Iran condemns Netanyahu UN speech, questions why he was allowed to address assembly
Iran’s representative to the United Nations condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the General Assembly on Friday, questioning why the Israeli leader was allowed to speak at the world body.
“If the General Assembly banned the apartheid regime of South Africa from speaking at this Assembly in the 1970s, why should it today grant this privilege to this criminal?” Nasser Asadi, Third Counsellor at Iran’s Permanent Mission to the UN, was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA.
Asadi also cited the International Criminal Court’s outstanding arrest warrant for Netanyahu and questioned why Israel had not been expelled from the UN over what he described as repeated violations of its principles.
Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have rejected allegations that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide and have accused Iran of deliberately targeting civilians across the region.
Iranian mothers accompany their daughters on the first day of school in Tehran in September. The image was reframed using AI to extend the background horizontally.
Mothers without headscarves walked daughters in regulation hoods to school in Iran this week. Women who remember 1980 describe the same scene from the year the state began imposing hijab. The picture is identical. What has changed is the society around it.
Among the images of the first day of the school year on September 23 were mothers who had dropped their daughters at the gate with their own hair uncovered, beside girls wearing the maghnaeh, the fitted hood that covers the hair, neck and shoulders and has been part of the girls' uniform in Iranian schools for four decades.
The scene is not new to the Islamic Republic. In the oral histories of women who remember the first years after the 1979 revolution, the same picture appears: mothers who still left the house without a headscarf, walking daughters who had to cover for school, because school was where the new state was making the rule stick first.
In the Islamic Republic's early years, compulsory hijab was established first in the spaces the state controlled most directly, government offices and schools, and only afterward extended to the street and the whole of public life.
Today the rules in schools and offices remain, and the law on compulsory hijab has not been repealed or even amended. But outside those spaces, part of the female population has been living differently for some time. This time, society has moved ahead of the rules.
Before the hood became the uniform
This summer an image of two designs for girls' school uniforms from 1979, first published by the popular weekly Javanan-e Emrooz, circulated again. Neither design includes the maghnaeh that later became a fixed part of the girls' uniform.
That interval did not last. In 1980, as the new state Islamized government offices and institutions, the dress code for schoolgirls changed too. For the 1980-81 school year, the requirement became a long-sleeved smock, loose trousers and a headscarf. In 1983, appearing in public without what the state called "sharia hijab" was made a crime.
The note to Article 638 of the Islamic Penal Code later became the legal basis for action against women who appear in public without the hijab the state requires.
So the history of compulsory hijab cannot be read from the street alone. School and office were among the first places it was enforced, and only later did the requirement settle across public space.
The regulation and the mandatory hood
In schools, much of that structure still stands. Article 85 of the schools' executive regulation, adopted in 2021, says students' clothing should be "simple, beautiful, varied, neat and cheerful," appropriate to Islamic-Iranian culture and identity, social custom, the student's age and the climate. The choice of style and color is left to each school's council, with the participation of the student council.
But the note to the same article fixes the range for girls. A female student's dress is either "chador, manteau, trousers and maghnaeh" or "manteau, trousers and maghnaeh," the chador being the full-length cloak and the manteau the long coat worn over trousers.
The chador is not compulsory. The maghnaeh is. The regulation provides no option for a girl to attend school with her hair uncovered.
The requirement begins in primary school. A girl of six or seven may walk to the gate hand in hand with a mother whose hair is uncovered, and must then cover her own to go in.
The distance between society and the rules can hardly be seen more clearly than in those few meters.
The fight reaches the uniform itself
This year the argument over girls' dress did not stop at the hood. The uniform itself made news.
On the eve of the new term, a message circulated about a girls' primary school in Saadat Abad, an affluent district in northwest Tehran, saying pupils would wear a shirt or blouse with trousers in place of the usual smock or manteau. Because the school is state-run, the message spread widely and reached state television.
The education office for Tehran's District 2 denied it, saying the images being shared had nothing to do with that school's uniform.
