Explosions reported in southern Iran's Sirik, cause unknown
Iranian media reported that explosions were heard Wednesday in the town of Sirik in the southern province of Hormozgan. The cause and origin of the blasts remained unknown.
A general view of the Treasury Building on day two of a partial government shutdown in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 1, 2026.
The United States on Wednesday sanctioned a law firm, shipping operators and maritime logistics companies accused of helping Iran evade restrictions on its oil and other exports.
The measures extend Washington's pressure beyond ships carrying Iranian cargo to businesses that register them, manage their operations and provide port services.
The US Treasury said four firms were designated under Operation Economic Outcast, a campaign Secretary Scott Bessent launched in August with a pledge to “sever every economic lifeline” sustaining Tehran.
Central to Wednesday's action was Karnakis and Karnakis, a law firm operating in Panama and Greece.
The Treasury said it registered companies used to move hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of Iranian petroleum, petrochemicals and steel while obscuring the ownership of vessels involved in the trade.
Those companies included previously sanctioned Skyros Maritime and Trading, Corfu Maritime and Trading and Elias Shipping and Trading Group.
The Treasury said Elias Shipping had served as a front for Syria's Al-Qatirji Company, which sold Iranian oil benefiting the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force and the Houthis.
The Treasury said Karnakis and Karnakis also helped establish companies associated with sanctioned Iranian energy trader Seyed Asadoollah Emamjomeh and acted as corporate agent for Roxette Maritime Shipping and Trading, a Panama- and Greece-based ship operator also sanctioned Wednesday.
Seven Panama-flagged cargo ships associated with Roxette were designated as blocked property. The law firm's two owners and three associates were also sanctioned.
The measures also targeted Singapore-based Amigoz Singapore, which the Treasury accused of assisting Iranian crude shipments and servicing vessels linked to Tehran's shadow fleet, and Dubai-based Whales Shipping Line, accused of facilitating Iranian petrochemical shipments.
Two vessels owned by Whales were also blocked.
Also on Wednesday, the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued an administrative subpoena to advance an investigation into a Greek bank over potential ties to Iran, according to a Treasury statement, which did not name the bank.
FINCEN also issued requests for information to six other banks in Europe over relationships with Iranian financial institutions under US sanctions.
Passengers carry their luggage at Toronto Pearson International Airport, following the end of the Air Canada labour strike, in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, August 19, 2025.
Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board has ordered the deportation of an Iranian man living in Toronto over his role in a criminal network that helped Iran evade international sanctions, Global News reported Wednesday, citing a 36-page ruling.
Amin Yousefijam, a former Tehran police lieutenant who has lived in Canada since 2016, helped coordinate shipments of restricted equipment from the United States to Iran through the United Arab Emirates, the board found, according to the report.
The shipments included electronics, motors and other dual-use goods with both civilian and military applications. Global News reported that some of the materials could potentially be used in the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction.
The deportation order was issued in July but only released to Global News this week. The board found that Yousefijam played an essential role in an operation that violated Canadian and US sanctions, although his involvement was more limited than that of his brother, Arash Yousefijam, who led the scheme.
Yousefijam was arrested in Toronto in 2021 and extradited to the United States, where he pleaded guilty to sanctions violations, the report said. After returning to Canada, he legally changed his name to Ameen Cohen.
The immigration board found that he intentionally failed to disclose his US conviction when applying for the name change, rejecting his explanation that he had been advised not to report convictions outside Canada.
The Canada Border Services Agency argued that Yousefijam posed a threat to national security. The board found insufficient evidence that he remained a security threat, however, and instead ordered his deportation on the grounds of membership in a criminal organization.
Global News quoted Yousefijam as saying he remained in Canada and was considering his legal options. He declined to say whether he had appealed the deportation order.
The case comes amid a broader Canadian effort to remove people with ties to the Islamic Republic, although Yousefijam's deportation is separate from proceedings targeting senior Iranian government officials.
According to Canada Border Services Agency figures, authorities had identified 40 senior Iranian officials living in Canada as of October 1. Two had been deported, eight had left voluntarily and two more were awaiting removal.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi during talks in Tehran, October 20, 2026.
Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed Iran with US envoy Steve Witkoff on Wednesday and offered Moscow’s help, shortly after Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited Tehran as Russia seeks a role in efforts to end the Iran-US conflict.
