Iran's parliament speaker urges stronger China ties to counter US pressure
China's experience resisting US pressure offers opportunities for Iran to deepen cooperation with Beijing and strengthen strategic partnerships, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Tuesday.
Writing in Sedaye Iran, the online newspaper published by the office responsible for preserving and publishing the works of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Ghalibaf said Tehran sought a significant role in shaping a new regional order.
Ghalibaf, who also serves as Iran's special representative for China affairs, said the 55th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries offered an opportunity to expand relations. He stressed that the 25-year comprehensive cooperation agreement between Iran and China must be translated into concrete projects.
He also said Iran's supreme leader had made relations with China a foreign policy priority and issued detailed instructions to strengthen bilateral cooperation.
Shahram Poursafi in the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist list
The FBI on Tuesday added an Iranian Revolutionary Guard member accused of plotting to assassinate former US national security adviser John Bolton to its Most Wanted Terrorists list and released appeals for information on three alleged associates.
Shahram Poursafi, also known as Mehdi Rezayi, allegedly sought to arrange the killing on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force. The FBI said he solicited the murder of two former US government officials between October 2021 and April 2022.
The bureau also issued seeking information posters for Mohammad Reza Ansari, Abolfazl Alizadeh and Mohammad Hossein Shamoradizadeh, whom it linked to Iranian assassination planning.
“The FBI will not stand for the IRGC’s brazen attempts to silence, harm, or murder activists, dissidents, journalists, public officials, or anyone else it deems a threat,” said Gregory Heeb, special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office’s Counterterrorism Division.
The alleged Bolton plot
The Justice Department announced charges against Poursafi in August 2022, accusing him of offering $300,000 to have Bolton killed in Washington or Maryland, likely in retaliation for the January 2020 killing of Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani.
Prosecutors said Poursafi initially asked a US resident he had met online to photograph Bolton, claiming the pictures were for a book. He subsequently negotiated the assassination with a confidential source working with US authorities. The charges include murder-for-hire and providing or attempting to provide material support to a transnational murder plot.
The State Department’s Rewards for Justice program is offering up to $20 million for information leading to Poursafi’s arrest or conviction. Its account says he used encrypted messaging applications to arrange the killing from Iran.
Quds Force network
The FBI described Ansari as a deputy in Unit 840, a Quds Force unit responsible for developing lethal operations, and said he had supported Iranian operations in Syria. With Poursafi’s assistance, Ansari allegedly planned and attempted to assassinate two former US officials.
Alizadeh and Shamoradizadeh are commanders in the Basij Imam Ali Battalion who have allegedly participated in lethal plotting, the bureau said. It identified Asghar Bagheri, who died in April 2026, as Unit 840’s former commander.
Iran International reported in December 2022, citing leaked documents, that Ansari led a failed operation targeting Bolton and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo. That report also identified Poursafi, Alizadeh and a commander named Mohammad Hossein Shahmoradi as members of Ansari’s team.
The US Treasury sanctioned Ansari and Poursafi in June 2023, accusing them of planning assassination attempts against two former US officials. Treasury said Ansari belonged to a Quds Force external operations unit targeting Iranian dissidents and other nationals in the United States, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.
An Iranian man looks at a butcher shop window in Tehran, Iran, October 27, 2026.
A prolonged confrontation with Washington risks eroding Iran’s economy and impoverishing its people even without a sudden collapse, an Iranian economist warned, as Washington appears intent on maintaining economic pressure without renewed major combat operations.
In an interview with Shargh newspaper published Monday, Mohammad Tabibian, a former deputy director of Iran’s Planning and Budget Organization, questioned the strategy of measuring success through the country’s capacity to endure economic suffering.
His warning came as President Donald Trump said Monday that Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other regional countries favored maintaining the “status quo,” which he described as the continuation of the US naval blockade and Operation Iron Gate, a new US task force to restrict Iran’s overland trade.
Trump also said US forces remained “locked and loaded,” keeping renewed military action an option.
Tabibian cautioned that Iran’s ability to adapt to sustained pressure did not mean an end to the damage.
