Iran International
Decades of American sanctions strengthened Iran’s Revolutionary Guards by hollowing out the middle class, former US diplomat Joey Hood told Iran International, and once the fighting ends, Tehran will face a reckoning with its own people.
Hood, who retired earlier this year after 27 years in the Foreign Service, served as acting assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, deputy chief of mission in Iraq and Kuwait, and US ambassador to Tunisia. He spoke in a studio interview.
He called the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979 and the 444-day hostage crisis that followed “the very definition of evil,” adding that the protection of envoys is an ancient principle recognized in Islamic tradition as well.
What followed, he said, was a pattern. In 1983, a suicide bombing at the US Marine barracks in Beirut killed 241 American service members who had been deployed as peacekeepers; US courts have found Iran responsible for the attack, carried out by militants who went on to form Hezbollah. In 1996, the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia was bombed; US investigators blamed Saudi Hezbollah (Hezbollah Al-Hejaz), acting with Iranian support. In 2011, US prosecutors charged an Iranian-American man with plotting, on behalf of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington. Argentina’s courts have held Iran responsible for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, and plots have been traced to Iran in Europe and Asia.
None of it, Hood said, has won the Islamic Republic a single endorsement.
“You haven’t seen any other country come out and say, ‘What the Iranian regime is doing is great,’” he said. “There’s no sovereign government anywhere in the world that has made such a declaration.”
‘Handing the economy over’
Successive US administrations from Carter to Obama tried various forms of engagement, Hood said, but repeatedly underestimated Tehran’s refusal to accept normal relations. Even when presidents saw the risks, they often stopped short of decisive action. Jimmy Carter understood the danger before admitting the exiled Shah to the United States for cancer treatment in October 1979, weeks before the embassy was seized. After the Beirut bombing, Ronald Reagan withdrew the Marines and limited the American response largely to sanctions, a choice Hood said emboldened Tehran.
Analysts warned as early as the Obama years, Hood said, that sanctions were “squeezing out the normal middle-class businessmen and women and handing the economy over to a shadowy black-market economy” run by the Revolutionary Guards. That has come true, he said: the Guards grew stronger and the middle class weaker, and that middle class has periodically taken to the streets.
The Islamic Republic drew its own lesson from the fall of the Shah, whose government collapsed after months of protest, Hood said. It keeps using lethal force until protests stop, as it did in 2009, 2019 and January 2026.
Congress favors sanctions because they appear to cost no American lives, Hood said, “but Iranian lives certainly are at stake, especially for the middle class and the poor.”
Money is also fungible. Relief that came with the 2015 nuclear deal, he said, went to regional militias rather than public welfare, with particularly deadly results in Syria. Hood declined to use the name Hezbollah, which means “Party of God” in Arabic, calling the group “Iran’s militia in Lebanon.” “God does not have a political party here on Earth, and certainly not a militia,” he said.
Coalitions, not bilateral deals
A more effective approach, Hood said, would press on the nuclear program and the militia network at the same time, with allies rather than through bilateral arrangements.
Under Obama, near-unanimous support in Congress for sanctions helped bring even Russia and China along on the nuclear file. Without that kind of coalition, he said, constraints stay limited. The bilateral agreements the current administration has made with Saudi Arabia, Syria and others help partners defend themselves, but isolating Tehran needs broader coordination.
He tied the Houthis’ recent escalation against Saudi Arabia to Tehran’s difficulty moving fuel and running its shadow fleet under US pressure, and said the Yemeni group would pose no comparable threat without Iranian support. With less leverage in the Strait of Hormuz, he said, Tehran and its allies have turned to other targets, among them Saudi Arabia and potentially the Bab el-Mandeb strait or the Suez Canal.
October, ahead of the US midterm elections, is a period of heightened risk, he said, given the Islamic Republic’s record of trying to influence American votes.
‘Answered for in Iran’
The decisive change since the 12-day war in June 2025, Hood said, is that “anything that Iran or its militias do around the world will be answered for in Iran.” Earlier presidents avoided direct confrontation and preferred to fight Tehran’s proxies.
