A leaked Russian government roadmap obtained by Fox News put the share of Russia-Iran trade settled in national currencies at 68%, far below Moscow’s public claims that nearly all bilateral trade had shifted to rubles and rials.
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Tehran media see diplomacy with Washington as increasingly precarious but not yet dead, with the two sides far apart over the sequencing of any deal and the window for compromise appearing to narrow.
Iran has disputed US accounts that Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and his delegation to leave the country after indirect negotiations in New York reached a stalemate.
Iran’s UN mission said the delegation left according to a schedule communicated to the State Department on September 17 and dismissed reports of a US-mandated departure as “baseless and worthless.”
Two US officials told the Associated Press that Rubio ordered the delegation to leave after little progress in indirect talks mediated by Qatar.
The dispute follows Washington’s response to Iran’s seven-point proposal for de-escalation and reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Araghchi has said Tehran has made no changes to the proposal, which calls for lifting the blockade and unfreezing Iranian assets as steps toward reopening maritime transit and resuming nuclear negotiations.
Iranian media have nevertheless stopped short of declaring the diplomatic process dead.
Across outlets ranging from the government’s Iran Newspaper and state broadcaster-affiliated Jam-e Jam to the moderate business daily Donya-ye Eghtesad, the negotiations are portrayed as a stalled bargaining process rather than a complete collapse.
Washington’s response, delivered through Qatar, is seen as keeping the diplomatic channel open even as the two sides remain far apart.
Across the three outlets, four broad conclusions emerge.
First, no comprehensive settlement appears close. Even the more optimistic assessments envisage, at best, a phased arrangement focused initially on crisis management rather than a broader breakthrough.
Second, trust remains a central constraint. Iran Newspaper and Jam-e Jam cite the US withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018 and subsequent American policy, while Donya-ye Eghtesad frames the problem more neutrally as the enduring question of which side should move first.
Third, the central dispute is increasingly about sequencing. Tehran wants an end to hostilities, sanctions and blockade relief before reopening Hormuz within seven days and moving to nuclear talks. Washington wants nuclear concessions and movement on Hormuz before easing pressure.
Fourth, from Tehran’s perspective, the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding remains the principal reference point. The Iranian press portrays the seven-day plan as an accelerated version of the June framework rather than a departure from it.
As the government’s voice, Iran Newspaper presents the seven-point proposal as a reasonable sequence that Washington is obstructing.
It also turns its attention to actors it sees as working against diplomacy, linking Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the UAE and his reported intelligence briefing there to efforts to build regional opposition to Iran.
Jam-e Jam similarly rejects accusations that Tehran is seeking to avoid the nuclear issue, arguing that the proposal would bring forward the start of nuclear negotiations from roughly 60 days to seven.
Donya-ye Eghtesad, however, focuses more heavily on the costs of prolonged deadlock. It treats the US response as a test of Iran’s willingness to show nuclear flexibility and argues that verifiable limits on its program would improve the prospects for an agreement.
Despite their different political orientations, the three outlets broadly treat the seven-point plan as the basis for further negotiations rather than something Tehran should abandon.
The remaining debate is largely about timing.
Iran Newspaper and Jam-e Jam argue that leverage over Hormuz, combined with US pre-election concerns about energy prices, favors Tehran holding firm. Donya-ye Eghtesad warns instead that the diplomatic window could close within weeks and that the risks of waiting until after the election may outweigh the benefits.
Trump’s rejection of key Iranian demands, Israeli intelligence activity and the UAE’s acknowledgement of Netanyahu’s visit also provide ammunition to voices in Tehran arguing against early concessions.
Jam-e Jam compared the diplomatic process to a game of Snakes and Ladders, in which every advance is followed by a setback. For now, it sees the US midterm elections as the next major variable that could alter the calculations of either side.
A leaked Russian government roadmap obtained by Fox News put the share of Russia-Iran trade settled in national currencies at 68%, far below Moscow’s public claims that nearly all bilateral trade had shifted to rubles and rials.
