Iran will take action against anyone who employs a military deserter, including private-sector companies, the head of the country’s Public Conscription Organization said on Tuesday.
Senior IRGC commander Hossein-Reza Sadeghi and his son Saeed played central roles in efforts to preserve an IRGC Intelligence oil-sales network and shift its financial operations from the United Arab Emirates to Russia, an Iran International investigation found.
Two informed sources told Iran International that Sadeghi, a senior adviser to the Revolutionary Guards commander-in-chief, and his son were at the center of efforts to shift the mechanism for transferring sanctioned oil revenues from the UAE to Russia.
The sources linked the changes to the departure of Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad.
On Sunday, the IRGC-affiliated Fars news agency reported that Iran’s Central Bank had found an alternative route to repatriate money held by oil intermediaries trusted by the Islamic Republic, known as “trustees,” and transferred $1.5 billion in Iranian oil revenues through Russia’s banking system.
Hours after the report, Paknejad resigned and President Masoud Pezeshkian accepted his resignation.
The two sources said Paknejad’s removal and the change in the money-transfer route were part of an effort to preserve the IRGC Intelligence Organization’s oil-sales corruption network.
Saeed Sadeghi’s role in Iran’s oil sector
Although Saeed Sadeghi currently holds no official Oil Ministry position, he has for years been a trusted Revolutionary Guards figure in Iran’s oil industry.
During Ebrahim Raisi’s presidency, he became chief executive of Amir Kabir Petrochemical Company. He previously served as deputy for legal affairs and contracts at the oil, gas and petrochemical holding company of the Guards’ Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters and at Shastan Investment Holding, which is affiliated with the Defense Ministry.
Two months after Pezeshkian took office, Sadeghi was appointed chief executive of Naftiran Intertrade Company (NICO). In September 2025, he was removed just one week after being appointed director of international affairs at the National Iranian Oil Company.
His removal came after it emerged that trustees had failed to return $8 billion in proceeds from oil sales to Iran.
After anti-government protests broke out in January, several establishment figures said economic pressure stemming from corruption among the trustees had caused the unrest.
Mehdi Kharatian, director of the Hayat-e Siasat think tank and an analyst close to the Islamic Republic, compared “the trustees’ failure to return the dollars” to “the pager operation in Iran” during a video podcast.
Iran International’s sources said Sadeghi traveled to Moscow at his father’s request a week before the start of the 40-day war, apparently to avoid possible judicial proceedings.
He remained in Russia until the war ended and worked on moving the financial network used to handle proceeds from sanctioned Iranian oil sales from the UAE to Russia, the sources said.
Shift from UAE to Russia
On June 6, Mohammad Javad Bavand, a former deputy head of the IRGC Intelligence Organization’s economic affairs division, was appointed the oil minister’s special assistant for sales.
Bavand had held the same position under Raisi and previously represented IRGC Intelligence on the Supreme National Security Council committee tasked with circumventing sanctions.
On June 17, Central Bank Governor Abdolnaser Hemmati visited Mir Business Bank in Moscow alongside Iran’s ambassador to Russia.
Bank Melli Iran owns all shares in the bank, which is registered in Moscow and has operated since 2002. Mir Business Bank provides correspondent accounts and services for ruble and foreign-currency transactions, connecting Iranian banks with Russia’s banking network.
The US Treasury sanctioned the bank in 2018 for providing financial services to sanctioned Iranian entities.
Iran International’s sources said proceeds from oil sold by the trustees are to be returned to Iran through Russia’s Mir financial network, which they said replaced SWIFT following US banking sanctions.
IRGC Intelligence builds new network
IRGC Brigadier General Hossein-Reza Sadeghi was tasked with completing the IRGC Intelligence Organization’s network for selling Iranian oil, according to Iran International’s sources.
Sadeghi has held senior oversight positions within the Revolutionary Guards, including heading the office responsible for special oversight of IRGC Intelligence on behalf of the Guards’ commander-in-chief. He has also served as deputy coordinator of the IRGC Intelligence Protection Organization.
The sources said the establishment of the IRGC trustee network was approved by Mehdi Sayyari, the new acting head of the IRGC Intelligence Organization.
At the same time, a separate network of oil intermediaries linked to Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, known as Shayan, came under scrutiny by the ministry’s internal security unit. Shayan, the ministry’s director-general for fuel and energy, was subsequently removed from his post.
Previous investigations traced billions in oil proceeds
One week later, Iran International identified nine trustees in the network, including children of senior security figures, among them Ali Rezaei, son of Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei.
Members of the network have collectively failed to return $11 billion in proceeds from Iranian oil sales, Iran International’s investigation found.
Two weeks later, Iran International published two confidential documents showing that Mohammad Javad Bavand, an IRGC-linked official in the Oil Ministry, had assigned the sale of 86 million barrels of Iranian oil to four trustees who already owed money from previous sales.