So the case cannot be treated as a confirmed change to a state school's uniform. But that such a report could circulate about a state school, and that the ministry felt obliged to answer it, shows the argument over girls' dress has reached the definition of the uniform itself.
Official policy has not moved. This year's directives asked schools to avoid unnecessary changes to the design and color of uniforms.
The result is a split. Outside school, the way women dress has changed quickly in recent years. Inside it, the manteau, trousers and maghnaeh of the official regulation remain exactly where they were.
Today's girls are not the girls of 1980
The most important difference between the two identical pictures may be the girls themselves.
The dress rules of 1980 were imposed on a society in which the Islamic Republic was still building its political, educational and cultural institutions. Today the same rules have to be enforced on a generation whose experience of how women around them dress is entirely different.
The protests of 2022 carried that difference into the schools. Among the most repeated images of the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising were teenage girls in school uniform who had taken off their hoods, in the schoolyard, the classroom and the street.
Reports of action against students over hijab followed. Amnesty International recorded the account of a 17-year-old who, after being seen with her hair uncovered on the school's cameras, was suspended and threatened with being reported to the security agencies.
That is a different experience from 1980. A student today may see bareheaded women on her way to school in the morning, be dropped off by a bareheaded mother, put on the hood to enter, and take it off again when school lets out.
For part of this generation, the maghnaeh is no longer a continuation of how they dress outside. It is a rule that applies on entering a controlled space, and stops applying on leaving it.
The law has not moved
None of this social change has become legal change.
The note to Article 638 still makes it a crime for a woman to appear in public without sharia hijab. Article 85 still lists the maghnaeh as part of a girl's dress.
The law known as Protection of the Family through the Promotion of the Culture of Chastity and Hijab, passed in December 2024, which would have widened the punishments and the means of enforcing compulsory hijab considerably, is not being implemented for now. Its suspension did not repeal the laws that came before it.
So what has happened in Iran's streets is not, in law, hijab becoming optional. The law has not recognized a right to choose. Part of society has made a different choice in practice.
A woman without a headscarf in Iran today is not uncovered because the law gave her that right. The law can still treat what she is doing as a crime, even if it is not enforced at every time and in every place.
The administrative structure behind hijab policy has not gone either. The budget for the Iranian year that began in March 2025 set aside 2.592 trillion rials, about $1.1 million at market rates, for the Headquarters for Enjoining Good and Forbidding Evil, the state body charged with policing public morality, for which hijab has been a principal concern. That is roughly the annual minimum wage of 1,300 workers.
In the budget for the year that began this March, the line was written differently: 6.284 trillion rials, about $2.7 million, in a single shared allocation for three bodies, the headquarters, Soureh University, which is run by the state's Islamic propaganda organization, and the Islamic Propagation Coordination Council, which organizes official rallies. Because the shares are not separated, the full figure cannot be described as the headquarters' budget, still less as a hijab budget.
The education ministry and other state bodies also retain duties under the existing law on dress. The retreat of enforcement in parts of public space has not removed the law, the institutions or the money behind it.
In 1980, the bareheaded mother was walking her daughter toward a rule that would soon reach her too. In 2026 she walks her daughter toward the last place the rule still holds. The picture has not changed. Its direction has. The few meters between her uncovered hair and her daughter's hood are no longer the distance between two generations, but between a society that has changed and a law that still says it hasn't.
An Iranian passenger carrying luggage leaves Najaf International Airport after arriving on an AVA Airlines flight, in Najaf, Iraq, September 23, 2026.
Iran threatened to disrupt regional air travel if its airlines lose access to flights and airport services, as Iraq's Najaf, Erbil and Sulaimaniya joined other destinations restricting Iranian connections under mounting US sanctions pressure.
“If Iran cannot fly and receive airport services, no country in the region will have that possibility either,” supreme leader adviser Mohammad Mokhber wrote in a post on Friday. He did not explain how Tehran would enforce the threat.
