IRGC, gunmen clash in southeast Iran

More cargo moving across the Caspian could help Iran keep supplies coming in. But rising freight totals do not show whether Tehran has found a practical alternative for exporting oil.

To establish that, we need to know what is being shipped, where it is going and what trade it replaces.

Grain and industrial goods can ease shortages; crude needs its own export infrastructure and buyers. Iran’s oil swaps at Neka show both what the northern route can offer and what it cannot.

What the freight numbers measure

Russia’s Ministry of Transport reported 1.8 million tonnes of freight on the trans-Caspian route in 2025 and 1.3 million tonnes in the first half of 2026. It separately reported maritime freight of 2.8 million tonnes in 2025 and about 4.5 million tonnes in the first seven months of 2026.

The figures point to increased activity, but the ministry does not break the cargo down by Iranian origin, Iranian destination or commodity.

The North–South Transport Corridor spans several countries, routes and modes. Cargo can transit Iran without being Iranian trade or move between other participating countries.

A corridor-wide increase could reflect transit shipments, trade between third countries or Iranian goods rerouted from elsewhere. The aggregate numbers do not distinguish among them.

Nor should the route and maritime figures be added together as if they measure the same flow. The ministry presents them separately and does not provide enough detail to establish how their coverage overlaps.

Evidence of genuine substitution requires knowing what cargo moved, where and which route it replaced. Grain rerouted from a southern port to northern Iran would demonstrate substitution for that cargo.

A shipment merely transiting Iran would demonstrate corridor use, not replacement of lost Iranian trade.

Imports and exports are different problems

Northern routes can still be valuable for Iran. Food, feed and industrial inputs can support domestic supply during a disruption. But that resilience should not be confused with replacing oil revenue.

Around 90% of Iran’s crude exports normally pass through Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf, according to Reuters. Bringing goods into northern Iran does not automatically provide the terminals, pipelines and shipping arrangements needed to move Iranian crude to international buyers.

Iran’s ports have nominal annual capacity of about 300 million tonnes, but only around 30 million tonnes is in the north, according to figures cited by Al Jazeera. One large vessel in the south can potentially carry as much cargo as 20 Caspian ships.

The question is not simply whether trade can move north, but whether those routes can serve the same economic purpose at comparable scale.

Neka was not an oil-export system

Iran’s Neka terminal was connected by pipeline to refineries in Tehran and Tabriz. Under previous oil-swap arrangements, crude from Caspian producers was delivered to Neka and processed in northern Iran. Iran then made an equivalent volume of its own crude available for export through Kharg.

The arrangement helped supply northern refineries while freeing Iranian crude elsewhere for export. It did not eliminate reliance on southern export infrastructure.

Swap volumes peaked at about 110,000 barrels per day in June 2006, fell to almost zero by 2011 and did not subsequently resume at scale, according to Lee and Kalyuzhnova. Changes in relative pricing were among the factors that made the route less attractive.

Infrastructure alone therefore does not create a durable oil route. The economics of each barrel, the terms of any swap and the availability of buyers matter too.

Any claim that Neka now provides a meaningful export alternative requires current evidence: how much crude is arriving, whether it is being refined, swapped or exported, and where any exported Iranian barrels actually leave the country.

Who controls the alternative?

Moscow’s transport ministry links freight growth to Russian-Iranian cooperation and identifies the unfinished Rasht–Astara railway as a key project.

The more important question is whether Iranian access depends on a limited number of suppliers, carriers, financiers or cross-border arrangements. Iran could gain another route while still having little control over the terms on which it operates.

That is not inevitable. A corridor involving several suppliers and transport partners could give Tehran more options.

The test is whether cargo can move regularly at competitive cost, with workable payment and customs arrangements, without a single partner becoming a bottleneck.

What would an alternative look like?

The available figures establish that activity on parts of the northern corridor has increased. They do not establish how much Iranian trade has been rerouted, whether those routes are commercially sustainable or whether they can substitute for oil-export capacity.

The Caspian may give Iran useful alternatives for specific shipments. Whether that amounts to strategic diversification depends on what Iran can move, at what scale, where it can send it and who sets the terms.

For now, rising freight totals are a starting point for that analysis, not proof that Iran has built a northern substitute for its oil-export system.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday condemned Netanyahu’s visit, warning of what it called the “very dangerous consequences” of an Israeli presence in the region.

The ministry said any move that provides “a platform for destabilizing actors to enter the region” would ultimately harm regional countries by fueling division and instability. It called on governments to prevent their territories from becoming “a platform for destabilizing actions” against neighboring states.

Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, issued a more direct warning to the UAE on Wednesday.

“Just as hosting US military bases has not brought you security, hosting the butcher of Gaza will not have positive consequences either,” he wrote on X. “Learn from the recent war, stop starting wars and refrain from making baseless claims about the Iranian islands.”

The hardline Javan newspaper, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), described Rezaei’s remarks as “a clear warning to Abu Dhabi,” saying Iran’s neighbors could pay a price for policies they believed would bring them greater security.

The rhetoric comes as the UAE’s security relationship with Israel faces fresh scrutiny following an attempted attack aboard a Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv.

Israeli and Emirati authorities are investigating the incident, while US President Donald Trump said Thursday that investigators were examining a possible Iranian connection, although no evidence of Tehran’s involvement has been made public.

