Netanyahu says Iran's regime is a ‘cancer’ that must be removed
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left open the possibility of further military action against Iran, likening the Islamic Republic to cancer and warning that the threat would return unless they it was removed.
“We did 90 percent of the work, but you know, it’s like cancer. If you don’t get rid of this regime in Iran, it will come back,” he told i24News Hebrew, despite touting his government’s achievements against Tehran.
He accused Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas of seeking to interfere in Israel’s October 27 election, alleging that Israel was seeing signs of attempts to disrupt the election, including by “creating security incidents.”
“They all say the same thing: Netanyahu has to lose,” he said.
File photo by NEQSOL Holding shows the installation of the Trans-Caspian Fiber-Optic Cable across the seabed of the Caspian Sea as part of the Digital Silk Way initiative.
Investment in trade routes linking Asia and Europe through Central Asia and the Caucasus is putting pressure on Iran’s ambitions to become a major transit hub, with neighboring countries developing transport and digital networks that bypass Iranian territory.
Among them is the Middle Corridor, a network of rail, road and sea links connecting China to Europe through Central Asia and the Caucasus while bypassing Iran.
The corridor is intended not only to connect Chinese and European markets. Countries along the route are also expanding trade among themselves, and the broader connectivity push extends beyond cargo to energy, information technology and data.
On October 15, the presidents of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan inaugurated a 380-kilometer fiber-optic link across the Caspian seabed with a capacity of more than 400 terabits per second. Part of the Digital Silk Way initiative, the cable complements the Middle Corridor.
Beyond carrying data along the East-West axis, its backers say it will help attract investment in AI data centers, cloud services and high-tech industries.
In its latest report, the World Bank projects that, if the planned investments materialize, freight volumes across the Caspian could rise from 8.8 million tons in 2023 to 32.1 million tons in 2040.
The report also finds that developing the corridor could, in the long term, increase the combined GDP of host countries by about 3.3 percent, equivalent to approximately $58 billion at current levels of economic activity, and raise employment by 2.9 percent.
These gains depend on policy and operational reforms alongside construction. The World Bank identifies at least $25 billion in infrastructure investment needs through 2040, plus an estimated $30 billion for connecting infrastructure, logistics facilities and equipment.
One of the most contentious proposed links is the route through southern Armenia that would connect mainland Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave, known in Azerbaijan as the Zangezur corridor.
Under agreements reached since August 2025, the US-backed project is being developed as the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, or TRIPP, with Armenia retaining sovereignty and jurisdiction over its territory.
Azerbaijan projects that the route could carry 15 million tons of freight annually. The section through Armenia is roughly 42 to 43 kilometers long.
After several years of fierce opposition to the proposed Zangezur corridor, Iran appears to be taking a more pragmatic approach to Armenia’s inclusion in East-West transport networks, although concerns over American involvement remain.
Iran’s ambassador in Yerevan expressed concern in September about an American presence near the border and proposed a mechanism to address Tehran’s concerns. On October 16, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said Iran had asked about the possible deployment of US military forces on Armenian territory and that Yerevan had assured Tehran this would not happen. He said he believed the Iranian side was satisfied with Armenia’s answers.
The World Bank estimates that developing the Middle Corridor could increase Armenia’s GDP by 3.4 percent, equivalent to $873 million, and raise employment by 3.9 percent in the long term. Armenia, however, is not yet a transit country on the route; the report assumes a direct rail link through the country becomes operational in the early 2030s.
Iran’s transit ambitions face growing competition
Azerbaijan and Iran have also pursued an alternative connection between mainland Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan through Iranian territory, known as the Aras corridor.
That route could preserve a role for Iran in regional transit, but participation in one connecting segment would fall short of Tehran’s broader ambition to become a central hub for trade between Asia and Europe. Western sanctions also complicate efforts to attract European businesses to routes through Iran.
A comparison with Turkey, a key link between the Middle Corridor and European markets, is telling. The World Bank estimates that corridor development could increase Turkey’s GDP by more than $47 billion and employment by about 4.4 percent in the long term.
Iran also faces competition from other regional transport plans. Iraq, with participation from Qatar, the UAE and Turkey, is advancing the Development Road, intended to link the Grand Faw port to the Turkish border at an estimated cost of about $17 billion. Iraqi officials have projected annual revenues of roughly $4 billion, although the project’s returns depend on financing, completion and demand.
