Belgium’s defense minister said on Friday that Tehran had warned his country of dire consequences if it allowed Reza Pahlavi, Iran’s exiled prince, to speak in Brussels, and that the event had gone ahead anyway.
Speaking at the Royal Military Academy in Brussels, where he welcomed Pahlavi before a lecture on the Middle East, Theo Francken said the Iranian leadership had tried to prevent the discussion.
“We have been warned of dire consequences if the lecture went ahead,” he told the audience.
Francken said the objection showed that Tehran was concerned about Pahlavi’s message and was seeking to pressure Belgium’s democracy.
“This attitude demonstrates to us that the Iranian regime is genuinely concerned about Mr. Pahlavi’s message. And not only that; It also seeks to coerce our own democracy,” he said, adding that the academy should be free to discuss and study issues without interference from abroad.
The minister said the conflict between the United States and Iran affected Belgium’s economic and security interests, saying it was important to understand the region clearly.
He described Pahlavi’s perspective as potentially valuable and introduced him as an outspoken opponent of the Islamic Republic.
“His perspective may prove particularly valuable in understanding the future of the region. His words carry weight,” he said, describing Pahlavi as “the most outspoken voice favoring the demise of the Islamic Republic.”
Francken said Pahlavi advocated a new national government based on Iranians’ right to choose their system of government in free and fair elections.
He closed by reciting a verse by the Persian poet Hafez about hoping for the sun to rise after a dark night, and expressed hope for Iranians’ freedom and a better future.
Pahlavi said in a post on X later in the day that he had urged Belgium to lead efforts in the European Union to counter the Islamic Republic.
Pahlavi said he met Belgian Interior Minister Bernard Quintin and discussed the Islamic Republic’s growing threat to Belgian security and attempts to undermine the country’s democracy.
President Donald Trump's sweeping midterm defeat has sparked a debate in Tehran over whether Iran should seize the opportunity to negotiate a deal with Washington or maintain pressure through its control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Reformist and pragmatic conservative publications have urged Iranian leaders to exploit the shifting political climate in the United States to secure economic concessions, while hardline outlets argue that Tehran should preserve its maritime leverage regardless of the election outcome.
The debate comes as Iran faces mounting economic pressure, with inflation nearing triple digits, industrial shortages and shipping restrictions disrupting supplies of essential goods.
Reformist newspaper Shargh focused on the country's economic struggles, welcoming Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi's proposal for implementing de-escalation measures in the Strait of Hormuz within two days.
Pragmatic conservative Khorasan, which is close to Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, urged lawmakers to pursue a negotiated settlement while ensuring parliamentary oversight of the proposed two-day mechanism.
The convergence suggests that support for exploring a deal extends beyond Iran's reformist camp, despite differences in political priorities.
‘Rescue the economy’
Sobh-e No, another conservative newspaper aligned with Ghalibaf, argued that Tehran should make the most of Trump's defeat to secure binding economic commitments.
Even Hamshahri, owned by the hardliner-led Tehran Municipality, called for swift diplomatic action, warning that shipping disruptions in the Persian Gulf were straining domestic supply chains and contributing to soaring food prices.
The US naval blockade has compounded Iran's economic crisis, effectively halting its oil exports and disrupting other maritime trade. Iran has not loaded oil for export since mid-August, according to shipping data from Kpler.
Together, these arguments reflect a calculation that Iran's maritime leverage may be more valuable if converted into immediate economic relief than maintained indefinitely.
‘Maintain pressure’
Hardline publications, however, showed little enthusiasm for changing Tehran's position.
Kayhan argued that the political balance in Washington had no bearing on what it described as Iran's "operational dominance" in Hormuz.
Javan similarly maintained that Tehran should continue using the strategic waterway to pressure Washington, regardless of which party controls Congress.
The English-language Tehran Times argued that the elections had changed neither Iran's ability to restrict maritime traffic nor its conditions for de-escalation.
Some conservative commentary also portrayed Vice President JD Vance's diplomatic outreach as evidence that the Trump administration was under pressure from high energy prices and difficulties securing maritime traffic.
Under this interpretation, the election results reinforced Washington's vulnerability but offered little reason for Tehran to soften its demands.
‘Beware miscalculation’
Other conservative publications struck a more cautious tone.
Resalat warned against assuming the election results would fundamentally change Washington's approach to Tehran, arguing that the United States remained an unreliable negotiating partner regardless of which party controlled Congress.