“That’s the big difference now,” he said. “Iranians themselves are having to pay for Iran’s foreign policy for the first time.”
When active military operations end, Hood said, he expects a reckoning between the Islamic Republic and its own people. Without a lasting coalition to constrain it, he said, the confrontation that began in 1979 will go on in new phases, with more attacks on American interests and partners.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
The other routes
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.”
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.
A senior Revolutionary Guards official has compared Iran’s conflict with the United States to a world war that could reshape the global order, reflecting a mindset in Tehran that appears increasingly resistant to backing down despite the risk of renewed US attacks.
IRGC political deputy Yadollah Javani said Wednesday that the conflict could have consequences comparable to the two world wars and alter the global balance of power.
His remarks capture a broader calculation among Iranian hardliners: if the confrontation is genuinely existential and its consequences historic, preserving Iran’s leverage may matter more than reducing the immediate risk of escalation.
That calculation is increasingly visible around the Strait of Hormuz, where the IRGC has intensified threats against US and commercial vessels even as officials warn that Washington may be preparing another attack.
President Donald Trump recently told an election campaign gathering in Alaska that he would call on Israel to prepare for a possible attack on Iran, while saying a decision on Iran would be announced “very soon.”
IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebi said Washington could launch new attacks before the November midterm elections, arguing that Trump might seek a military achievement before voters go to the polls.
Pressure around Hormuz
A Singapore-flagged container ship sank near the strait after being hit by a projectile, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing maritime security sources.
IRGC Navy Rear Admiral Ali Azmaei said Iranian coastal defense and fast-attack units were “waiting for American warships to approach the Strait of Hormuz so they can be sunk.”
He also warned that commercial vessels operating under coalition naval escort should not assume they would be protected from Iranian action.
Iranian media also reported Wednesday that a small fishing boat had been attacked by an unidentified drone near the strait, killing those on board. The circumstances of the reported attack remained unclear.
Javani said Wednesday that Iran had moved beyond the danger of a surprise attack and that its armed forces were prepared to respond to further enemy action.
He said Iran's adversaries had expected the killing of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to produce victory within 48 to 72 hours.
Tehran has meanwhile continued to distance itself from Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia. Whatever their origin, attacks threatening Saudi energy infrastructure add to pressure on oil markets, increasing the economic cost of the wider confrontation.
The appeal of the grey zone
Despite the growing economic cost to Iran itself, hardline outlets including Kayhan, Javan and state television continue to champion the “neither war nor negotiation” strategy associated with former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
A comprehensive agreement with Washington could require Tehran to surrender some of its nuclear and regional leverage, while another full-scale war could impose far greater costs on the country and threaten the political system itself.
Remaining between the two, hardliners argue, allows Iran to preserve its nuclear capabilities and regional influence without making irreversible concessions.
They also frequently cite the US withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as evidence that American commitments cannot be trusted and that any agreement reached today could be abandoned by a future administration.
But the escalating confrontation around Hormuz illustrates the danger inherent in that strategy. Maintaining such a grey zone requires Tehran to create enough risk to generate leverage without pushing the United States or Israel into another major attack.
Where the factions agree
Moderate, pragmatist and reformist-aligned media outlets close to President Masoud Pezeshkian and his foreign policy team have generally argued that Tehran should take advantage of diplomatic opportunities before conditions change.
Their disagreement with hardliners is substantial but does not necessarily extend to Iran's fundamental objectives.
Both sides seek to preserve the Islamic Republic and as much of its nuclear and regional leverage as possible. They differ over whether diplomacy or continued pressure offers the safer route.
For now, Tehran appears to be testing the hardline proposition that it can raise the cost of confrontation enough to make Washington compromise without pushing Trump toward war instead.
Seen from that perspective, Javani's invocation of a world war is more than bellicose rhetoric. It reflects a view of the confrontation as consequential enough that backing down carries risks of its own.
The increasingly dangerous contest around the Strait of Hormuz may determine how much room remains between compromise and another war.
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.