The proposed India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor and Syria’s Four Seas initiative, linking the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, Black Sea and Caspian region, likewise reflect efforts to develop alternative networks. These projects remain at different stages of development, and their commercial success is not assured.
More than two decades after Iran, India and Russia agreed to establish the International North-South Transport Corridor, Tehran’s ambition to become a transit hub linking India with Russia and European markets remains only partly realized. Shipments have moved through Iran, but the existence of traffic alone does not demonstrate that the route has fulfilled its wider commercial promise.
Iran’s weak logistics performance adds to the challenge. In the World Bank’s 2023 Logistics Performance Index, it ranked 123rd with a score of 2.3 out of five. Geography gives Iran potential advantages, but converting them into sustained transit business requires reliable infrastructure, efficient border procedures and commercially viable international connections.
Participants take part in a state-organized Janfada mobilization event in Rasht, northern Iran, on October 15, 2026.
A growing number of former Iranian officials and political figures are calling for an agreement with the United States, while hardliners and military commanders continue to push for confrontation, exposing a deeper struggle over the direction of Tehran’s foreign policy.
Among the latest voices calling for a change of course are former President Hassan Rouhani, former Tehran mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi and Hossein Marashi, secretary-general of the centrist Executives of Construction party.
Along with several other political figures, they have argued that Iran needs to reduce tensions with the United States and break its prolonged diplomatic impasse if it is to ease economic pressure and resume development.
Their interventions have come against a sharply different message from hardliners and military officials, who continue to frame resistance to Washington and Israel as essential to Iran’s security and warn against concessions under pressure.
The competing messages reflect a broader uncertainty at the heart of Iranian foreign policy: whether Tehran should use diplomacy to secure an exit from its confrontation with the United States or continue to raise the costs for its adversaries in the hope of extracting better terms.
The question has become more urgent after months of direct conflict with the United States, repeated warnings from Washington and Israel and several major waves of domestic unrest since 2018.
Those pressures have left the leadership increasingly sensitive to questions of public legitimacy while also making major diplomatic concessions politically dangerous. Any compromise with Washington risks being portrayed by rival factions as capitulation, giving decision-makers an incentive to postpone choices rather than assume responsibility for them.
Diplomacy without a clear destination
Hamid Aboutalebi, a former diplomat close to Rouhani, described that dilemma in an interview with Khabar Online this week, arguing that Iranian diplomacy has become caught between the urgency of immediate conflicts and the absence of a clearly defined long-term strategy.
The result, in his assessment, is a state of drift in which public expectations increasingly collide with geopolitical realities.
Aboutalebi’s criticism goes beyond whether Iran should or should not negotiate with Washington. He argues that Tehran has failed to clearly define the purpose, scope and desired outcome of diplomacy itself.
Without that clarity, he said, Iran cannot transform developments on the battlefield into political gains and is left “reacting to events rather than shaping them,” particularly in its confrontation with Israel and the United States.
That uncertainty is also visible in the government’s public messaging.
Many Iranians look to diplomacy primarily as a possible route toward economic relief and greater stability. Iranian officials, however, continue to alternate between warnings of further resistance and indications that negotiations remain possible.
The result is an expanding gap between what diplomacy is expected to deliver and what the government is prepared to commit to.
Aboutalebi argues that Iran must move beyond managing one crisis after another and instead define what it wants its foreign policy to achieve over the longer term.
That would require, in his view, deeper regional integration, a structured approach to the nuclear dispute and the development of economic partnerships capable of reducing Iran’s isolation.
The cost of suspended diplomacy
The argument is not new.
Tejarat-e Farda, one of Iran’s leading economic weeklies, has previously described the country’s approach as one of “suspended diplomacy” — a condition in which Tehran neither moves decisively toward confrontation nor commits itself to meaningful negotiations.
The magazine portrayed the consequences in unusually bleak terms, arguing that Iranians had come to recognize what it called the “tragic depth” of the country’s foreign-policy failures, producing not confidence or enthusiasm but “lethargy and despair.”
Writing in 2022, the publication argued that Iranian foreign policy had entered a prolonged state of strategic hesitation driven by domestic political caution, regional pressures and fear of diplomatic steps that might prove difficult to reverse.
The nuclear issue offered perhaps the clearest example.
