France begins implementing deal to protect Saudi oil facilities
France is beginning to implement operational elements of an agreement to help protect Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities, a French Foreign Ministry spokesperson said.
A Social Security hospital in Tehran has locked its main building and moved treatment into a cramped clinic in its courtyard, a member of the insurer’s healthcare oversight committee said, two months after officials listed it among the capital’s unsafe hospitals.
The main building of Shariat Razavi Hospital, run by the Social Security Organization, the state insurer that covers most of Iran’s workers and retirees, is deteriorating behind locked doors with its costly equipment still inside, Hossein Nategh told the labor-affiliated news agency ILNA on Thursday.
The move has turned a fully equipped hospital into what he called an outpatient clinic with the bare minimum of space, cutting the number of patients it can admit and the specialist care it can offer.
“The clinic set up in the yard has neither enough space for patients’ comfort nor the capacity to provide the services expected of a hospital,” he said.
The hospital’s equipment and funds belong to the workers and insured people who pay for them, Nategh said, and patients should not be left waiting in a cramped courtyard while the main building stands unused.
“If the building has a safety problem, why isn’t it being repaired? And if there is no plan to close it, why aren’t these resources being used?” he said. “This situation amounts to squandering the healthcare assets of the working community.”
He called for the main building to be reopened with its full equipment, or for an official explanation of why it was closed and what has happened to the equipment.
Neither ILNA’s report nor any statement from the Social Security Organization has explained why the building was closed or said what will happen to its equipment.
A list of unsafe hospitals
On August 18, Ali Nasiri, head of Tehran’s crisis management organization, named Shariat Razavi among 17 unsafe hospitals in the capital that were being made safe.
Warnings about the safety of Tehran’s buildings, hospitals among them, are not new. In 2024, the head of the city’s fire department said only 52 of the capital’s 189 hospitals had safety certification and that 125 were high-risk. In late 2025, a deputy fire chief, Kamran Abdoli, said 80,000 unsafe buildings had been identified in Tehran, about 27,000 of them high-risk.
Some of the warnings have ended in deaths. In June 2024, a fire at Qaem Hospital in Rasht, in northern Iran, killed at least nine patients with officials saying afterward that the hospital had never installed a fire suppression system despite earlier warnings. In early 2024, a fire broke out at Gandhi Hospital in Tehran, which fire officials said had received five safety notices beforehand and had faulty fire alarm and suppression systems.
Around the same time, Saeed Karimi, then the health ministry’s deputy for treatment, said about 100 hospitals were operating without a license because they had not fixed problems with safety or hygiene standards or with insurance contracts, and that closing them all at once would damage health services.
Iran cannot bring the United States to its knees despite inflicting damage on American forces, a former Tehran mayor said in a state television interview, arguing that Iran's military capabilities cannot match Washington's and calling for an end to the war through negotiations.
“We can bring in experts every day to say we are making America suffer, but the reality is that we cannot do that,” Gholamhossein Karbaschi, a former Tehran mayor and former secretary-general of the Executives of Construction Party, told state broadcaster IRIB.
Karbaschi criticized what he described as exaggerated portrayals of Iran's ability to inflict damage on the United States, saying the losses suffered by Iran and its population far exceeded the damage inflicted on Washington.
“The damage we have inflicted on the US is not comparable to the losses our own country and people have suffered. Fundamentally, our capabilities and capacities are not comparable to those of America,” Karbaschi said.
His remarks also addressed the Islamabad agreement, attacks on vessels and the need to release political prisoners to strengthen public support during the conflict.
Islamabad agreement and attacks on vessels
The attacks on three vessels could have been avoided had the Islamabad agreement been properly implemented, Karbaschi said, questioning who was responsible for targeting the ships.
Karbaschi argued that a distinction should be made between the actual reasons for violating an agreement and events used as a pretext to abandon it.
The agreement had been highly favorable to Iran and had surprised international observers because Washington had accepted its terms, Karbaschi said.
A US Navy fighter jet approaches an aircraft carrier's flight deck as crew members watch.
Israel opposed the agreement, and the attacks on the three ships ultimately became a pretext for breaching the understanding, he added.