The meeting adds to signs that Moscow is positioning itself as both an ally of Tehran and a potential intermediary with Washington as diplomatic efforts remain deadlocked over Iran’s nuclear program and the sequencing of commitments.
Earlier this month, Putin said Russia was prepared to do everything it could to help resolve the crisis and subsequently conveyed Tehran’s position to US President Donald Trump. Neither the contents of the message nor Washington’s response was made public.
In Tehran on Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the two countries had “never” worked as closely as they do now, while Lavrov described Iran’s cause as “just” and said Russian specialists who left the Bushehr nuclear power plant during the war were gradually returning.
Yet Iranian media and commentators questioned how much Moscow could achieve as an intermediary given the fundamental differences between Tehran and Washington.
Tabnak, a news website considered close to Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei, said Moscow could help by conveying messages, consulting with both capitals and supporting a political solution, but cautioned that no mediator could overcome the underlying disagreements on its own.
“As long as fundamental disagreements over the terms of an agreement persist, no mediator can guarantee success,” it wrote, citing differences over the sequencing of negotiations and the scope of commitments.
The reformist outlet Rouydad24 said there was little evidence Moscow had brought a comprehensive plan capable of breaking the deadlock.
“What has so far been presented by official Iranian and Russian sources points less to a ‘grand peace plan’ than to the continuation of Russia’s traditional role as a facilitator of dialogue,” it wrote.
Uranium emerges as key obstacle
A central obstacle in the diplomatic impasse is Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 60%.
Russian officials, including Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, have indicated that Moscow is prepared to receive the stockpile, a move that could address one of the central concerns surrounding Iran’s nuclear program.
Tehran, however, has rejected the idea of transferring its enriched uranium abroad and denied that nuclear negotiations with Washington are under way.
The position was reiterated during Pakistani army chief Asim Munir’s visit to Tehran on Tuesday. Rezaei told Munir that none of Iran’s enriched material would leave the country, describing it as a national asset intended for domestic use.
Before Lavrov’s arrival, conservative political activist Ali Gholhaki claimed Russia had been partly persuaded by an Iranian proposal, advanced when Ali Larijani was secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, to establish a framework for transferring uranium enriched to 60%.
But following the visit, Gholhaki said Lavrov had produced no tangible result and had left “without any particular achievement.”
The conservative newspaper Khorasan argued that negotiating over Iran’s enriched uranium could increase rather than reduce the danger of another attack.
It argued that while Iran did not possess a nuclear deterrent, its stockpile of highly enriched uranium itself acted as a form of deterrence by raising the risks of further US escalation.
Mohammad-Sadegh Alizadeh, a journalist interviewed by the conservative Farhikhtegan newspaper, said Tehran’s immediate priority should instead be ending the war on terms acceptable to Iran.
“Whether the Russians have agreed to accept Iran’s 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60% is a secondary issue to be addressed later,” he said. “First, the question of ending the war must be settled.”
Doubts over Moscow’s interests
Doubts about Russia’s intentions extend beyond whether it can bridge the divide between Tehran and Washington.
Reformist journalist Ahmad Zeidabadi argued that Iranian decision-makers should nevertheless welcome any Russian initiative capable of stopping another war.
“Russian interference is an evil, of course, but compared with the prospect of another war, it is the lesser evil,” he wrote on Telegram.
Commentator Mehran Tabatabaei argued that Moscow’s approach to Iran remained subordinate to its negotiations with Washington over Ukraine.
“Russia will not take any positive steps until it resolves the Ukraine issue and obtains the concessions it wants from the United States over Ukraine,” he wrote.
Journalist Mohammad Aghazadeh offered a starker assessment, saying failure by Lavrov to make progress would suggest diplomacy itself was approaching a dead end.
“Either the current state of uncertainty will continue, or an intense war will begin,” he wrote, “one that will probably not be as easy to end as it is to start.”
Land in parts of Iran’s southeastern Kerman province is sinking by as much as 40 centimeters a year, with ground fissures advancing toward villages, homes and orchards, according to data cited on Wednesday by the semi-official Mehr news agency.
Mehr, citing Iran’s Geological Survey, said some of the highest rates were recorded across the plains of Rafsanjan, Anar, Zarand and Sirjan, where annual subsidence was estimated at between 30 and 40 centimeters.
Several villages have already been affected, with cracks and fissures reaching areas close to residential buildings and agricultural land, the report said.