The push to settle bilateral trade outside the dollar has drawn renewed US scrutiny. Last month, the US Treasury imposed new sanctions on Russia’s VTB Bank, in part for its role in creating a ruble-rial settlement system.
On Thursday, Treasury also targeted the Russia-linked A7 Network, describing it as a “shadow banking network” used by Iran to evade sanctions. It said A7’s sub-agents formed a money-laundering and sanctions-evasion mechanism connected to Russian illicit finance that Iran used to move funds, including for oil sales and weapons procurement.
Both governments have spent years insisting they don’t need the dollar, but the amount of trade settled in each other’s currencies isn’t a number you need to announce unless you’re trying to convince people that sanctions aren’t working.
Sanctions leverage only works if people believe it is there. To convince people otherwise, Russia has since 2019 announced a rising share of its Iran trade settled in rubles and rials: from 40 percent to 50, 60, 80, until Putin himself claimed 95 percent in January 2025.
The Islamic Republic communicates in broad proclamations rather than Soviet-style quarterly statistical reports: its central bank governor said in November 2024 that Iran had “completely excluded the dollar” and traded only in rubles and rials.
But the internal plan, approved in September 2024, put it at 68 percent, with a goal of 71 by 2026.
The reality doesn’t fit the claim
The Kremlin’s claim of a working ruble-rial payment system is harder to sustain when the two sides have an imbalance in trade, because that can leave one side without enough of the other’s currency to meet demand. Russian figures put 2023 bilateral trade at about $4 billion, comprising $2.7 billion in Russian exports and $1.3 billion in Iranian exports.
The two countries also simply do not like holding each other’s currencies. Russia’s central bank described its problem with currencies like the rial in 2023: they are “often non-convertible or only partially convertible,” carry “higher volatility,” and trade in markets too thin to hedge.
Iranian exporters, according to Iran’s Resistance Economy Think Tank, refuse rubles when they can, and if they accept them sell them for dirhams as quickly as possible.
The usual fix for a shortage like this is a central bank swap line, which Iran and Russia signed in July 2024. Two years on, however, the only money either side has publicly put behind it was a 1 billion-ruble deposit, worth about $10 million at the time, at VTB to cover “possible ruble shortages,” and any further draw would leave Russia holding rials as collateral — a currency it cannot sell at home and that has lost 29 percent against the ruble since January.
An Iranian MP says Russia has offered a $20 billion ruble loan that Iran has not taken.
The trade goes around it
If the ruble-rial system worked as advertised, Iranian merchants wouldn’t be paying exchange houses in Dubai and Turkey to reach Russian suppliers.
Iranian MP Meysam Zohourian told Fars News in June that before the war even essential goods bought from Russia were routed through the UAE and settled in dirhams.
Fars asked in August why merchants still settle Russia trade through exchange houses and trustees in Turkey.
Iran’s central bank governor, Abdolnaser Hemmati, called his June trip to Moscow “an operational mission to untie the knots” in foreign trade, starting with letters of credit for Iranian merchants.
What the number counts
Whatever number is claimed, it doesn’t measure money moving between Russia and Iran — it’s a bookkeeping instrument, recording which currency left a Russian company’s account, not what currency reached the other side.
If a Russian importer’s bank takes rubles out of its account, converts them to dollars, and pays the seller in dollars, Russia’s Central Bank counts that as a ruble settlement, despite a contract priced in dollars and a seller that receives dollars.
The number also leaves out trade arranged without conventional cross-border payments. When countries are cut off from the international financial system, it’s easier to move goods than money, and Russia and Iran have increasingly turned to barter and swap arrangements.
Moscow has made barter official policy. The economy ministry issued a government manual for barter contracts in 2023, and a Russian economist says Iran is the one trading partner where barter accounts for a real share of the trade.