Jomhouri Eslami, meanwhile, cautioned that assuming Washington would indefinitely tolerate the closure of Hormuz could invite a wider regional war.
The competing assessments come as Tehran pursues diplomatic contacts beyond Washington.
On Thursday, Iran's Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and delivered a message from Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, Iranian state media reported.
The question facing Iranian policymakers is whether Trump's electoral setback offers a chance to secure concessions or whether maintaining pressure will yield better terms, and how long Iran can afford to wait.
Iran stepped up diplomatic efforts on Thursday, submitting a new nuclear proposal to Washington, seeking Russian support and reaching out to regional powers a day after President Donald Trump's party suffered a sweeping defeat in the US midterm elections.
Tehran sent Washington a nuclear proposal through Qatar, Reuters reported, citing a senior Iranian official who said any discussion of its contents would depend on the United States first meeting Iran's seven demands.
The official said Washington was reviewing the proposal.
Trump has acknowledged that the war contributed to Republican losses in Tuesday's elections, while Democratic leaders have vowed to use their new congressional majorities to push for an end to military operations against Iran.
For Tehran, the election results have raised the prospect of negotiating with a politically weakened president, although Iranian officials continue to insist on concrete concessions before relaxing their grip on the Strait of Hormuz.
Putin offers support for ending war
Iran's Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei travelled to Moscow, where he delivered a message from Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Rezaei told Iranian state television that Khamenei had wanted the message conveyed to Putin as soon as possible. He did not disclose its contents.
According to Rezaei, Putin condemned US and Israeli attacks on Iran, including strikes on its nuclear facilities, and offered Russian assistance in ending the war.
"He believed this was an unjust war and that it should end as soon as possible," Rezaei said. "He said, 'We are ready to cooperate in any way we can to help end the war.'"
Rezaei said Putin welcomed recent consultations among four regional countries in Tehran and supported a security framework that would exclude outside powers.
"Like our Chinese friends, we believe there should be regional arrangements and that foreign countries should not interfere in the region's security," Rezaei quoted Putin as saying.
Rezaei's involvement may also indicate a willingness among influential figures in Iran's security establishment to explore a negotiated settlement.
The New York Times reported, citing two Iranian officials and an American official, that Rezaei had privately expressed openness to discussing Iran's nuclear programme.
According to the report, he has been involved in negotiations with Qatari mediators alongside Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
Regional diplomatic outreach
Araghchi also held separate telephone conversations Thursday with his counterparts from nine countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, according to Iranian state media.
The calls, which also included Pakistan, Jordan, Kuwait and Cyprus, focused on regional developments and efforts to end the war.
The breadth of the diplomatic activity suggests that discussions extend beyond Iran's foreign ministry to senior figures in its security and political establishment, although Tehran's willingness to compromise remains unclear.
The central obstacle is the sequence of concessions. Iran wants Washington to meet its demands before substantive nuclear discussions can proceed, while the United States has yet to indicate whether it will accept those conditions.
An Iranian court has sentenced two men arrested during January's anti-government protests to death, a rights group reported Thursday, adding to a growing number of protesters facing execution in the northeastern city of Mashhad.
Matin Shabani and Amir Delshad were sentenced by Branch 5 of the Mashhad Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Hossein Yazdankhah, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).
An Iran International review of cases involving political charges found that approximately 220 prisoners are currently under sentence of death across Iran, up from around 194 previously reported.
Shabani was convicted of moharebeh, or "waging war against God", over allegations of arson and destruction of public property during protests in Shandiz, near Mashhad.
His case relates to demonstrations on January 8 and 9, during which a mosque and a Quranic education centre caught fire, according to a source cited by HRANA.
Shabani was arrested during those protests and later transferred to Vakilabad Prison. His death sentence had been communicated to him before Thursday's report, HRANA said.
Delshad was sentenced to death over alleged activities on behalf of an opposition group, as well as arson and destruction of public property during the protests, according to HRANA.
His case has been referred to Iran's Supreme Court following an appeal against the sentence. He remains in Vakilabad Prison.
Other protesters facing execution in Mashhad
In another case, Pouria Hosseini-Mofrad, 23, has appealed his death sentence to Iran's Supreme Court, HRANA reported.
Arrested on January 14, he was sentenced to death in August on national security-related charges. A source cited by HRANA said the allegations against him included breaking the glass of a bus stop and setting fire to shrubs.