“Adapting to sanctions does not mean eliminating their harm,” he said. Alternative trade routes, discounted sales, difficulties transferring money and uncertainty about the future continue to impose costs, reflected in reduced investment, declining productive capacity and weaker purchasing power.
The government’s ability to pay salaries was not, by itself, a measure of economic health, he argued. Payments could continue while their real value fell and families lost access to adequate food, healthcare, education or housing.
“A society can therefore gradually become poorer without experiencing a sudden halt to all economic activity,” he said.
“If investment declines in the meantime, human capital deteriorates and people suffer more, we cannot call the mere continuation of economic activity a success.”
Tabibian also cautioned that economic pressure would not necessarily produce Washington’s desired political outcome. Its effects would depend on decisions by both governments and the response of the economy and society, he said.
Mohammad Tabibian served under the administration of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as deputy director of the Planning and Budget Organization.
Who bears the cost of endurance?
Tabibian challenged Iranian authorities over decisions about the conflict and the economic burden imposed on society.
“My fundamental question is who bears responsibility for the decisive decisions about war and peace, and what mechanisms exist to hold them accountable? How can imposing this much pain and suffering on a nation be justified?” he said.
“People endure hardships within their homes that usually go unseen. There are families whose university-educated children remain unemployed at around age 40 and financially dependent on their parents. Many young people cannot establish independent lives. Retired parents, too, must support several people on limited incomes.”
He also rejected the assumption that disrupting the Strait of Hormuz and raising energy prices would necessarily force Washington to abandon its confrontation with Tehran.
“Why should we consider the suffering of our own people a success, simply in the hope that the other side suffers more?” Tabibian asked, arguing that government policies should instead be judged by their effects on people’s security and living standards.
He distinguished household resilience, government finances, the capacity to rebuild infrastructure and society’s political tolerance, warning against treating them as a single measure of national endurance.
The United States was better equipped to absorb economic shocks because of its large, diversified economy, financial resources and capacity for innovation, he said. Betting that higher energy prices or disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz would cripple the American economy or compel Washington to change course was therefore an unreliable strategy.
Washington backs economic pressure
Tabibian’s warning coincided with statements from US leaders favoring continued economic pressure without a resumption of large-scale combat operations.
Following a meeting with Qatar’s prime minister on Monday, President Donald Trump said several Arab governments favored keeping the present arrangements in place.
“Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and others, would prefer the status quo,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, describing that arrangement as the continuation of the US naval blockade and Operation Iron Gate, an initiative targeting weapons shipments and other illicit flows across Iran’s land borders and the Caspian Sea.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio made the economic argument more explicitly on Tuesday.
“The economic pain that is being inflicted on Iran right now is extraordinary, and it compounds. It’s growing every day,” Rubio told reporters in Paris.
“We don’t need to conduct military strikes if we’re achieving the same objective through economic means and economic pressure,” he added.
The economic campaign combines the naval blockade with sanctions against Iranian financial institutions, oil exports and businesses involved in sanctions evasion.
Reuters reported in September that three senior Iranian sources described Washington’s efforts to obstruct Iranian oil exports and access to international financial networks as increasingly difficult to withstand.
The sources warned that Tehran had fewer remaining avenues to obtain foreign currency and finance essential imports, raising concerns within the leadership about the consequences of a prolonged economic crisis.
The World Bank has also warned that the conflict, intensified sanctions and disruptions to trade are pushing Iran’s economy into a deeper contraction, with falling real incomes, weakened investment and growing poverty.
Economic grievances and the risk of renewed unrest
US intelligence officials and researchers have also examined the possible political consequences of prolonged economic pressure.
In March, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Congress that sanctions and economic deterioration had contributed to the conditions behind Iran’s nationwide protests in January.
Iranian demonstrators gather in a street during nationwide protests, in Tehran, Iran, January 8, 2026.
She said US intelligence assessed that internal tensions were likely to increase as the Iranian economy worsened, even if the Islamic Republic remained in power.
A more recent study by Eric Lob, a political scientist at Florida International University and scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, examined how economic grievances in Iran have repeatedly developed into broader political protests.
Published in October, his research argued that the war and US naval blockade had intensified the economic problems that initially drove those demonstrations, including inflation and currency depreciation.
