The United States is facing strategic isolation for the first time since World War II, with its closest allies refusing to support its war against Iran, army spokesman General Mohammad Akraminia said on Wednesday.
“The aim of the United States in launching an illegal war against Iran is to destroy its Iranian-Islamic civilization,” he alleged.
Iranians receiving unemployment benefits say payments have been delayed by up to two months, leaving some struggling to pay for food and service debts, according to messages sent to Iran International.
Recipients described repeated delays of several weeks and said banks and Social Security offices had provided little clarity over when the money would arrive, as inflation above 70% and the rial’s steep decline further squeeze household finances.
“Unemployment benefits are our only lifeline. I’m struggling to cover expenses for myself, my spouse and children,” one recipient said. “Every day the money doesn’t arrive, we’re left with an empty table and a sense of shame.”
Payments ‘weeks late’
Several recipients reported recurring delays of 20 to 25 days, while others said they had gone without benefits for as long as two months.
One person whose payment was more than a month overdue said people depended on the modest allowances to put food on the table and service debts.
The person said Bank Melli and Refah Bank had refused to accept responsibility for the delay, while the Social Security Organization said it had issued the payment check and the matter was now in the banks’ hands.
Another recipient reported a 25-day delay in receiving a monthly allowance of 160 million rials, saying Branch 15 of the Social Security Organization routinely made late payments.
A person with 22 years of employment history who had been unemployed for six months said the organization’s Shemiran branch in northern Tehran had failed to pay their benefits.
Others described receiving vague promises from local offices.
“The payment was supposed to arrive by the 15th of the month, but there’s been nothing. Some branches told us to wait until the 30th because it might be paid then,” one person said.
Under Iranian law, workers who involuntarily lose their jobs may qualify for unemployment benefits if they meet employment and insurance requirements.
For many recipients, the payments are their primary source of income while looking for work.
Social Security under strain
The delays come amid wider concerns about the finances of the Social Security Organization (SSO), Iran’s main social insurance institution responsible for unemployment benefits and pensions.
SSO chief Mostafa Salari said on July 27 that the organization faced a monthly pension shortfall of at least 170 trillion rials even if it collected all current insurance contributions. He put its debt to the central bank at 750 trillion rials.
Pensioners have also protested over delayed payments in recent months. On Sept. 20, retirees gathered in Tehran, Ahvaz, Rasht, Shush and Kermanshah to demand outstanding payments, including delayed pension adjustments.
The complaints come alongside broader reports of unpaid wages and insurance contributions across Iran.
Iran International reported last month that workers in several sectors, including factories and healthcare facilities, were facing delayed salaries and insurance contributions.
Workers laid off from Rajaee Port in Bandar Abbas have also reported unpaid wages and difficulties accessing unemployment benefits.
For those waiting for payments, however, the immediate problem is making ends meet.
“They haven’t deposited my unemployment benefits. I have countless loan repayments and debts, and I’m desperate,” one recipient said. “Social Security treats us so badly, as though we’re the ones who owe them money.”
Iranian police fired 36 rounds at a car during a seven-minute chase near Tehran, killing two brothers aged 15 and 19 after its occupants honked their horn while celebrating the death of then-supreme leader Ali Khamenei, a source close to the family told Iran International.
Khamenei, 86, was killed on February 28 when US and Israeli forces struck his compound in central Tehran in the opening attacks of the war. His death prompted celebrations in parts of the country.
The brothers, Ahmadreza Feyzi, 15, and Amirhossein Feyzi, 19, were traveling with their father, several of his colleagues and one colleague's wife from Mehrshahr to nearby Fardis, according to the source.
Police first confronted the group at Fardis's second roundabout after hearing them honk the car horn along many more who were doing so in celebration, the source said.
Following a verbal altercation, officers alerted colleagues by radio and the vehicle was stopped at the next roundabout.
One officer confronted a colleague of the boys' father, while another smashed the car's rear windows with the stock of his rifle despite seeing the two brothers in the back seat, according to the source.
