A member of Iran’s army ground forces was killed in an attack by unidentified gunmen in the country’s southeast, IRGC-linked Tasnim news agency reported on Tuesday.
A photo published by the outlet identified him as First Lieutenant Javad Heshmati.
It also said one of the gunmen was killed in the clash and another was wounded before fleeing.
Iranian military officials and hardline lawmakers have warned that a new confrontation with the United States could extend beyond the Middle East, while conservative media have begun identifying American military facilities in Europe as potential targets.
The warnings follow a statement attributed to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei on Saturday, ordering Iran's armed forces to prepare for retaliation without geographic restrictions and expand their list of potential US and Israeli targets.
The hardline daily Kayhan went further, arguing that American and NATO facilities "in the heart of Europe" could be targeted if US and Israeli attacks on Iran resume.
The newspaper named military facilities in Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Albania, Italy and Britain, as well as the joint US-British base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
Military commanders signal broader reach
Iran's Army spokesman, Mohammad Akraminia, said renewed fighting could spread beyond the countries and territories involved in previous rounds of the war.
"In the recent war, the conflict extended from the occupied territories to US bases in regional countries, but if another attack takes place, the geography of the war could expand beyond West Asia," he said.
He added that Iran was updating its list of potential US and Israeli targets.
A senior Basij commander, Ghassem Ghorayshi, also said Iran's armed forces would no longer be bound by previous limits on missile range, target selection or the scale of operations.
"In the past, target selection and missile ranges were restricted," he said, attributing those limits to decisions made under former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
"From now on, the armed forces will have no restrictions on striking targets, determining missile range or the scale of missile operations," he added.
The remarks do not by themselves establish that Iran has developed new long-range missiles or formally changed its military doctrine.
Iranian newspapers identify European bases
A separate report in the newspaper Hamshahri also raised the possibility of targeting American military infrastructure in Europe, including air bases, logistics centers and support facilities.
The newspaper cited speculation that Iranian missiles could reach targets 4,000 to 5,000 kilometers away, significantly beyond the roughly 2,000-kilometer range Iran previously described as a self-imposed limit.
However, those longer-range estimates remain disputed, and the ability to extend a missile's theoretical range does not necessarily establish its accuracy, payload or operational effectiveness.
The reports reflect a broader shift in Iranian rhetoric toward threatening American military infrastructure outside the Middle East.
Western defense experts have offered more cautious assessments of Iran's long-range strike capabilities. The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies lists Iran's principal ballistic missiles with ranges generally around 2,000 kilometers, with some variants potentially reaching 3,000 kilometers.
Britain’s Royal United Services Institute has said strikes as far as the UK may be theoretically possible, but would involve smaller, less accurate warheads traveling through defended airspace.
Lawmakers warn of wider conflict
Hassan Ghashghavi, spokesperson for parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, warned that renewed fighting could spread far beyond the countries already affected by the war.
"I don't want to use the term World War III, but the geography of the war would be almost on the scale of World War III," he told Iranian media.
He said another conflict would be considerably wider than the previous 12-day and 40-day rounds of fighting.
Ghashghavi also suggested that Iranian retaliation could affect civilian infrastructure and everyday life in countries involved in attacks on Iran.
"If they leave your people in darkness, you should leave their people in darkness too," he said.
In another warning, Tehran lawmaker Kamran Ghazanfari said Iran could retaliate against US assets in Europe and potentially on American territory if Washington used military bases in Arab states to attack Iran.
Ghazanfari also speculated that Iran might already possess nuclear weapons, without providing evidence. Tehran has not officially announced that it possesses a nuclear weapon.
Tehran links warnings to negotiating demands
The military warnings have come alongside renewed Iranian demands in negotiations aimed at ending the war.
Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Tehran had delivered a "firm and rational response" to Washington and that "the ball is now in America's court" to prevent renewed fighting.
Iran's armed forces chief, Ali Abdollahi, separately outlined five conditions for lasting regional security: an end to fighting on all fronts, particularly in Lebanon and Gaza; the lifting of sanctions and release of frozen assets; war reparations; recognition of Iranian authority over the Strait of Hormuz; and guarantees against renewed attacks under a new regional security framework.
