Prosecutors take no action against Iranian arrested at UK submarine base

The High Court in Podgorica approved Barati’s extradition under a simplified procedure and notified Montenegro’s Justice Ministry, local newspaper Vijesti reported Tuesday.

“The Ministry of Justice has informed the US Department of Justice,” Justice Minister Bojan Božović told the newspaper, adding that the remaining procedures would be carried out with police.

Barati, 39, was arrested on June 25 while visiting the coastal Montenegrin town of Kotor, in an operation involving local police and the FBI. He holds both Iranian and Turkish citizenship.

His extradition brings US authorities closer to putting on trial a man whose hacking career Iran International previously traced from underground cyber groups to alleged work for Iran’s Intelligence Ministry.

US prosecutors last month named Barati among 17 people charged over their alleged work with the Tehran-based Mabna Institute, which the Justice Department says conducted hacking operations for Iranian government entities, including the IRGC.

The Justice Department alleges the group targeted more than 100,000 professors and compromised about 8,000 accounts at 144 US universities and 178 universities abroad between 2013 and 2017. More than 31 terabytes of academic data and intellectual property were stolen, according to prosecutors.

Barati specifically helped track spearphishing campaigns, exchange credentials from compromised accounts, prepare lists of targets, conduct network reconnaissance and craft phishing messages, prosecutors said.

He faces seven counts, including conspiracy to commit computer intrusions and wire fraud, computer fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. The indictment remains allegations, and Barati is presumed innocent unless convicted.

‘Kinglet’

An Iran International investigation published after his arrest traced Barati’s hacking career much further back.

Born in Mashhad in 1986, Barati founded the Iran Black Hats Team in his early twenties and later co-founded Digital Boys Underground Team, operating online under the alias “Kinglet.”

Archived records reviewed by Iran International linked the groups to hundreds of attacks on academic, commercial and government websites, including systems associated with NASA, Microsoft, MIT and the US military.

His relationship with Iran’s security establishment appears to have shifted after his arrest by the Intelligence Ministry in 2010.

Multiple sources familiar with his activities told Iran International that authorities subsequently recruited Barati rather than pursuing him, turning him into an intelligence asset.

Court records reviewed by Iran International showed that a one-year prison sentence against him was never enforced despite reaching the enforcement stage. Iran International could not independently verify claims that the Intelligence Ministry intervened to protect him.

Barati left Iran for Turkey in 2021. He later obtained Turkish citizenship and changed both his first and last names through a Turkish court.

Sources told Iran International he subsequently avoided travelling to Europe until June, when he was arrested while on holiday in Montenegro despite travelling under his new identity.

The Justice Department’s August indictment later publicly confirmed Barati’s alleged role in the Mabna network for the first time, resolving a question raised after his arrest over how his case was connected to the long-running IRGC-linked university hacking campaign.

The statements came within hours of each other, from MPs, a Tehran city council official and military figures, and they map the mood in the hardline camp on the eve of the president's departure.

It came as Donald Trump said he was willing to meet Pezeshkian in New York while warning that "something big" could happen to Iran.

Kamran Ghazanfari, a hardline MP, told Didban Iran that if the existence of the Islamic Republic came under serious threat, the new supreme leader could reconsider the question of nuclear weapons. Some MPs favor a nuclear deterrent to end the recurring threats against Iran, he said, though any decision would rest with senior officials and the Supreme National Security Council.

Parviz Sarvari, deputy chairman of Tehran city council, said he would welcome news that Iran had moved toward building nuclear weapons for deterrence. Membership of the Non-Proliferation Treaty had brought Iran no benefit, he said, while its adversaries threatened it from a position of nuclear superiority.

The push has gone beyond words. Hossein-Ali Haji-Deligani, an MP, submitted a triple-urgency bill for Iran's withdrawal from the NPT, arguing that membership had become more costly since the IAEA Board of Governors referred Iran to the UN Security Council. Similar proposals have circulated for months and the leadership of parliament has kept them off the floor. Haji-Deligani said the presidium has now acknowledged receipt of this one.

Military figures spoke the same day. Army commander Amir Hatami said the armed forces were at full readiness. Esmail Kowsari, of parliament's national security committee, said Iran's growing capabilities would eventually push American forces out of the region.

Revolutionary Guards spokesman Hossein Mohebbi said the war with the United States and Israel was not over and that the Guards had prepared for a long one, citing assessments that Washington may be considering fresh strikes.

What the day was for

Three things were happening at once.

The first is the argument about the last war. The ceasefire that ended the 12-day conflict left hardliners needing it not to look like a defeat at home, and insisting the war is unfinished keeps the account open.