Their father drove away to get his children away from the confrontation, prompting officers to call for backup. A police emergency response unit subsequently joined the pursuit.
During a chase lasting roughly seven minutes, officers fired 36 rounds at the vehicle, the source said.
At one point, Amirhossein realized his younger brother had been shot and tried to revive him in the back seat, but Ahmadreza was unresponsive.
Their father continued driving in an attempt to get his sons to safety as officers pursued and fired at the vehicle, according to the source.
The source said officers opened sustained fire along a less congested stretch of road and fired two additional shots after the vehicle had come to a complete stop near a fire station.
Delayed medical treatment
Ahmadreza was shot in the heart, while Amirhossein suffered a gunshot wound to his side, according to the source.
Officers beat the vehicle's occupants and forced them out after the car stopped, the source said. The father realized both his sons had been shot when neither emerged.
Officers refused his request to take the brothers to Shohadaye Salamat Hospital and instead transported them to Resalat Clinic in Fardis, saying the facility fell within their jurisdiction.
The source said the clinic lacked the equipment needed to treat gunshot wounds and blamed the delay in receiving appropriate medical care for Amirhossein's death.
Plainclothes security personnel later beat family members who protested the killings, according to the source.
The brothers' bodies were subsequently placed in black body bags and taken to an undisclosed location.
Bodies withheld for four days
Security authorities withheld the brothers' bodies from their family for four days, according to the source.
During that period, the family was pressured to bury them at the remote Behesht-e Ali cemetery.
The source said the family eventually agreed so they could recover the bodies and bury the brothers as soon as possible.
Iran International could not independently verify all details of the source's account. Iranian authorities have not publicly commented on the brothers' deaths.
A resurfaced video of former foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif saying Iran lacked enough enriched uranium to produce a nuclear weapon has ignited a fierce debate after successive wars with Israel and the United States.
The speech appears to have been delivered in late April or May 2025, shortly before the 12-day war with Israel.
Zarif argued that the balance of power had changed and that nuclear weapons no longer provided effective deterrence, pointing to Israel's experience and the collapse of the Soviet Union to argue that possessing them neither prevented attack nor guaranteed a state's survival.
He dismissed acquiring an atomic bomb as “the paradigm promoted by a few ignorant demagogues.”
More than a year and two wars later, the remarks collide with a growing hardline argument that Tehran's failure to possess a nuclear weapon deprived it of the deterrent that might have prevented those attacks.
The video's renewed circulation has therefore fed directly into a growing debate over whether the wars vindicated Zarif's skepticism about military deterrence or proved his critics right.
Calls for a change in nuclear doctrine
Some officials and media outlets have openly raised the possibility of changing the country's nuclear doctrine.
Hassan Ghashghavi, a member of parliament, claimed in recent days that support for such a change was growing among the public, experts and officials.
The conservative newspaper Vatan-e Emrooz put the issue prominently on its front page Monday with the headline “Iran Should Build a Bomb.”
An accompanying report argued that Iran should develop a “deterrent” nuclear weapon to prevent future attacks by Israel and the United States.
The argument contrasts sharply with Zarif's contention that nuclear weapons cannot guarantee security and that Iran should place greater emphasis on diplomacy and economic cooperation.
Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani, a member of parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, told Khabar Online on Tuesday that threats from Israel and the United States could strengthen arguments inside Iran for acquiring a bomb.
Journalist Seyed Sadegh Hosseini, writing on Sadegh Media, defended Zarif's argument, saying attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities and the assassinations of its nuclear scientists had demonstrated the failure of the assumption that uranium enrichment and stockpiling nuclear material would deter attacks or force Washington to make concessions.
Hardliners turn on Zarif
The video's renewed circulation has also prompted attacks on Zarif at pro-government and pro-war gatherings in several parts of Iran, including Isfahan and Borujerd, where demonstrators chanted slogans against him and former president Hassan Rouhani.