The demands come amid diplomatic efforts involving Qatar and other mediators, although a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Tuesday that Tehran and Washington remained far from an agreement.
Amirhossein Maleki and Amirhossein Ebrahimi were hanged in connection with January protests in Isfahan, Iranian authorities said on Tuesday.
Mizan, the judiciary-linked news agency, alleged that the protesters had been armed and that the Supreme Court had upheld their death sentences.
The men are among 12 defendants sentenced to death in the Alikhani Square case. The case stems from protests in Isfahan on January 8, during which Iranian authorities accused defendants of involvement in the deaths of four security personnel, weapons offenses, destruction of property and arson.
Seven other defendants in the case, including two Afghan nationals, have been executed since July 19, Iran Human Rights said. Among them were Alireza Raisi and Alireza Sepahi, who were put to death on October 5.
UN Special Rapporteur Mai Sato highlighted the case during an October 28 address to the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee as an example of Iran’s mass trials of protesters.
Shahrzad Shahbazi, a lawyer representing defendants in the case, has previously disputed the official account, saying none had formally been charged with murder and the alleged killings had not been tried.
Iranian authorities have long used broadly worded charges such as espionage, acting against national security, armed rebellion, enmity against God and corruption on earth to crush dissent and remove political opponents.
Human rights organizations say these labels are routinely applied to protesters, dissidents and political prisoners to portray them as security threats and provide a legal pretext for execution.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and UN experts have documented repeated cases in which such convictions were issued by revolutionary courts after grossly unfair or highly expedited proceedings, with defendants denied meaningful access to lawyers and verdicts based on torture-tainted forced confessions.
Rights groups therefore describe many executions carried out under these charges as arbitrary and politically motivated, warning that the authorities’ allegations should not be treated as independently established facts.
US Vice President JD Vance’s letter to Iran’s national security chief, Mohsen Rezaei, has fueled speculation that Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf is being sidelined as Tehran’s chief negotiator, while officials deny any change in the negotiating structure.
Ghalibaf, who also serves as parliament speaker, has in recent months been identified as the head of Iran’s negotiating delegation. However, following the delivery of Vance’s letter to the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, ultra-hardline media outlets said that Rezaei had replaced him in negotiations with Washington.
The speculation intensified after Ghalibaf was absent from an unprecedented meeting last week involving the Pakistani army chief, Saudi Arabia’s defense minister and the head of Turkey’s intelligence service (MIT), representing three members of the Mecca Pact. Rezaei and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi attended.
Ghalibaf’s supporters have argued that the so-called Tehran Summit was unrelated to negotiations with the United States and instead concerned Iran’s possible accession to the Mecca Pact.
Similar rumors that Ghalibaf was being removed from Iran’s negotiating team emerged in May before being officially dismissed.
Officials insist Ghalibaf remains in charge
Iranian officials have maintained that Ghalibaf continues to lead the country’s negotiating team.
Araghchi told Al Jazeera on Saturday, October 31, that Tehran still regarded Ghalibaf as its chief negotiator and that Rezaei fully supported this arrangement.
Describing the American initiative to establish contact, the foreign minister said: “The American side’s attempt to open the door to dialogue and understanding more broadly is a positive step.”
However, he warned: “If Washington’s goal in sending this letter is to stir up discord, it would be yet another mistake to add to its previous ones.”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said Monday that Ghalibaf remained Iran’s chief negotiator and that the country's diplomatic process was managed through the Supreme National Security Council.
Manouchehr Mottaki, a member of parliament’s National Security Commission who is aligned with conservative hardliners, also dismissed reports that Ghalibaf had been excluded from decision-making.
Speaking to the reformist Ensaf News website on Monday, he said: “Ghalibaf’s significant role in decision-making after Rezaei’s appointment demonstrates that he continues to play an effective part in this process.”
Hardliners welcome Rezaei’s growing role
Despite official assurances, Vance’s letter has prompted some hardline outlets and supporters of the Paydari Front to welcome Rezaei’s growing role and the prospect of diminished influence for Ghalibaf.
Raja News, a website close to the Paydari Party, wrote on October 29 that recent developments demonstrated that “the center of gravity of foreign policy during wartime has shifted from the negotiating team to the secretariat of the Supreme National Security Council”.