His remarks echoed Supreme National Security Council secretary Mohsen Rezaei, who warned Wednesday that neighboring airports would be unable to operate if they cooperated with Washington’s campaign. Rezaei also warned neighboring countries against joining further US military action.
Airports in Najaf, Erbil and Sulaymaniyah have suspended flights to and from Iran, further narrowing air links with Iraq following restrictions at Baghdad airport. Najaf’s suspension took effect at 2 a.m. Friday until further notice, closing an alternative Iranian authorities had considered for diverted Baghdad-bound services.
Flights to Baghdad and Muscat were canceled on September 23. Iraqi aviation sources told Reuters that Baghdad’s suspension followed government instructions; Iranian aviation spokesman Majid Akhavan said Tehran was discussing Muscat’s restrictions with Oman.
The UAE suspended Iranian airlines’ flights Thursday, explicitly citing US sanctions. Azerbaijan halted services by Iranian carriers Tuesday, while affected airlines stopped flying to Georgia from September 21.
A Tehran-Dushanbe flight also turned back Thursday after Turkmenistan denied permission to cross its airspace. Mahan Air suspended Turkey and Oman services; travel agencies said it had lost ground-handling access in Turkey.
Washington sanctioned 36 aviation-related targets on September 8, including 27 carriers it described as Iran’s remaining unsanctioned airlines and three Turkey-based companies accused of serving Mahan. Treasury says Iranian aviation networks transport weapons, military personnel and illicit cargo.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that foreign airports, fuel suppliers, ground handlers and ticket sellers servicing sanctioned carriers risked US penalties, including exclusion from the dollar system. He said Iranian airlines would effectively lose international operations from September 23.
Those measures do not automatically close foreign airspace. Their effect depends on governments and service providers, and some flights continued. Bloomberg reported at least six departures Wednesday to destinations including Bangkok, Phuket, Shanghai and Kabul.
Foreign carriers have separately withdrawn services. Turkish Airlines told Iran International it had no Iran flights scheduled before March 2027, with no guaranteed restart. Earlier Iranian announcements of continuing Istanbul flights referred to other carriers.
Emirates no longer serves Tehran. Lufthansa and Austrian suspended Iran flights through October 24, while Qatar Airways cited airspace restrictions and tentatively listed November 29 for resumption. Those dates remain uncertain.
Four travel agencies contacted September 21 reported unavailable services across several other routes. Some Pegasus bookings were subsequently canceled, although booking-platform listings were not guarantees of operation.
The disruption affects family visits, business and pilgrimage to Najaf and Karbala. Agencies described travelers flying to Turkey, then taking roughly 17 hours by bus to Van and another 16–17 hours onward to Tehran, excluding border delays.
The UAE also barred Bank Melli branches from Iran-related transactions Wednesday, including trade finance and transfers.
Rezaei linked the aviation warning to Tehran’s broader negotiating position, giving Washington four to five days to accept conditions already sent to mediators before talks or Hormuz’s reopening. He did not list them, saying Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi would convey them again in New York, and presented control of the strait as negotiating leverage.
A US Navy sailor walks across the flight deck of the USS George Washington in the Arabian Sea, September 11, 2026. The aircraft carrier, capable of carrying more than 5,000 personnel, is enforcing a US naval blockade against Iran and providing cover for commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are urging Washington to maintain sanctions and its naval blockade of Iran, complicating efforts to restart peace talks as attacks threaten their oil exports, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Mediators including Qatar are seeking talks in Oman as early as next week to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and begin winding down the war, the newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the discussions. President Donald Trump said Tuesday he expected the two sides to meet again soon.
While Persian Gulf countries generally oppose further US military escalation, Saudi Arabia and the UAE want Washington to withhold concessions on sanctions and the blockade.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman recently told US officials the blockade should remain until Iran is compelled to sign a new agreement, people familiar with the discussions told the Journal.
The position marks a shift from the summer, when Saudi Arabia and other Arab states pressed for negotiations and were prepared to consider an agreement recognizing some Iranian influence over Hormuz.
