Iran's rhetoric against UAE hardens after Netanyahu visit

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.

As millions of students returned to classrooms this month, Iran's paramilitary Basij appeared prominently in elementary schools as authorities rolled out an education campaign infused with military and ideological messaging.

Iran's Education Ministry announced over the summer that material related to the recent war and the country's military and nuclear capabilities would be incorporated into educational content.

The push comes at a precarious moment for the Islamic Republic, following war, economic turmoil and nationwide unrest—and four years after schoolgirls became some of the youngest and most visible participants in the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising.

“Iran is obviously right now at sort of a crossroads,” historian Arash Azizi told Iran International, as the Islamic Republic struggles to command the loyalty of generations born decades after the 1979 revolution.

“We're talking about much younger people, people under 13,” Azizi said, adding that the Basij had some involvement in primary schools during the early years after the revolution, but considerably less in recent decades.

The memory of Woman, Life, Freedom

Historian Shahram Kholdi said the increased attention to schools cannot be separated from what happened inside them four years ago.

“We should remember that during the Woman, Life, Freedom movement we saw a huge wave of solidarity with this movement, especially in girls' schools in Iran,” he said.

The nationwide protests in January served as another warning. “It was again a wake-up call, harkening back to Woman, Life, Freedom, that they have to control schools,” Kholdi said.

After the death of Mahsa Jina Amini in morality police custody in September 2022, protests spread into schools.

Videos showed schoolgirls removing their headscarves, chanting against the Islamic Republic and removing or defacing images of its leaders. Some were barely teenagers.

The protests turned schools into one of the most visible arenas of youth opposition to the Islamic Republic.

Kholdi argues that the significance of a Basij presence extends beyond ideological instruction. Schools can provide authorities with greater visibility into students and, through them, their families at a time of considerable social and economic discontent.

The Basij's role in policing students also has a history. Kholdi recalled his own high-school years, when Basij members searched students' backpacks each morning for what he described as “contraband cultural material.”

What stands out now, he said, is how far down the age ladder the attention appears to be moving.

The Islamic Republic's concern about losing younger Iranians predates the latest unrest and war. In a January 2025 interview with Iran International, Iran specialist Holly Dagres said the establishment was already looking beyond an increasingly alienated Generation Z.

“They've been actually looking at the next generation, which is Gen Alpha,” she said.

‘North Korea scenario’

Azizi sees the push into younger age groups as part of a broader argument within the establishment over how to respond to a society that has moved away from some of the ideological positions that have defined the Islamic Republic.

“The regime has been trying to sort of bolster its base amongst the youth because it's lost them and it knows they're the future,” Azizi said.

One tendency, he said, favors a return to a more rigid and intensely ideological state—what he described as a “North Korea scenario”—drawing on mass mobilization of its remaining supporters to reinforce mandatory hijab and Islamist social rules.

In that vision, the Basij becomes an instrument not only for building support but for imposing what Azizi called “societal submission.”

But he said such an approach carries its own risk.

“If the regime wants to go toward bringing back Iran to the 1980s and then North Korea,” Azizi said, such policies could “lead to more social protests and social resistance.”

That tension is now reaching further into Iran's classrooms.

During Woman, Life, Freedom, schoolgirls who had spent their entire lives under the Islamic Republic turned some of those classrooms into places of protest. Four years later, the children entering elementary school belong to an even younger generation.

Khamenei described Iran as enjoying “progress, dignity and independence” and its highest standing in the Muslim world and beyond in a written message marking the anniversary of the Iran-Iraq War on Monday.

“Today, some consider us the world’s fourth superpower,” Khamenei wrote. He went further, saying that according to “divine calculations,” Iran is the “world’s top power.”

The depiction comes more than six months after Khamenei became supreme leader without making a public appearance.

No new photograph, video or audio recording of Khamenei has been released since his elevation to the post. Islamic Republic officials have said he remains in charge and has stayed out of public view for security reasons.

His absence extended to the days-long funeral and burial ceremonies for his father and predecessor, Ali Khamenei.

• 

  Will Mojtaba Khamenei's absence help the Islamic Republic survive?

That absence creates a contrast at the heart of a message centered on national strength and retreating adversaries. Khamenei invokes “millions” of Iranians taking to the streets and a country growing in power while remaining unseen by the public himself.