He warned that prolonged deterioration would increase the likelihood of renewed social unrest, while the authorities’ reliance on repression could deepen the underlying grievances.
Tabibian, however, cautioned against assuming that economic suffering would automatically translate into political collapse. Political upheavals depended on the interaction of economic, institutional and social conditions, he said.
Nor could the timing, form or likelihood of protests be predicted simply from rising prices.
“Policymakers should not mistake people’s silence for satisfaction or an unlimited capacity to endure,” he said.
The limits of economic pressure
Other researchers have highlighted the risks of relying on prolonged pressure to constrain a government’s military capabilities or change its decisions.
In a November 2 assessment, Benjamin Jensen, director of the Futures Lab at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, examined possible US options ranging from continued pressure to attacks on military installations or sensitive nuclear facilities.
His assessment assumed that the existing sanctions and blockade would remain in place. Jensen described continued pressure as the lowest-risk option, but warned that Tehran could use the time to rearm, seek to divide Washington from its allies or launch attacks of its own.
He also cautioned that military gains did not guarantee sustained political results.
Tabibian said Iran might find ways to reduce the effects of some restrictions over time, but questioned the cost of doing so if investment declined and people endured further hardship.
He called for efforts to resolve disputes and reduce the risk of war, while cautioning that negotiations alone would not guarantee a solution. The outcome would depend on the decisions, conditions and actions of both sides.
“At the end of the tunnel of war and attrition, no clear light is visible for Iran or the United States,” he said.
Shoppers walk through a market in Iran, where rising living costs and shrinking purchasing power reflect the economic toll of 47 years of Islamic Republic rule.
Nearly 47 years after Iran's 1979 revolution, a former football chief has asked what Iranians got for its promises, pointing to officials’ children living abroad, oil wealth that never reached wages and a state that answered protests with bullets.
“You haven’t done anything for 47 years. All you talk about is dignity, dignity, dignity. What dignity?” Mohammad Dadkan, former president of Iran’s Football Federation, said in an interview on the Persian-language podcast Tak be Tak.
The cost of confronting US
"What would we have to talk about if it weren't for 'Death to America'? What would we use to keep people occupied?" Dadkan asked.
The slogan has been at the heart of the Islamic Republic’s identity since 1979, when students loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini seized the US embassy and held its diplomats hostage.
Decades of confrontation, and the dispute over the nuclear program, brought broad US sanctions on oil, banking and trade.
They have deterred investment and raised the cost of imports, and the state’s own mismanagement has done the rest. Iranian households live with high inflation, falling purchasing power and few jobs.
Officials call resistance to Washington the measure of national independence. Iranians have paid for it in prices.
Shoppers crowd a bazaar in Iran, where decades of economic hardship, rising prices and declining purchasing power have taken a toll on everyday life.
Privilege at home, children abroad
"What have you done other than fill your own pockets, send your children abroad and take all the privileges for yourselves?" Dadkan said.
The children of senior officials living in the countries their parents denounce have long drawn anger.
Fatemeh Ardeshir Larijani, daughter of Ali Larijani, the former secretary of the Supreme National Security Council killed in an Israeli strike in March, worked as a cancer specialist at Emory University in the United States until January, when Emory said her employment had ended after protests by Iranian Americans. A government spokesman said she had already returned to Iran.
Issa Hashemi is the son of Masoumeh Ebtekar, a former vice president who was spokeswoman for the students who seized the US embassy in 1979.
He lived in Los Angeles with his wife and son until April, when US immigration authorities detained the family and Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked their permanent residency over their connection to Ebtekar.
For most Iranians, a falling currency and closing visa doors have made studying or settling abroad ever harder.
Oil wealth and shrinking wages
"We have stone, gold, oil, the best resources and an excellent geographical position for attracting tourists. We haven't done anything," Dadkan said.
Iran has some of the world’s largest oil and gas reserves. Its people have not seen the benefit.
Annual inflation reached 76.8 percent in October, according to the Statistical Center of Iran, and prices were 88.7 percent higher than a year earlier.
The dollar traded at about 2.63 million rials in November, against about 1.6 million in early April: the rial lost nearly 40 percent of its value in seven months.
The base minimum wage for the Iranian year that began in March was set at about 166 million rials a month. At today’s rate that is about $63.