Karbaschi also rejected the suggestion that ending the war through negotiations would require Iran to accept every American demand, arguing that both sides' objectives needed to be examined.
Political prisoners and public support
Iran must secure the backing of its population if it wants to resist pressure from US President Donald Trump, Karbaschi said.
“If this country wants us to stand up to Trump so that he does not dare bully us, we must have the people behind us,” Karbaschi said.
The former mayor questioned the continued imprisonment of prominent reformist politician Mostafa Tajzadeh, arguing that expressing an incorrect political opinion should not justify prolonged imprisonment.
Karbaschi called for the release of Tajzadeh and political prisoner Mostafa Mehraeen as part of efforts to bring the war to an end.
Mostafa Tajzadeh, a prominent reformist politician and former deputy interior minister under President Mohammad Khatami, has been imprisoned over his criticism of the Islamic Republic's leadership and calls for political reform.
Mahraein, a sociologist, was sentenced to a total of eight years in prison, five of which are enforceable. Mahraein was arrested on June 15, 2025, after publishing a letter criticizing former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
A satellite image taken May 9, 2026, shows strike damage to a collection of pipes sustained in an attack on May 4, 2026. Damage to a critical oil-routing system called a matrix manifold, which was struck in March, is also visible.
Iran and its allies hit water plants, airports, refineries and a nuclear power station across the Persian Gulf with a precision that rules out the official story of falling debris, a Reuters investigation has found, showing the civilian damage was the aim, not a side effect.
Reuters counted at least 135 drone and missile strikes on at least 84 infrastructure sites in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain since the war began on February 28. Again and again, the munitions struck the one piece of equipment a facility could least afford to lose, some of it hidden under rooftops or only a few meters across.
Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, has said as much. “It’s simple: the oil and gas production chain here is sprawling, accessible, and exposed,” he wrote on X in early September.
“American oil and gas companies across these waters and facilities share that exposure.” Three days later, three pumping stations on Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline were hit.
Reuters based its findings on 36 interviews, imagery and satellite data.
‘Falling debris’
In at least 34 statements, the region’s governments blamed damage on debris from successful interceptions. Fourteen experts who reviewed Reuters’ imagery, 11 from the affected industries, said that was highly improbable, citing signs of explosive detonation and the importance of what was hit.
Five of the states make it illegal to photograph or share certain images of strike damage.
‘Running out of water in days’
Kuwait, a desert country, draws 90 percent of its drinking water from desalination plants, most of them attached to coastal power stations because removing salt from seawater takes enormous amounts of heat and electricity.
Iran hit at least four of Kuwait’s eight combined power and desalination plants between March 2 and July 20, Reuters found, some more than once. In one four-day period in July, it struck what the government called “several” desalination plants, one of them at least twice.
“If you were to attack enough of their capacity, we’re talking about running out of water in days or weeks,” said Michael Christopher Low, director of the Middle East Center at the University of Utah. Donald Trump had threatened Iran’s water supply in March, Low said, but it was Iran that turned the threat into reality for its neighbors.
Kuwait’s government asked citizens to save water and electricity in “the spirit of shared responsibility.”
The strikes also hit Kuwait’s main refineries. In April it exported no crude at all, the first time since 1991, according to TankerTrackers.
A nuclear power plant
On May 17, a drone hit an electrical substation at the UAE’s Barakah nuclear plant, about 130 meters from a reactor, forcing one of its four reactors onto emergency diesel generators, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
“This means whoever was or is behind this knew exactly what they were doing,” IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said.
Three officials told Reuters Iran had the plant’s floor plan. The UAE said the drone came from “armed factions in Iraq.” There was no radioactive release.
A satellite image taken March 5, 2026, at the United Arab Emirates port of Fujairah after an attack on March 3, 2026, shows tanks burning.
Fujairah
The UAE’s main oil port outside the Strait of Hormuz, Fujairah was the region’s lifeline once Iran blockaded the strait. It was struck at least 19 times, and for the first three months of the war was either under attack or under repair.
The first strike, on March 3, left tanks burning that were still visible from space two days later. On March 9, a strike destroyed the first of the port’s two matrix manifolds, a junction of 62 pipelines that carries crude and refined products from the terminals to the ships. Emirati officials blamed debris.