Russia and Iran have also pursued energy swaps. Swap deliveries of petroleum products had begun by late 2022, while the two sides were discussing a broader arrangement covering up to 5 million tons of oil and 10 billion cubic meters of gas a year. Trade conducted through such arrangements would not necessarily appear in the national-currency settlement percentage.
What the mismatch tells you
Russia and Iran’s coordination is real, but both countries overstate the impact. The public number, announced for propaganda value, doesn’t even match the government’s internal goal.
And the mechanism is in reality a cobbled-together assortment of poorly working, mismatched payment arrangements that don’t serve either side well except in their fight against the international financial system.
Continued contacts between Tehran and Washington, mediated by Qatar and Pakistan, have intensified debate inside Iran over whether diplomacy can still produce a deal despite President Donald Trump’s rejection of Tehran’s latest proposal and what should happen if it fails.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking before leaving New York on Tuesday, rejected suggestions that Tehran had agreed to nuclear concessions, saying Iran’s immediate focus was the Strait of Hormuz.
Despite Trump’s rejection of the Iranian proposal, Araghchi said he had told Qatari mediators that Tehran would wait for an official US response through them.
The reformist newspaper Shargh said Araghchi’s remarks carried an important message: Tehran did not want its return to diplomacy to be interpreted in Washington as a retreat from its nuclear positions.
The dispute is increasingly about whether that diplomatic opening can produce an agreement before pressure gives way to another round of escalation.
An opening, but on whose terms?
President Masoud Pezeshkian reiterated on Wednesday that his government was seeking to bring the Islamabad understanding to fruition. He did not comment directly on Trump’s rejection of Iran’s proposal.
Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, meanwhile, responded sharply to Trump’s recent statements, warning that Iran would retaliate against further military action.
“In a region where we do not sell oil, no one will sell oil, and if our security is not ensured, no infrastructure will be safe,” he said.
“The main issue in the coming days will not be whether Iran and the United States are talking to each other, but whether they can move from exchanging messages to an implementable formula,” Shargh wrote.
It said a US response meeting at least some of Tehran’s conditions could lead to more serious negotiations, while failure to find such a formula would return the dispute to “a logic of pressure and confrontation.”
Etemad, another reformist daily, raised a different concern: that the Strait of Hormuz could lose value as an Iranian bargaining tool the longer the confrontation continues.
It argued that if the blockade, restrictions on Iranian oil exports and pressure on Iran’s commercial networks become entrenched, Washington could increasingly rely on economic pressure rather than further large-scale military action.
Former Iranian diplomat Kourosh Ahmadi made a similar argument in Shargh, saying Iranian officials should recognize that “diplomacy is an arena of give-and-take” rather than expect progress while offering almost no concessions.
Trump’s rejection of Tehran’s proposal, he argued, showed that the dispute was increasingly about “who sets the negotiating ground and who will be forced to put more concessions on the table to get out of pressure.”
If diplomacy fails
Hardline voices have pushed in the opposite direction, warning officials against interpreting continued diplomacy as evidence that Iran should compromise.
Political analyst Mehdi Kharatian rejected arguments that the Strait of Hormuz was losing its effectiveness as leverage.
“Do not be deceived by those who these days are flooding you with false and biased reports about the ineffectiveness of oil and the Strait,” he wrote, accusing such voices of implicitly advocating surrender to the United States.
He also warned officials against sending what he described as excessive signals of willingness to negotiate, arguing that doing so could encourage Trump to resume military action.
The possibility of another confrontation was also raised by IRGC spokesman Hossein Mahdavi, who told state television that Iran was already at war. He said the United States was unlikely to launch attacks on the same scale or with the same capabilities as before.
But he added: “In the world of war, everything is possible.”
Mahdavi also claimed Iranian forces continued to target vessels attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz and that the United States had recently refrained from responding.
The conservative Khorasan newspaper raised the possibility of Iran launching pre-emptive attacks if negotiations over the nuclear issue fail.
