks between Tehran and Washington.
The warnings came as President Masoud Pezeshkian prepared to travel to New York for the UN General Assembly and regional mediators stepped up contacts with both sides.
Iran would change the “geography of the war” if it came under renewed attack, Revolutionary Guards spokesperson Hossein Mohebbi said Monday, warning that Tehran would also use weapons it has not yet deployed and strike new targets.
“If a new aggression occurs, we will certainly change the weaponry and the geography of the war,” Mohebbi said.
“We will introduce new weapons with new capabilities into the battlefield, and the world will be astonished,” he added.
Mohebbi said Iran was prepared for a prolonged conflict and that its targets in another round would not necessarily be the same as before.
Iran’s armed forces also pledged in a joint statement to make the United States, Israel and their allies “taste the bitterness of further defeats,” while Army Commander Amir Hatami said the military remained on full alert.
New ship attacks in Hormuz
The threat came with tensions still high around the Strait of Hormuz, where two tankers were hit in separate incidents within hours on Monday.
An inbound tanker was struck by an unknown projectile, leaving two crew members with minor injuries, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations. The vessel remained under its own power and continued toward its next port.
UKMTO later reported that an LPG tanker leaving the strait had been hit by debris from unknown projectiles. Its crew was safe and no environmental damage was reported. Authorities were investigating both incidents.
Shipping through Hormuz remains far below pre-war levels. Seventeen commodity vessels crossed the waterway over the weekend, down from 37 a week earlier, according to shipping data cited by Reuters. Before the war, about 125 large commercial vessels typically transited the strait each day.
Qatar seeks short-term deal to revive talks
Qatar, meanwhile, said mediators were exchanging proposals between Iran and the United States in an effort to secure a short-term agreement that could reopen negotiations.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said Qatari mediators had been discussing proposals for nearly two weeks and traveling between capitals in search of a formula acceptable to both sides. Doha had also received assurances from US officials that Washington wanted an agreement, he said.
Pakistan has also remained involved in efforts to reduce tensions. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi met his Iranian counterpart Eskandar Momeni in Tehran on Monday, weeks after Naqvi and Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir visited Iran as part of Islamabad’s mediation efforts.
Iranian media said the latest visit was focused on bilateral relations and that Naqvi was not carrying a US message. Iran’s Foreign Ministry had earlier said it was unaware of any specific proposal being brought by the Pakistani minister.
Pezeshkian is due to leave for New York on Tuesday for the UN General Assembly, where the Iran-US conflict is expected to feature prominently in diplomatic contacts.
Washington tightens pressure
Washington showed no sign Monday of easing economic pressure while those contacts continued.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Iranian airlines would effectively be shut out of international operations from September 23 by threatening sanctions against airports and companies that provide them with fuel, landing services or ticket sales.
“If they land, you cannot provide them with fuel, you cannot provide them with landing services, you cannot sell them tickets, or you will be knocked out of the dollar system,” Bessent told CNBC.
The effects were already spreading. Turkish Airlines told Iran International it had suspended all flights to Iran until at least March 2027, while Iraqi government sources said Baghdad would stop Iranian airlines from operating in the country in line with the US measures.
Pezeshkian’s arrival in New York on Tuesday will give mediators another opportunity to test whether the proposals being exchanged can produce a path back to negotiations. The US airline measures are due to take effect the following day.