In Isfahan, protesters called Zarif a “spy” and an American “mercenary.”
The conservative newspaper Kayhan also attacked Zarif in an article titled “Mr Zarif! Why do you carry out a suicide operation whenever America is in trouble?!”
Kayhan accused the former foreign minister of making statements at sensitive moments that damaged Iran's national security capabilities and gave its adversaries “an opportunity to breathe.”
It also criticized Zarif's record in the negotiations that produced the 2015 nuclear agreement, accusing him of seeking to “whitewash the enemy and blame our own side.”
Two visions of Iranian power
But Zarif's speech went beyond the question of whether Iran should possess a nuclear weapon, challenging the security-oriented approach that has shaped much of the Islamic Republic's regional policy.
He drew a distinction between what he called a “threat-oriented” and an “opportunity-oriented” view of Iran's neighbors, arguing that Tehran's conception of the region determined the kind of relationship it built with surrounding states.
“If Iran's view of the region is threat-oriented, its ambassador should be a representative of the Quds Force. If its view is opportunity-oriented, the ambassador should be chosen from among businesspeople and diplomats,” Zarif said.
He argued that the dominance of security considerations in foreign policy had prevented Iran from taking full advantage of economic relations with neighboring countries.
“Why are our ambassadors in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq representatives of the Quds Force?” he asked. “Because we see them as threats.”
Zarif's critics say the wars demonstrated the danger of entering a confrontation without the ultimate deterrent and strengthened the case for greater military capability. His argument points in the opposite direction, that Iran has placed too much faith in military deterrence and treated economic ties and diplomacy as secondary sources of national power.
More than a year after he made it, that argument is being tested against a reality Zarif could not then have known.
Iran was subsequently attacked by both Israel and the United States, and the question of what might have prevented those attacks has become one of the most consequential debates in Tehran.
A women’s Basij commander and a police officer were killed in separate attacks on Wednesday in Iran’s southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province, adding to a series of deadly shootings, bombings and armed clashes in the region.
The IRGC-linked Tasnim news agency said a commander of a women’s Basij unit in Mehrastan County was shot dead outside her home.
Tasnim attributed the killing to what it described as militants linked to the United States and Israel, but did not identify a group or provide evidence supporting that assertion.
The Basij is a paramilitary organization operating under Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Police vehicle attacked in Mehrastan
In a separate incident in the same county, unidentified gunmen attacked a police vehicle, killing First Sergeant Mohammad Ali Shahriari, Tasnim reported.
The outlet did not provide details about the attackers, the circumstances of the shooting or whether anyone else was wounded.
The two killings came a day after major armed confrontations elsewhere in Sistan-Baluchestan that left casualties on both sides, according to Iranian authorities and local reporting.
Six killed in operation near Zahedan
The Revolutionary Guards said on Tuesday that five members of an alleged kidnapping cell and one of its personnel were killed near Zahedan, the provincial capital.
The IRGC Ground Force’s Quds regional headquarters said its forces located the group in the Kurin area after an engineer working on construction projects west of Zahedan was abducted a day earlier.
It said five members of the group were killed, the hostage was freed and one IRGC member was killed.
According to the statement, the kidnappers had links to armed groups and intended to take the engineer into a neighboring country. It did not identify the group or the country.
An earlier Tasnim report had put the number of people killed in that operation at three.
More than 20 Fatemiyoun casualties reported
Separately, Haalvsh, which covers developments in Sistan-Baluchestan, said more than 20 members of the Fatemiyoun were killed or wounded Tuesday during more than seven hours of fighting in the mountainous Chah Ahmad and Arzan Tak areas of Taftan County. The figure could not be independently verified.
Citing local sources and eyewitnesses, Haalvsh said armed men who had taken positions in the mountains opened heavy fire on a group that included Fatemiyoun fighters traveling on motorcycles.
Fatemiyoun is an Iran-backed Shiite militia composed largely of Afghan fighters and organized with support from the Revolutionary Guards. Its members have fought alongside Iranian forces in regional conflicts.