Iran International’s sources said that after the reports were published, IRGC commander Abdollah Zeighami, also known as Moshfegh and deputy head of the Revolutionary Guards’ media headquarters, held a confidential meeting with Bavand and Mostafa Ahadi, a former deputy for economic affairs at IRGC Intelligence who now serves as deputy head of Unit 600 of the IRGC Intelligence Organization.
The sources said the meeting focused on suppressing reporting about corruption involving IRGC-linked oil trustees.
Iran International’s sources said Sunday’s transfer of $1.5 billion in oil proceeds from Russia to Iran marked the completion of the Revolutionary Guards’ project.
Paknejad resigned hours later.
The sources said Paknejad had himself played a central role in establishing oil-sales corruption networks involving two of the Islamic Republic’s security agencies. He was removed after the new IRGC Intelligence network had been completed, while all the trustees remained free.
The school struck in February in Iran’s Minab was founded by the wife of senior IRGC commander Ali Fadavi as part of a wider educational project linked to the Guards’ navy, according to his remarks and an earlier Iranian media account.
Fadavi said Sunday that his late wife, Parvin Momen Zahmatkesh, founded around 97 Shajareh Tayyebeh schools across southern Iran, from Abadan to Chabahar. He discussed the network immediately after referring to the attack on its Minab school.
An earlier account published by the pro-establishment Fash News website on June 8 explicitly connected the Minab school to Momen Zahmatkesh’s work.
The account portrayed the Minab school as a partial realization of her ambition to create educational complexes, providing corroboration of its place in the network beyond Fadavi’s latest remarks.
From Rastegaran to Shajareh Tayyebeh
The schools were established inside or near IRGC Navy bases and organizational housing developments in southern Iran. Momen Zahmatkesh served as the force’s adviser on family affairs while her husband was its commander.
The Fash News account said she proposed establishing the schools and worked without a salary. It described her as a doctoral student in executive management and said the couple sold their home to help finance the project, subsequently securing support from the Education Ministry and donors.
The report tentatively dated the start of the project to 2013, in southern provinces along the Persian Gulf. The network expanded in the following years, with work continuing into 2025. Some facilities began as a single classroom or an older school or building refurbished with staff and charitable support.
The schools initially operated under the name Rastegaran between 2013 and 2015 before adopting Shajareh Tayyebeh.
The Minab attack
The Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab, in Hormozgan province, was struck on February 28, the opening day of the US-Israeli war against Iran. Local authorities subsequently put the death toll at 156, including 120 children.
Reuters reported in March that preliminary US military findings pointed to American responsibility, and the Pentagon elevated its investigation. President Donald Trump said in June that nobody had attacked the school intentionally. UN investigators said in September there were reasonable grounds to believe the US strike constituted a war crime.
A television appearance after rumors
Fadavi’s appearance on Sunday followed unverified social media rumors that he had been detained or sentenced to death for spying for Israel. Separate rumors alleged that his wife had died during interrogation.
He previously commanded the IRGC Navy and served as deputy commander of the Guards before being appointed head of the commander-in-chief’s advisory group in the Iranian month of Dey, spanning December 2025 and January 2026.
His television appearance contradicted rumors that he had been executed. Discussing his wife, he said she had “passed away” during the 12-day war in June 2025. He did not say she had been killed in an attack.
An earlier condolence message from then-IRGC commander Mohammad Pakpour, published on June 28, 2025, referred to her suffering from illness in the final years of her life. Pakpour was himself later killed during the 40-day war.
The Fash News account likewise said she had lived with diabetes for years and dated her death to Tir 1404, the Iranian month spanning late June and much of July 2025. It said she was buried in the Fatima al-Zahra section of the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad.
Fadavi’s wording differed from the customary official description of people killed in attacks as “martyrs.” The published illness accounts provide a more specific explanation than the unsupported claims circulating online.
Momen Zahmatkesh was born in the Iranian year 1337, corresponding to 1958–59. The couple’s home was on Isar 8 alley in Tehran’s Mahallati neighborhood, where many IRGC commanders lived.
A building on the same alley was bombed during the later 40-day war. Official accounts subsequently referred to it as the site of the deaths of the “Mahallati martyrs.” That later attack was separate from the period in which her death had already been publicly announced.
Educational and business interests
The couple’s involvement in education predated the southern school network. According to Iran International’s Persian reporting, they established the Naqsh-e Kowsar Cultural and Educational Complex in April–May 1997, when Fadavi was deputy commander of the IRGC Navy. Its stated activities included establishing technical and vocational schools for girls.
Momen Zahmatkesh also chaired the board of Shajareh Touba Ferdows, an institution established in 2017.