It argued that Iran could resort to a “Plan B” aimed at seizing the initiative before its adversaries complete their intelligence and logistical preparations, potentially triggering a period of intensified warfare before the US midterm elections.
The competing prescriptions emerging in Tehran reflect a debate that has moved beyond whether communication with Washington should continue. What the opposing camps increasingly share is a sense that the current diplomatic opening may not remain open indefinitely.
Iran’s receipt of Washington’s response to its seven-point proposal for ending the Strait of Hormuz crisis has sharpened divisions in Tehran over whether to pursue further compromise or intensify pressure on the United States.
The response was reportedly delivered through Qatar and has been described as US “feedback” rather than acceptance or rejection of the Iranian plan.
Hardline voices have portrayed Washington’s position as evidence that further diplomacy is futile, while more pragmatic commentators argue that the fact the US responded at all shows negotiations remain alive.
President Donald Trump had publicly dismissed Iran’s proposal as insufficient. Iranian diplomats said reopening the Strait and lifting the naval blockade were discussed in indirect talks mediated by Qatar.
The dispute in Tehran is increasingly about what it should do next.
Jame Jam, affiliated with state television, published an op-ed Wednesday by hardliner Abbas Salimi-Namin titled “America’s Fear of Admitting Defeat Against Iran.”
Salimi-Namin argued that Washington’s resistance to the seven-point plan, rooted in the earlier Islamabad talks, reflected the White House’s unwillingness to acknowledge that framework as a strategic setback.
US policymakers, he wrote, still cling to the prospect of delivering a “crippling blow” to Iran and fear the domestic political cost of acknowledging failure more than continued escalation.
Kayhan went considerably further.
Editor-in-chief Hossein Shariatmadari portrayed US demands for verifiable nuclear concessions as evidence that Washington never intended to negotiate in good faith.
He argued that linking freer navigation through the Strait to nuclear concessions was an attempt to strip Iran of its principal leverage while maintaining US economic and military pressure.
Kayhan criticized what it described as the Foreign Ministry’s excessive “patience” and called for non-attributable maritime interdictions, deployment of coastal anti-ship batteries and expanded targeting of Western-escorted vessels.
Global energy markets, it argued, must face an “unbearable cost” before Washington lifts its blockade.
The moderate daily Sharq offered an almost opposite prescription.
In a commentary, Ahmad Zeidabadi argued that despite the rigidity of the US response, Washington’s decision to send detailed feedback through Qatar showed that a diplomatic off-ramp remained open.
He urged the government to preserve the Qatari channel and proposed a two-stage approach under which Iran could offer targeted technical assurances, including temporary IAEA monitoring protocols, in return for an immediate, phased easing of restrictions on commercial transit under the Islamabad memorandum.
Zeidabadi rejected calls for military escalation, warning that abandoning shuttle diplomacy as restrictions on Iranian aviation and banking intensify would push the country towards deeper economic and civilian isolation.
The contrasting reactions show how Washington’s response has shifted the argument in Tehran from whether diplomacy should continue to what price Iran should be prepared to pay for it.
Jame Jam occupies a space somewhere between the positions represented by Kayhan and Sharq: deeply skeptical of Washington’s intentions, but portraying the impasse as a product of US reluctance to acknowledge Iran’s leverage rather than as grounds for immediately abandoning negotiations.
With an actual US response now before Tehran, those competing interpretations are no longer arguments about a hypothetical deal. They are becoming arguments over how Iran should answer.
Attacks by hardliners on Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf and Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei following hardline lawmaker Hamid Rasaei’s imprisonment have intensified the rift among Iran’s conservatives.
Rasaei said during an online parliamentary session on Sunday that Ghalibaf, former president Hassan Rouhani, President Masoud Pezeshkian and the Secretariat of the Supreme National Security Council had filed complaints against several lawmakers.
He said one of those complaints had resulted in a 10-month prison sentence against him. Rasaei described the ruling as “non-legal” and “political,” but said he would report to prison to serve the sentence.