Iranian attacks on Saudi ships and Tehran’s encouragement of Houthi efforts to restrict the alternative export route through the Red Sea have since weakened confidence in Iran’s willingness to reach a deal, the report said.
UAE officials have similarly lowered expectations for negotiations, arguing that renewed violence and attacks on shipping show Tehran is in no hurry to return to diplomacy. They said Persian Gulf states should not accept permanent Iranian control of Hormuz.
Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran specialist at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Journal that renewed Houthi threats, following months of disruption in Hormuz, were pushing regional governments toward compliance with US sanctions.
Oman and Qatar favor a different approach, arguing that a phased reopening of Hormuz and an end to attacks on Persian Gulf countries offer the only viable path out of a war that has already inflicted substantial regional damage.
Qatar has pursued mediation around the UN General Assembly. Iran’s foreign minister visited Doha on Sunday to discuss proposals including a seven-day pause in fighting that could lead to an end to Iranian attacks on shipping in exchange for Washington lifting its blockade.
But US officials have repeatedly told Qatar that Trump has no intention of lifting the maritime embargo, according to the report.
A White House official said sanctions and the blockade had strengthened Washington’s position. “While President Trump is open to talking with Iran under the right circumstances, he has no need to negotiate with the Iranians,” the official said.
Talks also face resistance inside Iran. Tehran fears Washington could use negotiations to delay action until after the US midterm elections before resuming attacks, while hardliners have adopted a more confrontational tone as economic pressure intensifies, the Journal reported.
Arab mediators said Iranian diplomats had offered proposals and acknowledged the worsening economic crisis, but the Revolutionary Guards had rejected new negotiating formulas and expressed readiness for a prolonged war.
The Guards, which dominate Iran’s power structure, want terms closer to the preliminary June agreement: relief from oil sanctions, access to frozen assets and recognition of an Iranian role in administering Hormuz in exchange for reopening the waterway.
Washington has told mediators it will not return to that agreement, believing sustained economic pressure will force Tehran to accept terms more favorable to the United States and its Persian Gulf partners.
Social media users in Iran say their phone lines have been cut off after posting political content or liking posts on Instagram, extending a practice previously reported among political activists and journalists.
Messages received by Iran International describe SIM cards being blocked without warning, demands for written pledges and difficulty finding out which authority can restore service.
The reports include a 70-year-old woman in Tehran who said she was summoned several times after posting a WhatsApp story supporting the Pahlavi dynasty. Her SIM card was blocked, and she was eventually required to sign a pledge not to publish similar content again.
The woman said she does not have an Instagram account and is not otherwise active on social media.
The use of SIM card blocking to pressure social media users has been reported before. On September 12, Iran International reported that political and civil activists in several cities had lost access to their phone lines without prior notice and had been unable to resolve the restrictions.
Phone lines blocked without warning
Other citizens said their phone lines were disconnected after they liked political posts on Instagram. Many said they received no explanation or advance notice.
One person told Iran International that his sister and brother-in-law had moved to Finland about three years ago, but his sister’s Hamrah-e Aval SIM card, which he had kept in Iran, was deactivated “by order of the cyber police.”
Another Iranian wrote to Iran International that all his phone lines had been blocked for two months.
“I went to the telecommunications office, and they said it was on the prosecutor’s orders. No matter which authority I approach, they won’t tell me what I’m supposed to do,” he wrote.
He said he was directed to call a number that he later learned belonged to the Revolutionary Guards’ Intelligence Organization.
“I’ve called many times, and no one answers. My entire life has been paralyzed,” he added.
A Tehran resident responding to his account said his SIM card had also been blocked in February or March and that he had gone to a prosecutor’s office in the capital to seek its restoration.
Written pledges
Iran International has previously reported that some citizens had their SIM cards blocked after publishing content critical of the Islamic Republic online.
Some were referred to the prosecutor’s office’s cyberspace division or Gerdab to seek restoration of service. In certain cases, they said they were required to sign written pledges to refrain from further critical activity.