Haalvsh said reinforcements later arrived with more than 40 vehicles as well as reconnaissance and combat drones. It also reported mortar and heavy-weapons fire in the surrounding mountains.
The identities and affiliation of the armed men involved in the fighting remained unclear.
Series of attacks on security personnel
Sistan-Baluchestan, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan, has seen repeated attacks on police and military personnel in recent weeks.
On October 9, Iranian state media reported that Nosrat Eftekhari, a senior provincial police official, was killed in a roadside bombing near Zahedan.
A day earlier, a police commando was killed in an armed attack near Nosratabad, while a separate attack on a vehicle carrying Iranian Army personnel near Nikshahr killed another serviceman.
On September 23, an armed confrontation in Saravan killed Hossein Zarifi, a commander with the IRGC’s Sajjad base, according to the Guards’ Quds regional headquarters. Haalvsh separately reported that another intelligence official was killed and at least 13 other personnel were wounded.
At least five Fatemiyoun members were also reported killed in an armed attack near Zahedan on October 2.
More than 90 killed since March - HRANA
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said this week that at least 94 people were killed and 33 wounded in 63 armed incidents across southeastern Iran between March 31 and October 10.
HRANA said attacks on patrol vehicles and military convoys were the most common incidents it documented, followed by targeted shootings.
It also reported increased use of mines, rocket-propelled grenades and other heavier weapons by armed groups, while forces of the Islamic Republic used drones, artillery and armored vehicles in several operations.
The group said the People’s Fighters Front, an alliance formed in December 2025 that includes Jaish al-Adl and several smaller Baluch armed groups, had taken responsibility for six of the incidents it documented. Most attacks remained unattributed or could not be reliably linked to a particular group, HRANA said.
Sistan-Baluchestan, one of Iran’s poorest provinces and home to much of the country’s Sunni Baluch minority, has long seen armed confrontations between the Islamic Republic’s security forces and Baluch armed groups. The frequency and intensity of such incidents have increased in recent months.
Iranian wheat farmers told Iran International that delayed government payments for their previous harvest are leaving them short of cash for autumn planting, while inflation and the falling rial erode the value of money they are still owed.
Farmers described having to pay cash for seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, labor, irrigation and other costs while waiting for the government to settle payments for wheat already delivered.
A farmer in the Sanjabi area of the western province of Kermanshah told Iran International that the delays were making it increasingly difficult to cover essential expenses.
"Most of my farming expenses have to be paid in cash, while the government pays us our own money in installments," the farmer said.
Another farmer in western Iran said inflation and the rial's depreciation meant that delayed payments were worth considerably less by the time they arrived.
"By the time they pay us everything they owe for our wheat, gold and dollar prices and inflation will have multiplied, and the value of our money will have fallen sharply. Which official cares about the difference?" the farmer told Iran International.
Even when farmers eventually receive the full amount originally agreed, the money may buy considerably less than it would have when they delivered their crop.
Between 10% and 30% of payments owed to wheat farmers remain outstanding in different provinces, according to Ghadam Borbor, deputy head of Iran's National Wheat Foundation.
Rial depreciation cuts dollar value of wheat payments by 36%
Earlier this year, the government set its guaranteed wheat purchase price for the previous agricultural year at between 475 million and 495 million rials per metric ton, depending on the type and quality of the crop.
At the time, the dollar traded at 1,663,700 rials on the open market, making the highest guaranteed price equivalent to approximately $298 per ton.
At the current open-market rate of about 2.615 million rials to the dollar, that same 495 million-rial payment is worth about $189, a decline of roughly 36%.
The figures illustrate how the depreciation of the rial has reduced the dollar value of farmers' earnings while the government's nominal debt has remained unchanged.
The actual loss of purchasing power depends on changes in domestic prices and agricultural production costs, but farmers say they are increasingly unable to afford supplies needed for the next harvest.