Groundwater depletion drives the damage
Excessive extraction of groundwater is the main driver of the subsidence, according to Mehr, with repeated droughts, declining rainfall, water-intensive farming and thousands of deep and semi-deep wells adding to pressure on underground reserves.
As groundwater is removed, underground soil layers compress and the surface sinks. That compaction is often irreversible, meaning the ground may not recover even if aquifers are later replenished.
Climate change and poor water management have added to the problem, the report said.
Ali-Asghar Zakeri Harandi, Kerman province’s deputy governor for development affairs, said continued depletion of groundwater was threatening infrastructure, farmland and settlements and could damage the province’s long-term development prospects without urgent action.
Farms, roads and villages at risk
The effects go beyond falling ground levels.
Subsidence can crack buildings, damage roads and energy pipelines and alter the structure of agricultural soil. Continued degradation can increase salinity and leave farmland less productive or, in some cases, unsuitable for cultivation.
That is particularly significant in southern Kerman, an important agricultural region where millions of tonnes of produce are grown annually.
Mehr said continued subsidence could threaten rural livelihoods and, over time, contribute to migration from affected settlements.
Iran’s Geological Survey said in September that the area affected by land subsidence nationwide had expanded tenfold over eight years, with previously separate subsidence zones beginning to merge in some areas.
A report by parliament’s research center cited earlier this year estimated that around 39 million people, nearly half of Iran’s population, live in areas already affected by subsidence or at risk of its spread.
The report put the affected area at about 185,000 square kilometers, roughly 11% of the country, encompassing more than 380 cities and 9,200 villages.
Tehran also among worst-affected areas
Although Kerman is recording some of the country’s fastest rates of sinking, Tehran province is among the most extensively affected.
Around 1,630 square kilometers of Tehran province, about 12.5% of its area, is experiencing subsidence, according to the parliamentary research cited earlier this year.
The most exposed areas include the Varamin plain, parts of southwestern Tehran and the cities of Eslamshahr, Shahriar and Malard.
The capital’s increasing reliance on groundwater has added to the risk. Parliamentary research found that underground sources now provide a significantly larger share of Tehran’s water than they did at the start of the previous decade.
Deep wells add to pressure
Iranian officials have repeatedly linked the problem to uncontrolled groundwater extraction.
Ali Beitollahi, a researcher at the Road, Housing and Urban Development Research Center, said in July that Iran had 1,450 wells deeper than 300 meters and identified excessive pumping as one of the main factors worsening subsidence.
Recent incidents have illustrated the risks in urban areas. Vehicles have fallen into ground collapses in cities including Neyshabur and Isfahan, while officials have also raised concerns about damage to roads, railways, utility networks and historic sites.
Officials call for lower groundwater use
Mehr said curbing groundwater extraction was the most immediate step needed to slow the crisis.
The measures it cited included closing illegal wells, enforcing limits on pumping, shifting agriculture toward less water-intensive crops, expanding greenhouse farming and improving irrigation efficiency.
Reusing treated wastewater and, over the longer term, desalinating seawater have also been proposed as ways to reduce pressure on freshwater reserves.
But because much of the underground compaction is irreversible, experts say slowing further subsidence is more realistic than restoring land that has already sunk.
The Revolutionary Guards' threat to target undersea internet cables in the Strait of Hormuz raises questions about its feasibility, as the waterway carries a fraction of global bandwidth and damaging its cables would not shut down the world's internet.
Yadollah Javani, the Revolutionary Guards' political deputy, warned on Wednesday, October 21, that vital internet cables in the Strait of Hormuz could be targeted if Iranian infrastructure came under attack.
The strait's importance to global oil and gas shipments may suggest that it holds similar significance for international internet traffic. Telecommunications data, however, paints a different picture.
According to the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC), five active submarine cable segments pass through the Strait of Hormuz, accounting for less than one percent of the world's international bandwidth.
Telecommunications research firm TeleGeography identifies three major cable systems serving the route: Asia Africa Europe-1 (AAE-1), FALCON and Gulf Bridge International (GBI).
The principal data routes linking Europe and East Asia pass through the Red Sea, meaning the strategic importance of Hormuz to global energy markets does not translate into equivalent influence over the internet.
Cables serving Iran's neighbors
Submarine cables crossing the Strait of Hormuz, according to TeleGeography, have been routed through Omani waters because of longstanding political considerations and difficulties in relations with Iran.