“This is a wound to the brain and heart,” said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, a petroleum engineering professor at the University of Houston, who said it stretched credibility that debris had simply fallen onto the manifold.
Strikes on March 14, 16 and 17, beginning hours after a US attack on Iran’s Kharg Island oil terminal, damaged the second manifold, Reuters found, a hit not previously reported. Loadings fell to 440,000 barrels a day in the week of March 16, less than half the 2025 average, according to Kpler.
A satellite image taken September 11, 2025, shows the aftermath of a September 10, 2026, attack on a pumping station on Saudi Arabia's East-West Pipeline.
“We were watching it come in and watching the helicopters blast the drones out of the sky,” said a foreign businessman who watched one wave from a nearby road. “They were sending swarms of drones and one or two got through.” American-made Patriot batteries sat about 3 kilometers away.
The port recovered to a weekly record of 3.2 million barrels a day by the end of March. Iran struck again on April 6 and May 4, the second time hitting the pipes feeding the first manifold. Refined exports essentially stopped: a single ship left between May 4 and June 1, and they did not recover until September. In at least six statements, Emirati authorities blamed debris; none admitted major damage.
The UAE’s reprieve
Strikes on UAE infrastructure stopped after May 17.
In June, four sources told Reuters, the UAE agreed to unlock at least $10 billion in frozen Iranian funds, $3 billion of which was released, and two said Iran agreed in return to stop attacking. The UAE denied any agreement. A senior Iranian official confirmed the transfer but said it reflected “the correction of the UAE’s behavior.”
In September, as Iran attacked ADNOC tankers at sea, Fujairah set a monthly export record of 2.62 million barrels a day.
At Qatar’s Ras Laffan, which handles nearly a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas, two strikes destroyed the cold boxes that chill gas into liquid. QatarEnergy says repairs will take three to five years.
On September 10, the attack on the East-West Pipeline halted crude flowing across the desert to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, a route for up to 4 percent of global supply. Riyadh blamed Iran-backed militias in Iraq.
Iran-linked strikes have damaged five of Saudi Arabia’s nine biggest refineries and output fell from more than 10 million barrels a day to below 7 million, a loss of over $50 billion.
Airports in at least four countries, Amazon data centers and the UAE’s Al Taweelah aluminum smelter were also hit. The smelter will not return to normal before 2027.
“Every single target was civilian,” said Sultan Al Jaber, head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. “They are targeting our infrastructure. But what they’re really targeting is our way of life.”
A satellite image taken July 30, 2026, shows damage to tanks at Saudi Aramco's Abqaiq oil processing facility, which was attacked on July 27, 2026.
The Houthis and the Red Sea
After the April ceasefire collapsed, Revolutionary Guards commanders flew to Yemen on July 13 with missile and drone equipment for the Houthis, according to Reuters.
From July 16 to 18, US forces hit bridges and a tunnel on the roads to Bandar Abbas, strikes Iran International mapped in its investigation of Iran’s road and rail network.
The Houthis answered by hitting Saudi Arabia, knocking the Jazan refinery’s output to zero. The group has since declared a naval embargo on Saudi Red Sea ports, hit tankers and the airport in Najran, and taken the port of Mokha. On Saturday, a strike blamed on the Houthis killed 12 people at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia’s crown prince asked Trump for military help in September and was rebuffed. Riyadh had already signed a mutual defense pact in Mecca with Turkey and Pakistan in August.
In 1983, a CIA assessment warned that “even a few attacks against well-chosen targets could do considerable damage” to the region’s oil facilities. Fujairah, which began full operations the same year, has since been struck at least 19 times.
Nearly five decades after the 1979 Revolution brought an end to Iran's legal wine industry, the country retains vast vineyards and a centuries-old winemaking heritage but remains absent from a global wine export market worth $37.8 billion in 2025.
Iran has approximately 128,000 hectares of vineyards, just 31,000 fewer than Australia, whose wine exports were worth around €1.3 billion ($1.45 billion) in 2025.
The disparity reflects the disappearance of an industry from Iran's economy following the revolution, when the newly established Islamic Republic banned the production and sale of alcoholic beverages.