Billions owed as government cites administrative delays
Borbor said the new 1405–1406 agricultural year (2026–2027) had begun without a guaranteed wheat purchase price and with preparations for autumn planting still incomplete.
Iran's government says it has settled most of its debts to wheat farmers but has not announced a deadline for paying the remainder.
According to figures released by the Targeted Subsidies Organization, the government body responsible for administering subsidy payments, on October 9, approximately 3,920 trillion rials ($1.50 billion at the current open-market rate) of the 4,100 trillion rials ($1.57 billion) owed to wheat farmers had been paid.
That left about 180 trillion rials ($69 million) outstanding.
Hassan Norouzi, head of the organization, said some payments were being held up by discrepancies between its records and those of the Ministry of Agriculture.
He said the remaining payments depended on correcting information in the government's administrative system.
For farmers who need the money for autumn planting, that means continuing to cover new production costs while government agencies resolve the discrepancies.
The Ministry of Agriculture has set wheat seed prices at between 720,000 and 756,000 rials ($0.28–$0.29) per kilogram, at least 45% above the highest guaranteed government purchase price of 495,000 rials ($0.19) per kilogram for harvested wheat.
Although seeds prepared for planting differ from ordinary harvested wheat, the price difference illustrates the financial burden facing farmers as they prepare for the new season.
A farmer in Nourabad told Iran International that the situation was becoming increasingly difficult.
"We have to buy seeds with cash, even though the government owes us money. Under these circumstances, what motivation is left to continue?" the farmer said.
Farmers turn to middlemen for immediate payment
The payment delays have prompted some farmers to sell their wheat to middlemen at prices below the government's guaranteed purchase rate.
Peyman Alemi, head of Iran's Chamber of Agricultural Guilds, said farmers urgently needing cash were selling wheat to intermediaries for between 380,000 and 440,000 rials ($0.15–$0.17) per kilogram.
That compares with the government's highest guaranteed purchase price of 495,000 rials ($0.19) per kilogram.
The difference means farmers accepting lower prices for immediate payment are sacrificing part of their potential income to cover mounting expenses.
Alemi warned that continued delays could discourage farmers from selling wheat to the government and potentially reduce domestic production in the next agricultural year.
Lower government purchases or falling domestic wheat output could complicate efforts to maintain strategic wheat reserves and increase reliance on imports, particularly as the rial's depreciation raises the cost of purchasing grain from abroad.
Bread prices climb despite unpaid farmers
The payment delays also come as bread prices rise across Iran, adding to the financial pressure on households.
Under the latest officially approved prices in Tehran, a loaf of sangak, a traditional Iranian flatbread, costs 155,000 rials (about $0.06), while barbari bread costs 100,000 rials (about $0.04).
Prices are considerably higher at bakeries operating outside the subsidized pricing system.
A review of prices recorded in October showed some varieties of sangak selling for as much as 500,000 rials ($0.19) in Tehran and 400,000 rials ($0.15) in the northeastern city of Mashhad.
The increases mean consumers are paying more for bread while some farmers who produced the wheat are still waiting for their earnings.
However, the current rise in bread prices cannot be directly attributed to delayed government payments, and the potential effects on future wheat production and imports have yet to materialize.
New planting season begins without guaranteed prices
Farmers face further uncertainty because the government has yet to announce the guaranteed purchase price for wheat from the current agricultural year.
The lack of a confirmed price makes it harder for farmers to calculate expected income and decide how much they can afford to spend on the new crop.
Many are therefore beginning the new planting season with part of the money for their previous harvest still unpaid, production costs that must largely be met in cash and no certainty over what the government will pay for their next crop.
Even if the government settles all outstanding payments, farmers may not recover the purchasing power lost during months of delays or the opportunities missed to buy agricultural supplies earlier.
Their previous wheat harvest has already been delivered to government storage facilities, but some producers are still waiting to be paid.
Agricultural officials warn that continued delays could undermine farmers' willingness to plant wheat or sell it to the government, potentially creating further challenges for Iran's domestic wheat supply.