Several families of people killed in the January 2026 crackdown in Iran have also said their SIM cards were blocked in recent weeks without notice after they shared information about their loved ones.
Daily life disrupted
Reports received by Iran International describe how SIM card blocking has disrupted citizens’ daily lives.
Many said mobile phones and phone lines are essential for everyday activities and that losing access can disrupt banking, ride-hailing and other online services.
Citizens also said they had received no clear explanation for why their lines were blocked or how to have them restored.
They described confusion and severe disruption to their lives, saying the restrictions had been imposed without judicial proceedings.
Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian addresses the 81st United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at UN headquarters in New York City, US, September 23, 2026.
President Masoud Pezeshkian’s UN speech won unusual praise across Iran’s political establishment Thursday, but emerging details of negotiations with the United States could soon test the president’s careful balancing act.
Conservatives embraced Pezeshkian’s defiant rhetoric at the General Assembly, while reformists highlighted his willingness to negotiate, allowing both sides to find something to welcome in an address that rejected surrender while keeping the door open to diplomacy.
The harder test may now come at the negotiating table.
US and Iranian negotiators in New York are exploring a phased agreement that could reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for Washington lifting its economic blockade of Iran, Reuters reported Thursday.
Neither side wants to surrender its main source of leverage before the other acts, and the talks remain far from an agreement.
Any substantive movement toward such an arrangement could sharpen the domestic divisions that Pezeshkian’s speech temporarily managed to straddle, particularly among hardliners who have opposed negotiations with Washington.
‘We will not surrender’
Pezeshkian’s speech Wednesday night drew praise from senior officials including Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, Expediency Council Chairman Sadegh Amoli-Larijani and Army Commander Major General Amir Hatami.
Revolutionary Guards commander Ahmad Vahidi said Pezeshkian’s remarks reflected the position of the Iranian people.
“We are not afraid of war. This is the voice of the Iranian people that was heard by the world through him,” Vahidi wrote.
Acting Defense Minister Majid Ibn al-Reza also praised the speech, saying Iran’s message represented a “change in Iran’s defense doctrine” and that the country would accelerate the development of its military capabilities accordingly.
Kayhan, one of the strongest opponents of negotiations with the United States, said Pezeshkian had turned New York into a “court for prosecuting the crimes of Washington and Tel Aviv” and delivered a decisive response to US President Donald Trump.
Javan, a newspaper affiliated with the IRGC, put Pezeshkian’s “We will not surrender” phrase on its front page.
‘Strategic mistake’
Reformist newspapers, however, emphasized another part of the same address: Pezeshkian’s stated readiness for negotiations and engagement with the world.
Their headlines included “We are not afraid of war, we do not shy away from negotiations for peace” and “Neither warmongering nor fear of negotiations,” illustrating the markedly different ways the speech was being presented to domestic audiences.
The balancing act did not satisfy everyone.
Hardline journalist Davoud Modarresian described parts of the speech as worthy of praise but criticized Pezeshkian for travelling to New York and continuing to advocate negotiations.
In the face of Trump’s threats against Iran, he argued, declaring readiness for talks amounted to a “strategic mistake.”
Other hardline commentators complained that Pezeshkian had failed to demand retribution for US and Israeli attacks.
A speech for home?
Reformist journalist Ahmad Zeidabadi, meanwhile, questioned the enthusiastic reception from some of Pezeshkian’s most determined opponents of negotiations with the United States.
He asked whether those praising the president also supported his references to negotiations, or were selectively highlighting his more confrontational remarks in an effort to push the president in a more radical direction.
Some reformists saw the combination differently. Journalist Mohammad Sohofi argued that Pezeshkian sometimes employed populist slogans precisely to reduce tensions and marginalize hardline opponents of his policies.
Former Tehran Chamber of Commerce chairman Hossein Selahvarzi said the speech appeared designed more for a domestic audience than for the international community.
“Pezeshkian’s speech seemed to have been written more to be heard inside the country than to convince the world,” he wrote, arguing that the president should have presented more concrete proposals and initiatives.