The website also drew a distinction between two recent meetings with Iran’s Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. It said that during his meeting with Ghalibaf, Khamenei had emphasized resolving people’s livelihood problems through parliament and the government, as well as advancing relations with strategic partners. By contrast, it said, discussions with Rezaei had focused on “fulfilling Iran’s seven new conditions” in negotiations with Washington.
Nobonyad, another news website associated with radical conservatives, reported on October 30 that the media committee for the Islamabad negotiations, which consisted of associates and advisers of the parliament speaker, had been dissolved on the orders of a “senior security official”.
Raja News subsequently published an article titled “Why Does Support for Rezaei Anger Ghalibaf’s Supporters?”, accusing Ghalibaf’s supporters of portraying backing for Rezaei as a political maneuver motivated by satisfaction among his rivals over Ghalibaf’s diminishing role in wartime diplomacy.
The website also leveled a series of accusations against the parliament speaker. It alleged that he had accepted a ceasefire without the Supreme Leader’s authorization, falsely claimed in a Supreme National Security Council statement that the United States had fully accepted Iran’s conditions, entered nuclear negotiations in Islamabad contrary to the Supreme Leader’s instructions, and used the issue of Lebanon’s rescue as a pretext for traveling to Switzerland and continuing direct negotiations with representatives of US President Donald Trump.
Raja News wrote that Ghalibaf and his political allies could have enjoyed the same support from revolutionary forces as Rezaei, particularly under wartime conditions. However, it said they had chosen to place their personal views above the Supreme Leader’s principles and consequently became the target of what it described as “one of the harshest reprimands in the history of the Islamic Republic,” referring to Mojtaba Khamenei’s June 18 message in which he said he had held a different view on the agreement with the United States but authorized it after the president, on behalf of himself and other members of the Supreme National Security Council, gave assurances and accepted responsibility for it.
The website also criticized Araghchi’s recent statement that Tehran was still giving diplomacy an opportunity to succeed.
It described the foreign minister’s remarks as a “special gift to Trump on the eve of his electoral defeat” and a “direct signal of military weakness to the Pentagon and Tel Aviv operations rooms”.
“It is regrettable that Seyed Abbas Araghchi’s behavior at this critical juncture is exactly like that of someone who enters the scene whenever the enemy is on the verge of collapse and facing danger, in order to protect its interests,” it wrote.
Moderates reject claims of a power struggle
Ghalibaf and his close associates have not directly commented on the issue. However, the moderate conservative website Khabar Online described Raja News’s support for Rezaei as “superficial”, arguing that the website was using its support for Rezaei’s positions as a means of undermining and weakening Ghalibaf.
In a commentary published on Monday under the headline “The Duality That Never Materialized: Ghalibaf and Rezaei on the Same Side”, the moderate Asr-e Iran website argued that if the American letter had been intended to create divisions within Iran’s decision-making structure, that objective had effectively failed.
It added that even if Washington had no such intention, some domestic political factions had attempted to exploit the development to manufacture a rivalry between the two officials, despite their public rejection of such a division.
According to Asr-e Iran, Rezaei’s message in a television interview on Saturday was clear: an expanded role for the Supreme National Security Council, or the decision to address its secretary directly, did not mean that he was competing with the head of the negotiating team.
The website argued that although foreign governments could choose whom to address in their correspondence, they could not dictate Iran’s internal decision-making structure.
“The Vance letter could have become an issue for polarization. Some domestic factions also tried to create this duality. But the coordinated positions of Rezaei, Araghchi and Baghaei demonstrated that attempts to manufacture divisions among officials, at least in this case, face a serious obstacle: a division of responsibilities is possible, and differences in language are natural, but Iran’s final decision is one,” Asr-e Iran wrote.
Several employees at subsidiaries of Bank Pasargad, one of Iran's largest private banks, have been fired or barred from their workplaces amid tighter enforcement of the country's mandatory hijab laws, people familiar with the matter told Iran International.
Bank Pasargad CEO Majid Ghasemi dismissed six employees during an unannounced visit to one of the bank's subsidiaries on October 27 over their clothing, sources told Iran International.