Grapes continue to be cultivated across Iran, including in Fars, Qazvin, Hamedan and Urmia, while Iranian raisins remain present in international markets. But an industry that could have generated exports, employment and tourism has remained absent for nearly five decades.
Freshly harvested grapes are displayed alongside traditional food preparation and drying trays in Ruyan, Semnan province, northern Iran, August 31, 2026.
Historic wines of Shiraz
The name "Shiraz" is now one of the most recognizable in the global wine industry, although the grape variety has no proven genetic connection to the grapes historically cultivated in Shiraz, southern Iran.
The shared name has long fueled a theory that the Syrah grape originated in Shiraz, Persia, before reaching France. In 1832, Scottish viticulturist James Busby brought Syrah vines from France to Australia, where the variety eventually became known as Shiraz.
Genetic research later established the grape's French origins, although the precise evolution of the Australian name remains disputed. The historical association with Persia has nevertheless endured.
Wine is deeply embedded in Persian culture and literature. Words such as mey and badeh, both meaning wine, and saqi, meaning cupbearer, established an enduring presence in Persian poetry.
Wine produced in Shiraz enjoyed commercial recognition during the Safavid period, when English and Dutch merchants transported some of it through the Persian Gulf to India and other parts of Asia, primarily for their own consumption.
In 1665, Shah Abbas II granted the French East India Company permission to produce wine in Shiraz for its employees.
The tradition continued into the Pahlavi era. Before the 1979 revolution, wine production and sales were legal in Iran, with commercial wineries operating in the country.
Freshly harvested grapes in crates at a vineyard in Ruyan, Semnan province, northern Iran, August 31, 2026.
The industry that might have been
Wine is more than the product of a vineyard. The industry extends from agriculture to factories, laboratories, glass bottle manufacturing, packaging, transportation, marketing, exports and tourism.
During the same decades that Iran's wine industry ceased operating, countries including Australia, Chile and New Zealand expanded their presence in the international market through investment in technology, education and branding.
According to the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV), Australia had approximately 159,000 hectares of vineyards in 2025 and exported wine worth about €1.3 billion ($1.45 billion).
The comparison does not mean Iran and Australia have identical winemaking potential. Commercial winemaking requires suitable grape varieties, specialized equipment, established production standards and access to international export networks.
A hypothetical model based on OIV statistics and Australian industry data suggests that if 20 percent of Iran's existing vineyards were dedicated to growing grapes suitable for winemaking, annual wine production could reach approximately 125 million liters.
The estimate assumes an average harvest of seven metric tons of grapes per hectare and a conversion rate of 0.7 liters of wine per kilogram of grapes.
Under a hypothetical scenario in which Iran exported half of that production, divided equally between bottled wine at about $5 per liter and bulk wine at about $0.80, annual exports would be worth around $186 million at 2025 prices.
The figure is illustrative rather than a forecast. The calculation does not account for the cost of converting vineyards and building a wine industry, or the value of grape and raisin production displaced in the process.
Even with those limitations, it illustrates how part of Iran's existing agricultural capacity could have developed into an export-oriented industry.
Such an industry could also have generated employment across grape-growing regions, supporting agricultural workers, food-processing businesses, packaging plants, transportation companies and exporters.
A wine tourism destination?
In many parts of the world, winemaking has become an important contributor to tourism, attracting visitors and generating income beyond the vineyards themselves.
Bordeaux in France, Tuscany in Italy and Napa Valley in the United States are among the best-known examples of regions where vineyards have become tourist attractions alongside their role in wine production.
Shiraz, the capital of Fars province in southern Iran, would have had many of the ingredients for developing a comparable form of tourism, although revenues generated by established international wine regions cannot simply be applied to Iran.
The city and surrounding region already boast internationally recognized attractions, including Persepolis, the ancient ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire, Pasargadae, the tombs of the Persian poets Hafez and Saadi, historic Persian gardens and distinctive local cuisine.
Vineyards, winery tours and opportunities to experience local food and wine could have complemented these attractions.
The name "Shiraz" itself could also have represented a valuable commercial advantage, although its international recognition in wine today is largely the result of Australia's successful industry.
The Gate of All Nations (also known as the Xerxes Gate) at the ancient ceremonial capital of Persepolis in Fars Province, Iran.