HRANA also identified 34-year-old Vahid Khedrikhah as one of three protesters sentenced to death in a separate joint case.
Khedrikhah, Matin Farnian, 23, and a third defendant whose identity remains unknown were convicted of moharebeh by the same court.
Khedrikhah was wounded by gunfire during the January protests, according to a source cited by HRANA.
Five protesters already executed in Mashhad
At least five protesters arrested in connection with January's demonstrations in Mashhad have been executed at Vakilabad Prison this year.
Mehdi Rasouli, 25, Mohammadreza Miri, 21, and Ebrahim Dolatabadinejad were executed on May 3 over their alleged involvement in the protests.
Authorities accused Rasouli and Miri of involvement in the killing of a Basij paramilitary member, while Dolatabadinejad was accused of directing protesters and inciting unrest. Rights groups reported that the men had been subjected to torture and forced confessions.
Two others, Ali Hemmati Sistani and Majid Nikandish, 25, were executed on September 30 after being convicted of moharebeh.
Iran's judiciary accused them of involvement in protests in Mashhad's Tabarsi district on January 8 that allegedly resulted in the deaths of four security personnel.
Amnesty International said the men had been convicted following grossly unfair trials in which televised forced confessions were used as evidence.
According to Norway-based Iran Human Rights, at least 81 people were executed on political charges between January and the end of October, including 32 protesters.
Even as Iran grapples with war, economic crisis and the threat of renewed US and Israeli attacks, its security forces are breaking up Halloween celebrations, closing cafes and detaining people for gathering in public.
Analysts say the crackdown on everyday freedoms, alongside the continued execution of protesters, serves several purposes: intimidating a discontented population, reassuring loyalists and demonstrating that the authorities remain firmly in control.
"I think they feel cornered and they feel threatened by the impending military conflict with the US and Israel," Shahin Milani, executive director of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, told Iran International.
"They just want to tell the population that we're staying here, we're not going to go anywhere."
On October 30, Basij paramilitary forces and plainclothes security personnel broke up Halloween celebrations on Tehran's Iranshahr Street, beating and detaining people and forcing nearby cafes to close, witnesses told Iran International.
Families spending the evening at nearby Artists Park were also ordered to leave.
The crackdown extended to other cities, where authorities shut down businesses and initiated legal proceedings against organisers of Halloween celebrations.
Social control as a means of survival
Roya Boroumand, executive director of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran, said the repression reflects a longstanding feature of the Islamic Republic rather than a new wartime strategy.
She pointed to the years following the 1979 revolution, when authorities targeted cinemas, alcohol sales and women who refused compulsory veiling, even as Iran faced war with Iraq.
"They focused on these issues because this is how they keep people in their place," she told Iran International.
Omid Memarian, an Iran analyst with DAWN, said sweeping social changes in recent years have unsettled the government's conservative base, prompting hardline institutions to enforce restrictions that reassure their supporters.
"These performative acts, which might cost some Iranian citizens their time and their life and their freedoms, [are] designed to satisfy the base, the very hardline base that has been supporting the government over the past seven months," Memarian said.
He distinguished between the civilian government and powerful hardline institutions, including the judiciary, which continue to enforce ideological restrictions.
No respite from executions
The policing of social freedoms comes alongside an escalating campaign of executions following January's nationwide anti-government uprising.
On November 3, Iranian authorities executed Amirhossein Maleki and Amirhossein Ebrahimi, both 19, at Isfahan Central Prison.
Iran Human Rights said the executions brought to nine the number of defendants put to death in the Alikhani Square case, which has been marred by allegations of torture, forced confessions and serious violations of due process.
Three other defendants remain at grave risk of execution.
At least 36 protesters have been executed in connection with the January uprising since March, according to Iran Human Rights.
"They want to intimidate people and just send the message that nothing is going to change and that they're not going to give up an inch," Milani said.
Boroumand argued that international attention to military developments has given the authorities greater room to pursue repression.
"Of course, that's why they are executing so many political prisoners and protesters, because the world is focused on fuel prices and the Strait of Hormuz," she said.
But Boroumand stressed that repression is an existential issue for the Islamic Republic, regardless of whether the country is at war.
A show of strength with limits
Milani cautioned against assuming that every restriction reflects a coordinated national strategy.