During another visit the following day, several female employees were dismissed for wearing jackets and skirts, casual clothing or trainers, while a male employee was fired for wearing jeans, according to one of the sources.
Another person working at a company under Fanap Holding, a technology group linked to Bank Pasargad, said a company executive was forced to resign after refusing instructions to impose stricter dress code restrictions.
Employees at several companies, including Fanap, Fanap Infrastructure, Fanap Telecom, Dotin and Pasargad Electronic Payment, received notices warning that entry to workplaces from October 31 would be conditional on compliance with new clothing requirements.
The notices banned women from wearing headscarves, short or open-front manteaus, women's trouser suits and T-shirts. Some employees were subsequently denied entry over their clothing, the sources said.
One source said two or three colleagues were among those dismissed but were reluctant to speak publicly for fear of losing their severance payments and final employment settlements.
The reported dismissals come amid renewed pressure on Iranian businesses to enforce compulsory hijab rules, which require women to cover their hair and observe Islamic dress standards in public.
On October 30, Tehran Prosecutor Ali Salehi warned that managers of government agencies could face legal action for failing to enforce hijab regulations, according to the judiciary-affiliated Mizan news agency. He also called for increased monitoring of businesses, clothing retailers and public venues.
Iranian authorities have increasingly targeted businesses over alleged dress code violations. In August, Iran International documented at least 42 closures of cafes, restaurants, shops, sports clubs and other establishments across 17 cities in just three weeks.
More recently, Tehran prosecutors opened a case against organizers of the Tehran Art Fair over alleged violations of the country’s hijab laws, while the event's ticketing website and social media account were blocked.
Iran's compulsory hijab requirements have remained a point of contention since the 2022 protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody, with growing numbers of women appearing in public without headscarves despite the threat of penalties.
Some Arab states have warned Iran that they could retaliate individually or collectively if Tehran targets their infrastructure, as Persian Gulf countries prepare for the possibility of renewed US strikes and Iranian retaliation, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have been conducting security drills, including at airports, while some attendees at a major energy conference in Abu Dhabi were cutting short their stays on government advice. Schools in Riyadh were also set to remain online this week as Saudi Arabia faces attacks by the Iran-backed Houthis. UAE presidential adviser Anwar Gargash said his country hoped diplomatic efforts would succeed but was “braced for the worst.”
The warnings come against a backdrop of continuing attacks around the Strait of Hormuz. A tanker was struck by two unidentified projectiles near a Saudi port late Sunday, while another vessel was hit by an unidentified projectile off Oman early Monday. Iranian state media also reported Monday that an oil tanker caught fire after striking a mine in the eastern part of the strait.
The heightened preparations coincide with diplomatic efforts to prevent renewed fighting. Iranian negotiators left Doha on Sunday, with a draft proposal still circulating for feedback and a follow-up meeting possible. An Iranian source cited by the IRGC-affiliated Fars news agency said Monday that indirect communications with Washington had produced no diplomatic breakthrough and that Tehran continued to insist on its seven conditions. A third Qatari delegation in a week was heading to Tehran on Monday as Doha sought to bring Tehran and Washington closer to an agreement to end the war, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed reported, citing an informed Iranian source.
Axios reported that Qatari mediators had drafted an agreement outlining a three-day sequence of confidence-building measures aimed at resuming direct US-Iran negotiations. Trump told Axios he was “in no rush” to decide whether to resume fighting with Iran, saying: “One way or the other, we will do something, but there is no rush.”
The diplomatic push has also exposed differing views within the Trump administration over how to proceed. CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of State Marco Rubio favor maintaining economic pressure without either a new war or a deal, while Vice President JD Vance and White House envoy Steve Witkoff are urging Trump to move toward an agreement, Axios reported.
Vance said Monday that Washington had made “some progress” toward a negotiated settlement. “The President and I both feel pretty good about the prospects for potentially coming to a negotiated settlement,” Vance said, adding: “We've certainly made some progress. We'll see if we can make some more.”
Despite those signs of progress, the possibility of renewed US military action remains. The Journal reported that Trump has been leaning toward a large attack on Iran after the US midterm election but has not decided whether to proceed. Trump told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a call Saturday that he wanted to first give continuing diplomatic efforts a chance to succeed, according to people familiar with the call.