These cables primarily serve countries in the Persian Gulf, meaning an attack would pose a more immediate threat to regional connectivity than to the wider global internet.
Damage to submarine cables in the Strait of Hormuz could disrupt international connectivity in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, although all four countries have alternative terrestrial connections. Saudi Arabia is less dependent on Persian Gulf cable routes, with most of its international bandwidth carried through systems landing on its Red Sea coast.
Why cutting cables does not mean cutting internet access
The global internet does not depend on a single network or point of failure. Telecommunications operators use multiple submarine and terrestrial routes to carry data and can redirect some traffic when a connection becomes unavailable.
Such rerouting may reduce speeds, increase latency or disrupt certain services, but it does not necessarily disconnect users entirely.
Damaging a cable is also fundamentally different from depriving a country of internet access. The outcome depends on the number of affected routes, operators' dependence on them and the capacity remaining elsewhere in the network.
Mehdi Saremifar, a Canada-based technology expert, described earlier Revolutionary Guards threats against submarine cables as largely rhetorical in an interview with Iran International.
Referring to similar threats made by Iranian authorities during the summer, Saremifar said their calculations had used the total volume of global submarine cable traffic rather than the much smaller amount passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
"These cables carry much of the traffic for countries along the southern shores of the Persian Gulf, Kuwait, parts of Iraq, Jordan and Syria. That means traffic in these areas would be affected, but not all of it," Saremifar said.
Alternative terrestrial connections, including routes through Saudi Arabia and Egypt, could carry some of the displaced traffic, Saremifar said, adding that Iran's earlier threats had already encouraged consideration of backup routes.
"So it is neither a particularly far-reaching threat nor a particularly serious one," Saremifar said.
He also questioned the operational significance of the earlier warning, noting the institutional background of the Revolutionary Guards official who issued it. Evidence of actual naval movements toward the cables would warrant a different assessment, he said.
Damage could disrupt communications and economic activity in Persian Gulf commercial centres, but would not necessarily produce a prolonged internet outage, Saremifar added.
What the Red Sea disruptions reveal
Previous submarine cable failures have disrupted communications without shutting down internet access across entire regions.
In February 2024, three cables were damaged in the Red Sea, most likely by the dragging anchor of the Rubymar, a cargo ship struck by Houthi missiles. Repairs took six months, according to TeleGeography.
Four submarine cables were damaged in the Red Sea in September 2025, disrupting connectivity across parts of the Middle East and Asia, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
In March 2024, damage to four cables off West Africa disrupted internet services in 13 countries. Operators rerouted some traffic through unaffected submarine and terrestrial networks, according to the Internet Society.
These cases illustrate an important distinction: the time required to repair a cable is not necessarily the length of the resulting internet disruption. Operators may restore some services through alternative networks before physical repairs are completed.
Security risks in the Persian Gulf could delay cable repairs by restricting access for specialized vessels. However, the availability of alternative submarine and terrestrial routes means delayed repairs would not necessarily cause a prolonged internet shutdown across the region.
Legal constraints on targeting submarine cables
Submarine communications cables are also subject to international legal protections.
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea protects the laying and maintenance of submarine cables under Article 79, while Article 113 requires states to criminalize certain intentional or negligently caused damage to cables beneath the high seas.
Legal responsibility would depend on factors including the location of an attack, applicable jurisdiction and the international obligations of the countries involved.
During armed conflict, international humanitarian law also applies.
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, civilian communications infrastructure is generally protected against direct attack unless it meets the specific criteria for becoming a military objective.
Military use of part of a communications network does not automatically make the entire network a lawful target. The principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution must still be observed.
Workers install the 2Africa undersea cable on the beach in Amanzimtoti, South Africa, February 7, 2023.
These requirements are particularly relevant to cables carrying civilian communications for several countries simultaneously.
The gap between the threat and the internet's reality
Javani's warning follows earlier threats by Iranian officials against submarine internet infrastructure in the Persian Gulf.
Yet the Strait of Hormuz's limited share of international bandwidth, together with the availability of alternative routes, means that even substantial damage to cables in the area would not amount to a global internet shutdown.
The more immediate consequences could fall on Persian Gulf Arab states and businesses dependent on regional connectivity.
The threat therefore highlights a gap between the Revolutionary Guards' warnings and the technical and geographical limits of carrying them out: cables in the Strait of Hormuz can be damaged, but the global internet does not depend on them to remain operational.