Combining the international familiarity of the Shiraz name with the legacies of Hafez and Saadi, Persepolis, Persian gardens and the region's long history of winemaking could have helped establish a distinctive identity for local tourism.
Other grape-growing regions of Iran such as Qazvin province and the city of Takestan, as well as Hamedan and Urmia, could have established wine-producing regions based on their climates and traditions of grape cultivation.
Iran's lost opportunity extends beyond the wine that might have been produced. It encompasses nearly five decades in which investment, jobs, exports and tourism around such an industry were unable to develop.
Perhaps a glimpse of what such an industry might have become can be found in one of the most celebrated verses of Hafez, the 14th-century Persian poet whose name remains inseparable from Shiraz:
Come, let us scatter flowers and pour wine into the cup.
Let us break through the roof of heaven and devise a new design.
A former Iranian labor minister has drawn ridicule after saying the country has no economic problems other than high prices and inflation, remarks that came as official data showed year-on-year inflation approaching 90%.
Hojjat Abdolmaleki, who served under former president Ebrahim Raisi and is an economics professor, made the remarks in a recent interview with state television that has circulated widely online over the past two days.
“In the economy, the issue is only and only high prices and inflation,” Abdolmaleki said. “Set high prices aside and you have no other economic problems… We have no problems, praised be God.”
The former minister has previously made controversial remarks about the causes of inflation. In August, he claimed that rising prices were not even one percent attributable to the war and regional conditions.
Reformist and moderate newspapers, including Sazandegi, criticized the assertion as an oversimplification that ignored the economic costs and currency shocks resulting from political and military developments.
Abdolmaleki has also dismissed the economic consequences of international internet disruptions, saying nobody had lost their job because of internet shutdowns and that online sellers could move their businesses to domestic platforms.
Critics argued that changing platforms could not guarantee businesses would retain their customers, income or jobs.
Ridicule crosses political lines
Abdolmaleki's latest remarks have drawn criticism from conservatives as well as moderate and reformist voices.
The moderate conservative news website Khabar Online published the video under the headline: “Abdolmaleki’s Great Discovery About Iran’s Economy: Erase the Problem from the Equation to Solve It!”
Bamdadeno, an online media outlet active primarily on Instagram and Telegram, compared the argument to saying that “if you disregard poverty, there are no poor people; ignore unemployment, and everyone is employed.”
“The issue is not simply how bizarre a sentence is,” it added. “The issue is that decisions about employment, livelihoods and the welfare of millions of Iranians were once made on the basis of this kind of outlook and oversimplification.”
Rouhollah Jome’i, a conservative political activist, took a sarcastic swipe at Abdolmaleki, who is associated with hardline groups known as “super-revolutionaries.”
“What an interesting way of putting it! For example, if we set aside delusional super-revolutionaries, we would have no political or security problems either…” he wrote on X.
Journalist Mohammad Parsi applied the same logic to other problems facing Iranians.
“Yes, if there is no internet, there is no problem with filtering; if we do not get sick, there is no problem with medicine; and if we do not drive cars, there is no problem with petrol,” he wrote.
“This satire becomes bitter when we remember that this man was once a minister in this country and made decisions on our behalf!”
One Instagram user applied the same logic to several other problems: “Yes! The problem with drought is only a lack of water! The problem with power cuts is a lack of electricity! The problem with cars is a shortage of parts and funding! Otherwise, we have no problems!”
Another user questioned whether the country could hope for improvement with people like Abdolmaleki in positions of influence over major decisions.
Inflation approaches 90%
The remarks come as official figures indicate that inflationary pressures in Iran remain severe.
According to the latest figures from the Statistical Centre of Iran, year-on-year inflation rose by 0.8 percentage points last month to 89.8%. Annual inflation increased from 69.9% in August to 73.6% in September.
Inflation in food and beverages was considerably higher than the overall rate, with prices of some food items, including cooking oil, rising by more than 250% compared with a year earlier.
Even housing rents, which recorded the lowest rate of increase among the 12 main categories of goods and services in the household consumption basket, rose by more than 30% year on year.
The figures point to mounting pressure on Iranian households and declining purchasing power, providing a stark backdrop to Abdolmaleki's assertion that, high prices aside, the economy has no other problems.