The ‘fourth superpower’ by what measure?

Khamenei does not identify those who regard Iran as the world’s fourth superpower or explain what measure produces that ranking.

Military spending offers one measurable comparison.

Iran spent an estimated $7.4 billion on its military in 2025, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The United States spent about $954 billion, China $336 billion and Russia $190 billion.

SIPRI says Iran also finances some military activities outside its regular budget, meaning actual expenditure could be higher. Even allowing for that, the available figures leave a wide gap between Iran and the world’s largest military spenders.

Economic measures offer another comparison. The International Monetary Fund estimates Iran will account for around 0.8% of the global economy on a purchasing-power-parity basis in 2026.

100%

Khamenei moves his larger assertion outside such measurable criteria by invoking “divine calculations” to describe Iran as the world’s top power.

Military expenditure, economic output, trade, industrial capacity and the outcome of military operations can be measured. “Divine calculations” provide no equivalent benchmark for determining what outcome would confirm or contradict the assertion.

‘Progress’ meets inflation and contraction

Khamenei portrays pre-revolutionary Iran as an era of “backwardness, humiliation and disgrace,” contrasting it with a present filled with “progress, dignity and independence.”

Measured through economic conditions and everyday living standards, however, progress presents a more complicated picture.

The IMF projects average inflation of 68.9% in Iran in 2026 and a 5.4% contraction in the economy.

The World Bank has also pointed to pressure from war and sanctions, water and energy shortages, weak investment and rising poverty.

Those indicators raise a basic question about Khamenei’s broad description of progress: what is being measured, and for which part of Iranian society?

The enemy that supposedly stops at the Arabian Sea

One of the most readily testable parts of Khamenei’s message concerns foreign military activity in waters around Iran.

Waters south of the country were once a domain for enemy forces, Khamenei wrote, but “painful blows” by Iranian forces and the “defenders of the Strait of Hormuz” mean those adversaries now advance no further than the Arabian Sea.

Military activity in recent months presents a more complicated geographical picture.

US officials told Axios in August that the American military had established a shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz, with around 15 to 20 tankers entering or leaving each night. The operation allowed roughly 10 million barrels of oil to move through the waterway each day, according to the officials.

The US military presence in waters around Iran continued in September.

The Revolutionary Guards fired ballistic missiles toward a US aircraft carrier and destroyer in early September, according to US military accounts. American forces also struck Iranian oil tankers near Kharg Island and in the Gulf of Oman.

• 

  All Mojtaba's men: Old guard shapes Iran’s new order

US Central Command said on September 8 that an American warship continued patrolling regional waters after being targeted twice by Iranian missiles over two days. US forces struck five Iranian tankers during the same operation in the Gulf of Oman and near Kharg Island.

The maritime pressure has also become part of negotiations between the two countries. Iran would be prepared to reopen the Strait of Hormuz if Washington reduced military pressure and lifted its blockade of Iranian ports, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on September 22.

100%

US operations in the Strait of Hormuz, Gulf of Oman and waters close to Iran therefore do not fit an absolute geographical reading of Khamenei’s assertion that adversaries no longer advance beyond the Arabian Sea.

‘Millions of supporters’ and the Iranians left out

Khamenei also presents pro-establishment mobilization over the past seven months as evidence of domestic strength and cohesion.

“More than 30 million Iranians have declared themselves ready for self-sacrifice,” he wrote, adding that more than 500,000 people filled the available capacity of one registration drive in just 100 minutes.

Even if those figures are accepted, mobilizing millions of people does not by itself measure support across Iranian society.

Iran during the same period witnessed nationwide protests that began over economic grievances in late December 2025, spread rapidly across the country and developed into direct protests against the political establishment. The demonstrations subsided after a sweeping crackdown.

The government put the death toll at 3,117. Iran International’s Editorial Board estimated that more than 36,500 people were killed, based on classified security documents, field reports and information from medical workers, with most deaths occurring on January 8 and 9.

In Khamenei’s account, government supporters filling streets provide evidence of national unity and strength. Opponents occupying those same public spaces are not given comparable weight in assessing the state of Iranian society.

Khamenei’s own absence again becomes relevant. He invokes millions of Iranians gathering in streets and squares, but more than six months after becoming supreme leader has yet to appear among them or release a public video or audio message.