The second is pressure on Pezeshkian. The NPT bill and the nuclear talk arrived alongside renewed parliamentary criticism of his government for allowing IAEA inspectors access, in a dispute over how far Iran should engage Washington and the monitors.

The third is the IAEA referral and the threat of snapback sanctions, which is the immediate cause of the NPT bill and the reason the timing is not a coincidence.

The language stayed inside limits. Ghazanfari attached any reconsideration of weapons to an existential threat. Sarvari's endorsement was of a hypothetical. Neither said Iran should build a bomb now, and neither Mojtaba Khamenei nor the Supreme National Security Council has said anything on the question.

The risk is how it reads elsewhere. Open parliamentary discussion of leaving the NPT and of nuclear contingencies is the kind of material Washington and Israel have previously cited as evidence that Iran is moving toward a weapon, and the United States struck Iranian nuclear sites during the last war. On the same day, the Guards said they expected it to happen again.

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.

The growing debate has exposed a divide within Iran’s political establishment between those who see NPT membership as offering little protection and others who warn that withdrawal would surrender one of Tehran’s remaining diplomatic and legal advantages.

Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, appeared to threaten withdrawal from the treaty on Sunday, saying that “political and destructive actions” by the International Atomic Energy Agency would “push countries toward leaving the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.”

But President Masoud Pezeshkian reiterated the same day, during a visit to India, that Iran was not seeking nuclear weapons. “If we were seeking nuclear weapons, we would not have become a member of the NPT,” he said.

The debate intensified after Mohammad Eslami, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, was prevented from attending the IAEA General Conference in Vienna.

Austria had sought an exemption from a UN travel ban to allow Eslami to attend, but the sanctions committee did not approve it after a US objection.

Calls for immediate withdrawal

Supporters of immediate withdrawal say NPT membership has failed to protect Iran from international pressure or attacks on its nuclear facilities.

Continued membership, they argue, only makes sense if members’ nuclear rights are given equal weight alongside their obligations.

Sepehr Khalaji, who headed the Government Information Council under former President Ebrahim Raisi, questioned why Iran remained in the treaty.

“They bombed the nuclear facilities, martyred the scientists, sanctioned nuclear technology and say they will strike the remaining nuclear facilities. They referred Iran’s case to the Security Council, and they do not allow the head of the Atomic Energy Organization to enter the IAEA. So why are we still in the IAEA? Why don’t we withdraw from the NPT?” he wrote on X.

Parliamentary push

The debate has also reached parliament, where lawmakers are preparing a proposal for Iran to withdraw from the NPT.

Hassan-Ali Akhlaghi, a member of parliament, told the Fars news agency on Wednesday that lawmakers had prepared a triple-urgency bill that would be put to a vote if approved by the parliamentary leadership.

Given what he called the IAEA’s “entirely hostile and illogical” resolution, Akhlaghi said Iran should leave the treaty as soon as possible.

The proposal, however, has not yet formally reached parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee and is not currently on the parliamentary agenda.

Warnings of a trap

The conservative Khorasan newspaper on Wednesday warned that leaving the treaty could increase political and diplomatic pressure on Iran without producing significant security gains.

“On the surface, these positions may appear to be a revolutionary and deterrent response to the enemy; but when the pieces of the situation are put together, another worrying picture emerges,” it wrote.

Khorasan argued that the United States and Israel were deliberately trying to push Iran’s political debate toward more radical positions, including testing a nuclear weapon, changing its nuclear doctrine and immediately withdrawing from the NPT.

The newspaper said leaving the treaty before Iran had achieved deterrence could reveal Tehran’s intentions rather than demonstrate strength, potentially giving its opponents an opportunity to act.

“Iran has obtained an important part of the practical outcome without making an official and costly withdrawal: the IAEA no longer has its previous access, while Tehran continues to benefit from the legal protection of NPT membership and the political support of Russia and China,” Khorasan wrote.

“Official withdrawal would destroy this useful grey zone without creating a new strategic advantage.”

Reformist politician Rasoul Montajab-Nia made a similar argument.

“If the agency has not acted impartially toward Iran, we should not resort to disrupting the framework, because this would mean fuelling disputes and war with other countries.”

Montajab-Nia said withdrawal would not benefit Iran and would be “in line with Israel’s objectives.”

The nuclear threshold

At the outer edge of the debate, some advocates of developing nuclear weapons have argued that Iran should remain in the NPT unless it decides to change its nuclear doctrine — and then coordinate withdrawal with a nuclear test.

Foad Izadi, a hardline political commentator, told the Moj news agency that Iran had no need to leave the NPT while its current nuclear doctrine remained in place.

But if Tehran decided to change that doctrine, he said, Iran could withdraw from the treaty after a nuclear test or simultaneously with one.