"Just because the regime is dictatorial and authoritarian doesn't necessarily mean that it is efficient, even in repression," he said.
Decisions can be arbitrary, he explained, with local officials sometimes imposing restrictions independently of senior authorities.
Memarian said hardline institutions are attempting to demonstrate strength at a time when the government faces unprecedented external pressure.
But he questioned whether they could reverse the social changes that have already taken place, arguing that enforcing restrictions on the scale seen in previous decades has become increasingly difficult.
Milani pointed out that intimidation continues to have devastating consequences for families. Many who have lost children or have loved ones imprisoned may remain silent out of fear that speaking publicly could endanger other loved ones.
Boroumand warned that the consequences of January's crackdown must not disappear from international attention as the war dominates headlines.
"The war is very important, but it should not overshadow the massive and unprecedented killings of January and the repression that Iranians have been experiencing since," she said.
She also pointed to the continuing arrests of lawyers and the difficulties protesters face in securing legal representation.
For the Islamic Republic, repression remains a means of asserting authority. But while it can intimidate citizens into silence, whether it can reverse the social changes that have transformed Iranian society is another matter.
Unpaid insurance reimbursements and rising medicine and equipment prices are draining private hospitals' finances, threatening their ability to maintain services and increasing costs for patients, hospital executives said in accounts published on Thursday.
A journalist in Iran described the financial pressures facing non-government hospitals following a meeting of hospital directors, with some executives saying insurers had failed to settle bills dating back to the Iranian calendar year that ended in March 2025.
One director of a major hospital in a provincial capital said the facility had contracts with about 35 basic and supplementary insurers, welfare departments, banks and other institutions, none of which had settled their outstanding bills for that year.
The largest unpaid balances belonged to Dey and Dana Insurance, the director said.
The financial shortfalls come as hospitals face rapidly increasing costs for medicines and medical supplies, with treatment tariffs adjusted annually even as procurement prices change daily.
A director overseeing another hospital with more than 1,200 medical and administrative employees said inflation had made it increasingly difficult to replace medicines and supplies after use.
The price of Ringer's solution, a commonly used intravenous fluid, had increased by 600 percent over three years, the director said.
Insulin and widely used blood pressure medications have also risen in price by as much as 50 percent over the past month.
Some retirees said these medicines were unavailable at Social Security medical facilities, forcing them to seek supplies from other pharmacies.
Hospital costs rise faster than treatment tariffs
One private hospital with more than 300 beds and nearly 20 operating rooms has established a separate department to update medicine prices because they change daily, its director said.
The hospital is not profitable, with revenue covering only operating expenses and staff salaries, according to the director.
The mismatch between changing procurement costs and annually fixed treatment tariffs has added to the financial pressures on hospitals already waiting for overdue insurance payments.
The difficulties extend to Iran's public health insurance system.
Inflation and rising expenditure have created an imbalance between resources and spending at the Iran Health Insurance Organization since the second half of the Iranian calendar year beginning in March 2024, its chief executive Mohammad Mehdi Nasehi said on October 24.
The Health Ministry owed the organization 420 trillion rials (about $157 million), while shares worth 850 trillion rials (about $318 million) transferred to settle outstanding receivables had not been converted into cash, Nasehi said.
Those figures cover the organization's wider network of contracted providers rather than the outstanding debts owed to individual hospitals.
Iran's Social Security Organization announced on November 3 that it had paid 50 trillion rials (about $19 million) to private pharmacies, family physicians and university-affiliated and private medical facilities.
The announcement did not specify how much of the outstanding debt to hospitals remained unpaid.
Patients face higher costs and reduced coverage
Private hospital executives said rising foreign exchange rates and tighter sanctions could make obtaining medicines and medical equipment more difficult.
Patients are also facing higher treatment costs and restrictions on insurance coverage, adding to the financial pressures across Iran's healthcare system.
The removal of some injectable medicines from outpatient insurance coverage is among the changes that could increase patients' out-of-pocket expenses.
Some retirees have stopped visiting doctors or purchasing medicines because of treatment costs, retirement rights advocate Ali Akbar Eyvazi told the ILNA news agency on Thursday, November 5.
The removal of medicines from insurance coverage had extended to commonly used diabetes and blood pressure treatments, Eyvazi said.
Prices for some pharmaceutical products have increased by as much as 380 percent in recent months, while patients have described shortages and rising insulin prices.