Private schooling has been an area of activity for other families of senior Iranian officials, including the wife of former parliament speaker Gholamali Haddad-Adel and relatives of current Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
Her business interests extended beyond education. In October–November 1993, she established the Alaleh Shalamcheh Agriculture and Livestock Company. Fadavi’s father, Mohammadali, joined the company in September–October 1996; both had left its board by 1999.
The enterprise now operates in Kordan, west of Tehran, as the Alaleh horse-breeding complex and riding club, according to the same report.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Monday that talks with the United States were meaningless, even as President Donald Trump remained open to direct negotiations, while a third tanker in two days was struck near the Strait of Hormuz.
The contrasting messages came as months of intermittent diplomacy remained stalled and tensions intensified around the strategic waterway, where Iran and the United States have imposed competing restrictions on shipping. Tehran has tied progress to conditions surrounding Hormuz, while Washington has pressed for broader concessions, including on Iran’s nuclear program.
“Our problem with the United States is that every time we come to the negotiating table, war is immediately imposed on us,” Pezeshkian told Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan during a meeting in Tehran.
Pezeshkian said negotiations made no sense with an adversary that “every day engages in assassination, sanctions, pressure and threats” and breaks its commitments.
“We have been attacked three times so far following talks, and this shows that they are not seeking dialogue; rather, their goal is to overthrow the Islamic Republic,” he said.
Trump, however, said Monday that he remained open to direct talks with Tehran, keeping a diplomatic path available after saying over the weekend that Iran could resolve the confrontation “the easy way or the hard way.”
The two sides have continued exchanging messages indirectly despite the impasse. Tehran presented Washington through intermediaries with a seven-day proposal aimed at restoring security in the Strait of Hormuz, and Iranian officials said Sunday they were reviewing the US response. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran remained serious about diplomacy but was also prepared to defend itself.
The diplomatic standoff coincided with another escalation at sea Monday, when a tanker was struck by an unidentified projectile in the Strait of Hormuz, sparking a fire in its engine room. UK Maritime Trade Operations said the crew was battling the blaze and no casualties or environmental impact had been reported.
The strike marked the third tanker hit in two days. UKMTO said Monday it had received delayed reports that two tankers — one carrying liquefied petroleum gas and another crude oil — were struck by unidentified projectiles Sunday.
UKMTO did not attribute those attacks to Iran. But in a separate incident Monday, it said an inbound tanker 11 nautical miles north of Khasab, Oman, turned back after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps hailed the vessel and threatened to target it if it continued.
The IRGC-affiliated Fars news agency separately reported Monday that Iran had targeted 13 tankers it described as “violators” in the Strait of Hormuz over the previous seven days.
The incidents came as the United States intensified enforcement of its naval blockade against Iran. US Central Command said Monday its forces had redirected 130 commercial vessels since resuming the blockade on July 14, disabled three ships that refused to comply and destroyed 13 commercial vessels it said were violating the blockade or were part of the IRGC’s multibillion-dollar shadow network. Pasted markdown
“The US military remains intensely focused on this mission,” CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper said. “We will swiftly act against any vessels trying to run the blockade.”
Washington has also stepped up economic pressure. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday that the rial had fallen to record lows and Iran loaded no crude onto tankers last month, citing the figures as evidence that the US pressure campaign was working.
The military pressure has also continued alongside the diplomatic impasse. Senior members of Trump’s national security team met at Camp David on Friday to discuss the Iran war, with Trump considering renewed major combat operations as negotiations remain stalled, Axios reported.
Iranian officials warned Monday that renewed military action could widen the conflict. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said another attack or “miscalculation” against Iran could open additional fronts.
“Every miscalculation by the enemy against Iran has brought it a heavy defeat,” Rezaei said. “The next mistake will bring new fronts and bigger surprises.”
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has nominated Mehrdad Akhlaghi Ketabchi as defense minister, moving to fill a post left vacant since Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh was killed in US-Israeli strikes in February.
Sasan Valizadeh, an adviser to the president’s deputy for parliamentary affairs, said Pezeshkian sent the nomination to Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf under Article 133 of the constitution, which requires ministers to win a parliamentary vote of confidence. Lawmakers are expected to review Akhlaghi Ketabchi’s program and policies before scheduling the vote.
The Defense Ministry has been run by Majid Ebn-e-Reza since March 2, when Pezeshkian appointed him acting minister after Nasirzadeh’s death on February 28. Ebn-e-Reza, previously the deputy defense minister, has represented the ministry in domestic and foreign meetings but was never nominated for the permanent post.
Akhlaghi Ketabchi is a longtime Defense Ministry official with deep roots in Iran’s missile and aerospace industries. He was listed by the UN Security Council in 2007 as head of the Shahid Bagheri Industrial Group, a Defense Ministry entity linked to Iran’s ballistic missile program. His name returned to the UN sanctions list when earlier sanctions on Iran were re-applied in September 2025.