Political analyst Fatemeh Mosayebi argued at the time that Tehran repeatedly signaled its willingness to engage in dialogue while avoiding concrete commitments, contributing to a cycle of hesitation in which neither Iran nor Western governments wanted to make the first major move.
Four years later, the circumstances are radically different, but the diagnosis retains much of its relevance.
Iran has moved from indirect regional confrontation to war with the United States, while the costs of economic pressure and military escalation have risen substantially. Yet the fundamental question identified in the earlier debate remains unresolved: what outcome is Iranian diplomacy actually intended to achieve?
Domestic rivalry further complicates the answer. Major foreign-policy decisions in Iran carry consequences not only for relations with Washington but also for the balance of power among competing political camps.
A failed compromise can be weaponized by hardliners, while escalation that imposes additional economic or military costs can become ammunition for their opponents.
That dynamic encourages delay. Tejarat-e Farda called it a “suspension of decision,” arguing that postponing difficult choices can ultimately “cost more than confrontation” by prolonging economic pressure without producing corresponding strategic gains.
The increasingly public calls for negotiations suggest that the price of that indecision is becoming harder to ignore.
Figures such as Aboutalebi and Marashi are not simply arguing for another round of talks. Their criticism raises a more fundamental question about whether Iran can continue simultaneously threatening escalation, signaling openness to diplomacy and postponing decisions about the compromises any agreement would ultimately require.
For now, Tehran continues to preserve both possibilities.
But the longer Iran remains caught between confrontation and compromise, the harder it becomes to present uncertainty itself as a strategy.
Protesters gather outside the Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor's Office in Semnan, east of Tehran, as a fire burns inside the compound during Iran's January 2026 uprising.
Iran's security forces deployed snipers on the rooftops of the provincial Friday prayer leader's office and a women's student dormitory to fire on protesters during January's deadly crackdown in Semnan, east of Tehran, an Iran International investigation found.
The investigation draws on eyewitness accounts and footage geolocated and verified by Iran International. The identities of the sources are being withheld for fear of reprisals by Iranian authorities.
It also found that hospital officials in Semnan province cooperated with security agencies to identify and arrest wounded protesters, in some cases before they could receive medical treatment.
The findings shed light on the methods used by authorities to suppress protests across the province during January's nationwide uprising.
Snipers stationed on government buildings
On January 8, as demonstrations intensified in Semnan, security forces deployed snipers and military-grade weapons on the rooftops of several prominent buildings.
The locations included the office of the provincial Friday prayer leader, the Maryam women's student dormitory and the provincial headquarters of Iran's state broadcaster, IRIB.
Witnesses described security personnel firing live ammunition at protesters from the elevated positions.
A machine gun was also deployed at the broadcasting building, where forces fired directly at protesters' heads and eyes in an attempt to suppress the crowds, according to the accounts.
On January 9, security forces raided the Kowsar student dormitory in Semnan, beating students with batons, using tear gas and arresting several people.
In the nearby city of Shahroud, witnesses described armed personnel patrolling residential streets on motorcycles and opening fire on residents.
Witnesses also said protesters detained at bases run by the Basij, a paramilitary force affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), were shot with pellets in the backs of their legs from about one meter away, causing severe injuries, including torn tendons.
Security forces also used drones to identify demonstrators, armored vehicles to block roads and pepper spray against occupants of private vehicles, while widespread internet restrictions disrupted communications.
Hospitals used to identify wounded protesters
Kowsar Hospital in Semnan and other medical facilities were used to identify and arrest protesters during the January 8–12 crackdown, according to the investigation.
Hospital administrators and staff linked to security agencies systematically recorded the identities of patients arriving with pellet wounds or injuries from live ammunition and passed the information to security authorities.
Some wounded protesters were arrested immediately upon arrival, before receiving treatment.
In other cases, security personnel prevented emergency surgery on injured demonstrators, while medical resources were prioritized for government forces, according to accounts obtained by Iran International.
A Kowsar Hospital official who helped security forces identify protesters had previously served on a government election supervisory board.
The hospital also had close ties with IRGC officials and commanders and had hosted religious ceremonies and election-related gatherings.
Detainees subjected to torture, protestors killed
Witness accounts described protesters being transported to IRGC intelligence detention facilities and prisons with sacks covering their heads.