The developments centered on the loss of international oversight of Iran’s nuclear material, mounting restrictions and threats involving shipping through Hormuz, and a new round of regional military activity that prompted Saudi emergency alerts and high-level talks with the head of US Central Command.

IAEA warns of serious proliferation concern

The International Atomic Energy Agency has carried out no in-field verification activities in Iran for more than six months, except for an inspection of the Bushehr nuclear power plant in June, Director General Rafael Grossi said at the agency’s General Conference in Vienna.

Grossi said the IAEA withdrew its inspectors after renewed attacks on Iran in late February, worsening a decline in oversight of Tehran’s nuclear program during 2026.

The agency has also lacked continuity of knowledge for more than a year regarding Iran’s previously declared inventories of low- and highly enriched uranium, including material enriched to 60% purity, at nuclear facilities affected by attacks in June 2025.

“The Agency’s lack of information about this nuclear material and access to facilities to verify it is a matter of serious proliferation concern and needs to be addressed with the utmost urgency,” Grossi said.

He called a return to diplomacy and negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program “imperative,” warning that the situation had consequences for the wider global non-proliferation system.

The remarks came as Iran summoned Austria’s chargé d’affaires over Vienna’s failure to issue a visa to Mohammad Eslami, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei called the decision “completely unjustified” and said Tehran had formally protested.

Bloomberg reported earlier that Austria denied Eslami entry after pressure from the Trump administration, preventing him from addressing the IAEA conference. A US official cited by Bloomberg said Washington had urged Austria not to grant a UN-requested sanctions waiver that would have permitted the visit.

Iran threatens restrictions against 77 vessels

Maritime tensions also escalated as Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority published an updated list of 77 vessels it accused of violating Iranian protocols governing passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

The authority warned that the vessels could face restrictions on future passage, including fines, detention or confiscation. Ships cooperating with vessels on the list would also be added, it said, while companies and other entities were warned not to provide services to them.

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  Hormuz diplomacy stalls as attacks deepen pressure on Persian Gulf oil routes

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Tehran would continue taking what it considered necessary measures for as long as the United States maintained its maritime blockade.

Baghaei said security in the Strait of Hormuz was a matter for Iran and Oman as the two coastal states and blamed US actions for instability in the waterway. He said an understanding between Tehran and Muscat establishing safe shipping routes had been reached after weeks of negotiations while preserving the sovereign rights of both countries.

But a wider regional meeting planned in Oman had been postponed. Baghaei said it could have provided even a small step toward dialogue between Tehran and Persian Gulf countries, describing its postponement as a missed opportunity.

“Israel is the only beneficiary of tensions between Iran and Persian Gulf countries,” he said, calling on neighboring states to set aside past disputes and pursue regional dialogue.

Saudi Arabia had sought amendments to the Omani-Iranian proposal over concerns that its language could establish an unacceptable new status quo in the strait, Axios reported, citing a senior regional official.

The United States, meanwhile, said its forces had redirected 101 commercial vessels while enforcing the blockade against Iran as of September 13.

Shipping traffic through Hormuz remained sharply reduced over the weekend. Only four commodity vessels exited the Persian Gulf and 10 entered, Reuters reported, citing preliminary tracking data. Daily traffic fell to single digits, compared with a 10-day average of 14 vessels, although the figures excluded ships operating with their tracking transponders switched off.

The IRGC also said that it had detected and destroyed an advanced MQ-1 drone over the Strait of Hormuz using a new Aerospace Force air-defense system. It did not identify the drone’s operator, and the statement was not independently verified.

Houthis claim Saudi air-base attack

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis said they attacked an air base in Khamis Mushait in southwestern Saudi Arabia on Monday. Saudi authorities did not immediately confirm that a strike had occurred.

Saudi Arabia’s Civil Defense initially issued emergency alerts warning of potential danger in Khamis Mushait and nearby Abha, but announced shortly afterward that the danger had passed in both locations.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met US Central Command chief Admiral Brad Cooper to discuss the latest regional developments.

Elsewhere, missiles struck three camps belonging to Iranian Kurdish opposition groups east of Sulaimaniya in Iraq’s Kurdistan region early Monday, two security sources told Reuters. No casualties were reported, and the sources did not identify who carried out the attacks.

The latest round of tensions has added to pressure on energy markets and regional shipping. Brent crude rose more than $3 to above $108 a barrel at the opening on Monday following fresh strikes on Saudi Arabia and vessels in the Persian Gulf over the weekend.

Pressure was also evident in Iran’s currency market with the US dollar trading at 2.34 million rials, the euro at about 2.7 million rials and the British pound at 3.16 million rials by around midday Monday.