Iranian media intensify criticism

The criticism in Iranian media has increasingly gone beyond Netanyahu’s visit, with conservative outlets portraying the UAE as an active participant in efforts to contain Iran and questioning whether its cooperation with Israel extends beyond diplomacy.

Nour News, which is close to the Supreme National Security Council, accused the UAE of pursuing a two-track policy — publicly advocating de-escalation and dialogue with Iran while maintaining close security ties with the United States and Israel and pressing its claims to the disputed islands.

The website also portrayed Netanyahu’s visit as part of broader Israeli-Emirati efforts to reshape the regional security order and increase pressure on Saudi Arabia, though it offered no evidence of a coordinated plan.

Sobh-e No, considered close to parliament speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, warned that cooperation with a country involved in a war against Iran, whether military or intelligence-related, could affect Tehran’s security calculations.

The newspaper questioned whether the UAE’s role had been limited to hosting political meetings or whether its security cooperation with Israel had extended to the military confrontation with Iran.

Economic ties under strain

The increasingly hostile rhetoric comes against a history of extensive economic ties between Iran and the UAE, although Abu Dhabi suspended trade with Iran in August amid the war.

In 2024, around $21 billion of Iranian imports came from the UAE, accounting for roughly 30% of the total, according to World Trade Organization data. The UAE was also one of Iran’s largest destinations for non-oil exports.

The country has also long served as a hub for Iranian companies and intermediaries involved in moving goods and money around US sanctions.

Some Iranian conservatives are now arguing that those economic ties gave the UAE excessive influence over Tehran’s policy.

Conservative political activist Ali Gholhaki accused the UAE of profiting from sanctions on Iran while increasingly using its influence in Israel’s favor. He also alleged the existence of a “UAE lobby” inside Iran that had prevented Tehran from taking punitive measures against Abu Dhabi.

Calls for retaliation

The rhetoric has gone further among some figures close to Iran’s political establishment, with calls for direct retaliation against the UAE.

Mehdi Mohammadi, a strategic adviser to parliament speaker Ghalibaf, accused the UAE of cooperating with Netanyahu in launching a war against the Islamic Republic in a commentary published by the conservative Alef website.

“There is not much difference between them and the Israelis,” Mohammadi wrote.

“This time, the Emiratis should taste in Dubai, Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah what they have brought about in Africa, Yemen, Somalia and the Arabian Peninsula. It is time for flames of light to be seen in the middle of Dubai.”

The rhetoric marks a sharp deterioration in Iranian discourse toward a neighbor with which Tehran had until recently sought de-escalation and maintained extensive commercial ties, with Netanyahu’s visit intensifying an already widening rupture over Israel, regional security and the disputed islands.

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.

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.

US President Donald Trump raised the prospect of an Iranian connection, saying investigators were examining whether Tehran had a role in the incident and that, based on what he was hearing, he believed there could be one.

“We're working on it right now,” Trump said. “I would say the answer based on what I'm hearing, is yes. But we're working on it right now.”

Asked whether the co-pilot could have been placed on the flight by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards or radicalized separately, Trump said: “It could have been. Yeah.”

Trump also warned Iran of retaliation if investigators established its involvement.

“Oh they’ll be hit, very hard, don’t worry,” he told reporters Thursday. “You just ask them. They know what happened. They’ll be hit very hard.”

Israeli agencies investigate

Israel’s Mossad and Shin Bet intelligence and security agencies are also investigating the incident and whether the Omani co-pilot acted alone or was directed by others, according to i24News. Israeli officials said no Iranian involvement had been identified so far, and an initial assessment was that the co-pilot likely acted alone.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that the co-pilot had undergone Islamist radicalization but that it was too early to determine whether he had connections to Iran.

“I think it's too early to say whether he had any connections with Iran or with anyone else,” Netanyahu said, adding that he expected more clarity within days.

The flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv was diverted to Saudi Arabia after the co-pilot allegedly stabbed the captain and tried to bring down the aircraft. Passengers subdued him, and a reserve crew aboard the plane landed it safely in Saudi Arabia.

The United Arab Emirates has launched its own investigation into the circumstances and motives behind the incident, including whether it involved terrorist intent, prior planning or outside direction.

Iran role in UK airbase plot

The Flydubai developments came days after a separate investigation in Britain raised questions about possible Iranian involvement in a suspected plot involving RAF Fairford, an airbase used by US bombers in operations against Iran.

British counter-terrorism police on Thursday arrested a dual UK-Iranian national in London on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts as part of the investigation. Police said they were examining “all possible angles — including possible foreign state involvement.”

The arrest followed the detention Sunday of five British men in their 20s near RAF Fairford. They were arrested on suspicion of terrorism and explosives offenses but were later released on bail.

Police said petrol was found in the vans used by the men but no improvised explosive devices were discovered.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Wednesday there were “strong indications that Iran played a part in what happened over the weekend at RAF Fairford,” while stressing that the case remained an ongoing police investigation.

Iran denies involvement

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi rejected Burnham’s assertion, pointing to the release of the initial five suspects on bail.

“I can confirm Iran's belief that releasing supposed terrorists working for foreign states really says it all,” Araghchi wrote on X. “You're barking up the wrong tree.”

Iran summoned Britain’s ambassador in Tehran on Thursday to protest the accusations, with the Foreign Ministry describing them as baseless.

The Flydubai and RAF Fairford investigations are separate, and authorities have not established Iranian responsibility in either case.