‘Victory’ and Hezbollah’s losses

Khamenei applies a similar conception of power to Iran’s regional allies.

He describes “victory and triumph” as the constant companions of late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and presents his successor, Naim Qassem, as continuing the same path.

Hezbollah’s present position complicates a narrative of uninterrupted victory.

Nasrallah was killed and Hezbollah lost a significant number of senior commanders. Israel’s operation against the group’s communications network also exposed the extent of Israeli intelligence penetration into its structures.

Inside Lebanon, Hezbollah’s weapons have become central to one of the country’s major political disputes. The Lebanese government has pursued a process aimed at bringing the group’s weapons under state control, which Hezbollah opposes.

The death of a leader and senior commanders, combined with political pressure to transfer control of a group’s weapons to the state, sits uneasily alongside a historical description centered on permanent “victory and triumph.”

A definition of power with little room for defeat

The central issue in Khamenei’s message may be less any single assertion than the way power itself is defined.

In his account, the Islamic Republic emerged stronger from the eight-year Iran-Iraq War. Subsequent pressure, he said, made it stronger. More recent wars have made the Islamic Republic’s “phoenix” larger, while its future will be “far more glorious.”

Such a framework can absorb sharply different outcomes without altering its conclusion.

If an adversary retreats, that demonstrates strength. If fighting continues, that demonstrates resistance. Economic pressure becomes the cost of independence. If a regional ally loses leaders and commanders, the continuation of its cause takes precedence. Government supporters in the streets demonstrate popular backing, while opponents filling those streets are given no equivalent role in measuring political strength.

Within such a definition, defeat becomes increasingly difficult to identify.

National power can also be examined through observable outcomes: a country’s capacity to protect its territory and infrastructure, influence an adversary’s behavior, maintain economic stability, achieve foreign policy objectives, preserve regional influence and retain domestic support.

• 

  Iran publishes purported handwritten Mojtaba Khamenei letter to IRGC general

Measured against such indicators, Iran’s ability to impose costs on its adversaries does not by itself establish the status invoked by Khamenei when he describes the country as the “fourth superpower” or, according to “divine calculations,” the world’s top power.

That leaves the central question running through his message: if decades of war, pressure and confrontation have elevated Iran to such a position, which military, economic, social or regional measures demonstrate it?

The question takes on additional weight when this portrait of national power comes not from a leader addressing the public, but through a written message from a supreme leader who, more than six months after taking Iran’s highest office, has yet to be seen or heard by Iranians in a public appearance.

Trump publicly rejected the proposal on Saturday. The plan would have reopened the strait within seven days and resumed nuclear negotiations in return for measures including lifting the US naval blockade of Iranian ports.

The president plainly wants normal shipping restored, but he appears unwilling to pay the price Tehran is asking for it.

Iranian officials have repeatedly described Hormuz as a strategic asset and a source of leverage. Disruption of the narrow waterway affects energy markets, shipping costs and inflation far beyond the region.

That importance has not disappeared. What may be changing is Iran’s ability to convert that disruption into immediate political concessions from Washington.

The US military has spent months trying to reduce Iran’s ability to attack shipping while expanding escorts for commercial vessels. CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper said last week that US forces had facilitated the transit of more than 2,000 commercial vessels and more than one billion barrels of crude oil through the strait.

The operation has not restored normal shipping, but it has allowed substantial volumes of oil to move without an agreement with Tehran, helping Washington turn Hormuz from an Iranian energy veto into what it increasingly appears to regard as a manageable risk.

Why Trump can wait

If Washington believes it can keep significant quantities of oil moving without Tehran’s cooperation, there is less incentive to lift the naval blockade and ease economic pressure simply to secure the full reopening of the strait.

Trump’s rejection also comes as his administration is increasing rather than reducing that pressure. At the UN General Assembly this week, he called for Iran’s “complete economic isolation” and said he expected an agreement after the November midterm elections

The administration has expanded restrictions on Iranian banking and aviation. Iranian airlines have lost access to several international destinations, while companies servicing sanctioned Iranian carriers face the threat of secondary US sanctions.

Trump’s rejection therefore suggests Washington believes time is, for now, working more in its favor than Tehran’s.

Hormuz still matters

None of this means Iran’s Hormuz strategy has failed.