Rasaei was elected third in Tehran in the parliamentary election three years ago, when around 80 percent of eligible voters in the capital boycotted the election.
He is the first sitting lawmaker to be sent to prison during his term in office.
The complaint dates to before Rasaei was elected to parliament and concerns a case brought by Ghalibaf against the weekly 9 Dey, where Rasaei was managing director. The complaint followed an article published in January 2024 under the headline “Ghalibaf’s Manipulation of Parliamentary Documents.”
The judiciary announced on Monday that Rasaei had appeared at Tehran’s Special Clerical Court and was sent to the clerics’ section of Evin Prison the same day to begin serving his sentence. According to the judiciary’s statement, Rasaei had more than 18 months to resolve the case by apologizing to Ghalibaf.
Rasaei’s positions are closely aligned with those of the Paydari Party and former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.
Hardliners react to the sentence
Rasaei’s supporters have accused Ghalibaf of “silencing the voices of critics” and criticized him for pursuing the complaint against Rasaei rather than focusing on the country’s economic and security problems.
Figures associated with these groups and their media outlets also attacked Mohseni-Ejei. The criticism has spilled over into some recent nightly pro-government gatherings.
Mohammad-Manan Raeisi, a Qom lawmaker who headed Saeed Jalili’s presidential campaign in the city two years ago, sharply criticized Ghalibaf and other officials and warned of a possible popular backlash against them.
“I doubt that, under these circumstances, people will allow you to appear in any mosque, gathering, public square or religious ceremony, and you may face a popular backlash,” he wrote.
Meysam Nili, managing director of the Raja News website and a figure associated with the Paydari Party, accused the judiciary of injustice and political bias, claiming that a “coup” was being organized against media and political figures belonging to the faction.
Hardline social media user Mohsen Maghsoudi, referring to arguments in favour of negotiations with the United States, wrote: “When it is possible to negotiate with the killer of the martyred Imam (Ali Khamenei) in the national interests and still talk about negotiations despite receiving insult, humiliation and aggression, why can’t we, in order to preserve unity, drop a three-year-old complaint over the headline of a weekly newspaper so that a revolutionary representative does not go to prison and hundreds of thousands of people’s votes do not become ineffective for 10 months?”
Other conservatives push back
Other conservative figures have sharply criticized the controversy generated by Rasaei’s supporters and the hardline groups.
The IRGC-affiliated Tasnim news agency published an article headlined “On Mr Rasaei’s Strange Fallacies!” and described his objections to the ruling as “slander against a judicial ruling.”
Tasnim said Rasaei had effectively challenged the validity of the ruling by describing it as “strange” and “contrary to procedure,” while accusing the judiciary of political conduct by calling the ruling “political and non-legal.” The agency characterized his statements as criminal.
The Tabnak website published a video showing hardliners chanting in support of Rasaei and against Ghalibaf at one of the nightly gatherings. It called them “infiltrators” and said a small number of people were using the gatherings to “advance factional objectives.”
The conservative Khorasan newspaper said Rasaei’s refusal to apologize had led the court to conclude that he was not only unrepentant about the allegations he had made against Ghalibaf, but was also refusing to resolve the case and defying a judicial order.
Mojtaba Zarei, a member of parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, wrote that turning a judicial case into a political and media confrontation during wartime would only deepen divisions among political forces.
Deepening confrontation
Hardliners have stepped up attacks in recent days against political rivals who support resolving the dispute with the United States through negotiations and returning to the Islamabad understanding.
They have gathered outside the home of former President Hassan Rouhani, whom they accuse of being subservient to the West, and called for him and his former foreign minister, Mohammad-Javad Zarif, to be prosecuted.
They also chanted against President Masoud Pezeshkian and called him an “infiltrator” as he returned from New York, where he attended the UN General Assembly. Hardliners have also registered an impeachment motion against Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi over his meeting with Steve Witkoff, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Iran, and launched an online campaign calling for Pezeshkian’s removal.