According to witness accounts, some detainees were held overnight alongside bloodied bodies, while others faced severe beatings, torture and verbal abuse targeting their ethnicity or gender.
Eyewitnesses previously told Iran International that at least 200 people were killed by security forces in Shahroud on January 8 and 9, although the figure could not be independently verified.
Iran International identified several of those killed, including Matin Montazerzohur, 31, who was shot in the chest on January 8, and Mahmoud Bijani, 24, who was shot dead outside the city's governor's office the following day.
Soleyman Norouzi, 31, was killed by live ammunition while returning from work on January 9. Hossein Gharib, 32, an electricity department employee and athlete, was also shot dead that day.
In another case documented by Iran International, security forces shot dead Saeed Golsorkhi, a 31-year-old powerlifter, outside his family home on January 11, two days after he was wounded during protests. Sources close to his family said he was killed in front of his mother and young niece.
Iranian authorities also executed Javad Zamani and Abolfazl Saedi, two protesters arrested during January's demonstrations in Shahroud, Semnan province, on June 16, according to the judiciary's Mizan news agency.
Protests spread across Semnan province
The January demonstrations extended across Semnan, Shahroud, Garmsar and Damghan, four counties accounting for more than 83 percent of the province's population and roughly half its territory.
The unrest spread across administrative centers, industrial districts, university communities and agricultural areas, showing that protests were not confined to a single city or social group.
Semnan province, home to approximately 700,000 people, has faced mounting economic and environmental pressures, including severe drought, declining groundwater supplies, land subsidence, industrial stagnation and rising living costs.
Despite numerous industrial estates along the Tehran-Mashhad corridor, the province has struggled with widening economic inequality and housing pressures.
Semnan also witnessed protests during nationwide uprisings in the Iranian calendar years beginning in March 2017 and March 2019, as well as the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising.
The province has also experienced labor and trade strikes, including those involving railway workers and merchants in Shahroud.
A sharp decline in voter turnout and growing political disillusionment reflect deep dissatisfaction with the continued rule of the Islamic Republic.
Official election figures show turnout in Semnan province fell from 87.82 percent in the 2009 presidential election to 49.11 percent in the first round of the 2024 vote.
A poster bearing an image of late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is seen at a rally with Houthi supporters in Sanaa, Yemen, March 6, 2026.orters in solidarity with Iran and Lebanon in Sanaa, Yemen, March 6, 2026
Iranian support has helped Yemen’s Houthis carry out their most potent and sophisticated attacks yet on Saudi Arabia and its Yemeni allies, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people briefed on intelligence from Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s anti-Houthi alliance.
The assistance includes help targeting drone and missile attacks, as well as training, intelligence and tactical guidance, according to the report. It has also contributed to rapid Houthi territorial gains in Yemen. The group now controls coastline along its side of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait and has attacked Saudi oil tankers, energy facilities and airports.
People briefed on regional intelligence cited by the WSJ said IRGC officers inside Yemen had helped the Houthis deploy missiles and radars threatening the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb.
The report said the Houthis used large numbers of fighters backed by missiles and drones during an offensive launched in early September, seizing the Red Sea port city of Mokha and territory around Bab al-Mandeb after catching Saudi-backed Yemeni forces off guard.
A person with forces opposing the Houthis cited by the WSJ said the group showed greater sophistication than in previous fighting, combining infantry assaults with missile and drone attacks, including first-person-view drones guided by fiber-optic wire.
Another anti-Houthi official cited by the newspaper said IRGC officers were on the front lines helping direct drone and missile attacks.
Danny Citrinowicz, a former head of the Iran branch for Israeli defense intelligence, said the operational relationship between Tehran and the Houthis was “very, very strong.”
“Iran has a major interest in the Houthis’ success,” he said, describing the relationship as strategic cooperation rather than a simple patron-client arrangement.
Senior Houthi official Mohammed al-Bukhaiti rejected allegations of Iranian military involvement, saying such claims exaggerated Tehran’s role and ignored the group’s own development of its capabilities.
“Iran does not interfere in Yemeni affairs,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said last month, describing the Houthis as “entirely independent actors who make their decisions based on their own interests.”
A UN panel of experts found in 2024 that the Houthis had established joint operations rooms in Lebanon and Iraq to coordinate activities.
Houthi supporters rally to show support for the movement as fighting intensifies across several Yemeni fronts, in Sanaa, Yemen October 9, 2026.