Keeping commercial traffic moving requires a major US military operation, while shipping and insurance costs remain elevated and the threat of attacks has not disappeared. Washington is paying a price for managing the disruption.

But the balance may have shifted. Tehran still views reopening Hormuz as something it can exchange for relief from economic and military pressure. Washington appears to believe it has reduced the costs of disruption enough that it does not yet need to meet Iran’s asking price.

Seen that way, Trump’s “no” becomes more significant. He has not necessarily rejected diplomacy: contacts through mediators continue, and Iran says it is still awaiting Washington’s formal response to its proposal. US officials have also described indirect discussions as continuing.

What Trump has rejected, for now, is Tehran’s price for ending the Hormuz crisis.

Iran still holds the Hormuz card. Washington’s calculation appears to be that it no longer has to pay as much to take it off the table.

The discussions have increasingly focused on sequencing: Iran wants the United States to lift its economic blockade before Tehran reopens the Strait of Hormuz, while Washington is seeking movement on the strait before surrendering its principal source of leverage.

Neither side appears willing to go first despite the mounting economic and political costs of the deadlock.

On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said in an interview with Fox News that Tehran was willing to relinquish its stockpile of uranium enriched to 60% within the framework of international law and its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The choice of Fox News may also have reflected an effort to reach President Donald Trump and his political audience more directly, given the network’s close relationship with the president.

Pezeshkian also said Tehran hoped to revive its June ceasefire understanding with Washington before the US midterm elections in November.

“We don't want it to get to the midterm elections,” he told reporters.

Trump has suggested the opposite timetable, saying in his UN General Assembly address that an agreement with Iran would likely be reached after the elections.

Who moves first?

Although both sides insist they seek peace, they remain divided over how an agreement would be implemented and in what order each should make concessions.

Tehran insists that no agreement can be reached before the United States lifts its economic blockade, while Washington and its European allies favour the opposite approach.

The disagreement is compounded by the collapse of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding.

From Tehran’s perspective, returning to an agreement that Washington previously failed to honour requires guarantees upfront. From Washington’s perspective, reviving the June arrangement risks appearing to reward Iran for using the Strait of Hormuz as leverage.

Supporters of diplomacy on both sides, along with mediators including Pakistan and Qatar, continue to urge the replacement of military rhetoric with political dialogue.

The problem is that each side is making a different calculation about timing and sequencing, while political considerations discourage either from moving first.

Iran’s demand that “all fronts” be addressed further complicates the equation, linking any agreement to Israel’s actions in Lebanon and elsewhere, while the widening confrontation in the Red Sea and around Bab el-Mandeb has added another layer of uncertainty to negotiations.

The midterms

The competing timetables reveal another dimension of the deadlock: both capitals have now openly linked a potential agreement to the November elections, but appear to be drawing opposite conclusions about who benefits from waiting.

It remains unclear whether Pezeshkian’s remarks will materially alter the course of negotiations. For now, each side appears to calculate that time is placing greater pressure on the other.

Trump’s threat to “annihilate Iran” raises the domestic political cost for Tehran of making concessions and increases the risk that any flexibility will be portrayed by Pezeshkian’s hardline opponents as capitulation.

Washington has political constraints of its own, with congressional hawks and influential regional lobbying groups likely to raise the political cost of concessions to Tehran ahead of the midterm elections.

The view from Tehran

The reformist daily Sharq argued on Thursday that the resumption of contacts offered an opportunity to prevent further escalation, but that significant differences between the two governments and political opposition at home made an immediate breakthrough unlikely.

“The mere continuation of mediation, or even a direct meeting between the presidents of Iran and the United States, lacks the capacity to overcome the current deadlock,” it said. “Changing this situation requires practical and reciprocal decisions from both Tehran and Washington that go beyond diplomatic messaging.”

That assessment points to the constraints facing Pezeshkian, including opposition from hardline parliamentary factions and Iran’s powerful security establishment.

For Iran’s leadership, the principal risk of an agreement is surrendering strategic leverage without guaranteed sanctions relief. For the Trump administration, moving first could expose it to accusations of appeasement ahead of the midterm elections.

The contacts in New York therefore suggest that diplomacy itself is not the missing ingredient. The harder question is whether either side is prepared to move first — and accept the political cost of doing so.