Then-defense minister Hossein Dehghan appointed him head of the Aerospace Industries Organization in November 2014. The United States also sanctioned him in 2020, identifying him as director of the Defense Industries Organization and citing conventional arms-related activities.
The nomination also raises the question of how the appointment was cleared at the top of Iran’s political system. Defense ministers are formally nominated by the president and confirmed by parliament, but the post is among the sensitive ministries whose nominees have traditionally been coordinated with and approved by the supreme leader beforehand.
That process is less transparent under Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not made a public appearance since taking office. Decisions, appointments and written messages have continued to be issued in his name, but officials have not said whether or how his approval was obtained for Akhlaghi Ketabchi’s nomination.
Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan activated collective deterrence measures Monday and agreed to rapidly deploy forces and military capabilities to the kingdom, as Saudi-backed Yemeni troops advanced against the Iran-backed Houthis.
The decision followed an emergency meeting of the Mecca defense pact’s committee, which reaffirmed the three countries’ solidarity in confronting attacks against Saudi Arabia and Islamic holy sites, Saudi Arabia’s defense minister said.
The committee agreed to activate “collective deterrence measures” in response to the attacks and those responsible for them, he said.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry said in a joint statement that the three countries had also agreed on the rapid deployment of military forces and capabilities in Saudi Arabia. The statements did not detail the forces involved or specify what role they would play.
The move came as Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces reported major gains along the Red Sea coast, saying Monday they had retaken Mokha and advanced around the strategic Bab al-Mandeb Strait, one day after launching a major offensive to recover territory seized by the Houthis last month.
The armed forces of Yemen’s internationally recognized government said they had recaptured the port of Mokha, Reuters reported. Military spokesman Majed al-Nuzaili also reported the capture of Dhubab airport and the cutting of the road linking Dhubab to Mokha.
Saudi-led coalition spokesperson Maj. Gen. Turki al-Malki said 100 fighter jets were participating in Operation Yemen Dawn, providing round-the-clock support for ground forces and air cover over Bab al-Mandeb. He said the campaign had destroyed 324 “high-value” Houthi targets.
The Houthis earlier denied reports of government advances around the strait.
Yemen’s Information Minister Moammar al-Eryani told Reuters government forces had secured effective control of Bab al-Mandeb, although another government source said fighting continued at a nearby military base.
The offensive follows Houthi advances along Yemen’s western coast and around Taiz. Presidential Leadership Council Chairman Rashad al-Alimi announced the campaign Sunday, setting out ambitions to recover Houthi-held territory and restore state institutions.
Saudi campaign expands toward Sanaa
The government’s stated objectives extend beyond recovering recently lost coastal territory to retaking Sanaa, which has been under Houthi control since 2014.
“Our armed forces have begun implementing a strategic offensive operation on Sanaa,” al-Nuzaili said Monday. Houthi-run Al Masirah television reported attacks on the capital, although the announcement did not establish that government ground forces had reached the city.
The government’s reported coastal gains came alongside further Houthi advances inland. The Associated Press reported that the group captured Turbah on Sunday, a town on the main road between Taiz and Aden that had served as an important position for government forces defending Taiz.
The Houthis have also continued missile and drone attacks against Saudi Arabia, the attacks that prompted Riyadh, Ankara and Islamabad to put their new collective-defense framework into operation.
On Monday, the group’s HOCC agency warned airlines that Saudi airspace was unsafe for civilian flights and would become a “theater of operations” for its forces, according to a statement carried by the Houthi-run Saba news agency.
US backs Saudi right to respond
The activation of the Mecca pact adds another layer to Saudi Arabia’s military response as Washington provides support without directly joining the war in Yemen.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio backed Saudi Arabia’s right to respond to Houthi attacks in remarks to reporters Monday.
“Obviously the Saudis have come under Houthi attack … and they have a right to defend themselves,” Rubio said. He also said Washington intended to honor what he described as its binding security agreement with Riyadh.
Rubio said neither Saudi Arabia nor Yemen’s internationally recognized government supported continued Houthi control of territory taken from government forces.
About 200 US advisers are working in Saudi planning and operations centers, including on targeting, while Washington is also providing intelligence sharing, planning assistance and aerial refueling, Al Jazeera reported Monday, citing a US official.
The official said, however, that US forces were not participating in the Yemen war and had no specific military objectives there.
At the center of the campaign is Bab al-Mandeb, the narrow waterway connecting the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden. Fighting there threatens commercial shipping at a time when the Iran war has also disrupted passage through the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian officials had previously presented Houthi control of the waterway as a strategic gain against Washington. In remarks reported September 27, Maj. Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, described Houthi control of Bab al-Mandeb as another step toward a broader US defeat in the region.
Even if government forces consolidate their coastal gains, the Houthis could still threaten shipping with drones and missiles launched from positions farther inland or elsewhere along Yemen’s coast.