Iran spent years building influence in Yemen through Hezbollah recruiters and Revolutionary Guards officers, a former Yemeni pro-democracy activist told Iran International, and is now using the Houthis to carry the war to Saudi Arabia and its Western allies.
Baraa Shiban, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London who took part in Yemen’s 2011 uprising and later negotiated with the Houthis, told Iran International’s Eye for Iran podcast that Tehran’s involvement began long before the group became a major regional force.
His account comes as Houthi missile and drone attacks on Saudi airports and energy infrastructure have opened another front in the wider war, threatening aviation and trade routes already disrupted by the confrontation over the Strait of Hormuz.
“I think we’re entering phase three,” Shiban said, describing what he sees as Tehran’s strategy of extending the economic cost of the war to US allies.
Iran, he argued, had kept the Houthis in reserve as a strategic asset until it needed them. Their attacks now serve Tehran’s interests while advancing the group’s own ambitions inside Yemen.
From democracy conferences to an IRGC handler
Young Yemenis who took part in the 2011 Arab Spring were invited to conferences in Lebanon that were presented as discussions of democratic reform, Shiban said. Those who went found that Hezbollah operatives were behind them.
Activists receptive to Iran’s revolutionary ideology were introduced to a Revolutionary Guards officer working in Lebanon under the alias Abu Hadi, he said, and some went on to Tehran.
“We were calling it the Arab Spring. The Iranians called it the Islamic Awakening,” he said. Tehran, he said, wanted to present Yemen’s uprising as an extension of Iran’s 1979 revolution.
Shiban identified the officer as Hassan Irlou, who in 2020 became Iran’s ambassador to the Houthi authorities in Sanaa, a post the United States said was held by a Quds Force official. Irlou died in December 2021.
Hezbollah ran much of the operation at first, Shiban said, before Revolutionary Guards personnel took a more prominent role.
The recruitment reached beyond political activists to women invited to conferences in Iran, some of whom came back converted to the Islamic Republic’s ideology. Shiban said he was shocked by one woman he knew as very liberal, who had protested alongside him and returned from Iran repeating Tehran’s case for crushing the Syrian revolution.
“She has absorbed that propaganda of what the Iranians were saying about the Syrian revolution and why they need to kill all of those protesters until the last one, given this woman herself was protesting with us,” he said.
People drawn into these networks went on to help set up the Houthis’ political bureau in Sanaa, Shiban said. Iran International could not independently verify the full extent of the recruitment he described.
Talks rejected
The account has new weight after Saudi Arabia disclosed on Thursday that the Houthis had rejected an invitation to negotiations in Oman in July.
Riyadh had sought talks to settle outstanding differences before the fighting escalated, Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Rayed Krimly said.
The Saudi-led coalition said the Houthis had attacked King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh 20 times in October. At least 19 people have been killed in the recent attacks across the kingdom, according to Saudi officials.
Yemen analyst Fatima Alasrar said on X that the Houthis’ refusal reflected Tehran’s timetable rather than an effort to resolve their long-standing demands over airport access, and warned that Iran could keep leverage through the Bab el-Mandeb strait even if it reached a deal with Washington over Hormuz.
The Houthis also have their own aims, among them consolidating control over Yemen and forcing Saudi Arabia to end its support for rival Yemeni forces.
A second strategic chokepoint
The war has put Bab el-Mandeb, the narrow passage between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, at the center of the regional confrontation.
Iran saw the leverage that disrupting Hormuz gave it and wanted the same at a second shipping route, Shiban said. “It saw how valuable and important the Strait of Hormuz was and it wanted to add another choke point.”
The consequences are visible inside Yemen. On Thursday, Houthi missiles struck the presidential palace compound in Aden, killing five people, according to Yemeni authorities. Houthi advances around Taiz have intensified fighting and displacement.
The escalation could prove costly for Tehran, Shiban said, having already antagonized Saudi Arabia and pushed Yemen’s internationally recognized government toward wider war. But Iran’s leaders appear willing to take that risk, he said, on the calculation that Western governments will hesitate to act decisively.
“I think right now they’re counting on the United States is going to be hesitant,” he said.
Even a long confrontation could suit Tehran, he said, if it raises the economic pressure on the Persian Gulf states and strains their ties with Washington.
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