'National dignity’
Dadkan also turned the officials’ favorite word back on them, pointing to Iranian women driven into prostitution in neighboring countries.
The US State Department’s 2019 Trafficking in Persons Report cited growing numbers of young Iranian women in prostitution in Dubai, some controlled by networks that took their passports and threatened violence, and possible links between traffickers and members of the police, the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij militia.
Its 2022 report identified Iranian women as vulnerable to sex trafficking in Turkey, especially near the border.
Resilience, salaries and missiles
"They've come up with something new, and apparently they all say the same thing," Dadkan said, criticizing officials' repeated use of the term resilience.
The Persian term tabavari, meaning resilience or the ability to withstand hardship, has increasingly featured in speeches by Iranian officials urging the public to cope with economic and social pressures.
Shoppers browse fresh produce at a market in Iran.
The appeals have come as households struggle with persistent inflation, declining purchasing power, electricity outages and water shortages. Power cuts have disrupted businesses and industrial production, while water shortages have affected daily life in several provinces.
Dadkan's criticism focused on the expectation that citizens should repeatedly adjust to worsening conditions, with officials emphasizing their capacity to endure hardship rather than explaining how the underlying problems would be addressed.
Dadkan also challenged demands for higher parliamentary salaries.
"Why should your salary get increased? What have you done?" he asked.
He contrasted lawmakers' benefits with the struggles of retirees who have repeatedly demonstrated for pensions that keep pace with inflation.
Military priorities drew similar criticism.
"You come on television in the morning and say the missiles' range should be increased. Why is that your concern? Go take care of people's lives, their welfare and their security," Dadkan said.
Iranian officials have made expanding the country's missile capabilities a priority, even as power cuts disrupt homes and factories, water shortages worsen and basic infrastructure falls into disrepair.
The right to protest
"Now tell those who don't agree with your policies to come out. See if you can contain the crowds. Then you'll find out whether people want you," Dadkan said.
His challenge followed years of anti-government demonstrations, including protests in 2017–18 and 2019, the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising of 2022 and the nationwide protests of January 2026.
The January crackdown, particularly the killings on January 8 and 9, became central to questions about the system's treatment of dissent.
On January 25, Iran International's editorial board announced that more than 36,500 people had been killed during those two days, citing confidential security documents, field reports and testimony from medical workers, witnesses and victims' families.
One generation lived through revolution, war and one economic crisis after another. The next grew up with falling incomes and few prospects, and many left. Others buried relatives killed in the streets.
Forty-seven years is a chapter in a state’s history. For Iranians it is a lifetime of youth spent getting by, futures abandoned and families split by emigration or death. None of it can be given back.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth participates in a panel on Project Agincourt, an initiative about autonomous warfare, during the 2026 Association of the United States Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting and Exposition at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC, US, October 14, 2026.
US War Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday that he would carry out the military operations against Iran again, warning that American forces remained ready to respond to any further action by Tehran.
"I stand behind every one of these operations. I was proud to execute them, and I would do it again tomorrow," Hegseth said at a Pentagon briefing, referring to US military operations involving Iran, Yemen and Venezuela.
"And if that regime makes one wrong move, as the president said, we remain locked and loaded with the full weight and lethality of Central Command," he said, referring to Iran.
Hegseth also said American forces had destroyed more than 80% of Iran's nuclear industrial base during the war.
Hegseth says more than 80% of Iran's nuclear industrial base destroyed
Hegseth said American forces had struck more than 13,000 targets during Operation Epic Fury, the US military campaign against Iran, and caused extensive damage to the country's military and nuclear infrastructure.
"In under 40 days of sustained combat, more than 13,000 targets struck. Their navy sunk. Their air force grounded. Their defense industrial base gone. More than 80% of their nuclear industrial base gone," he said.
Hegseth also said the US naval blockade of Iranian ports remained in place and asserted that Washington controlled the Strait of Hormuz.
"The ironclad blockade unbroken. We control the Strait of Hormuz," he said.
"By every measure, we achieved a historic military victory," Hegseth added.
Trump also says he would launch Iran war again
Hegseth's remarks echoed Trump's defense of the decision to attack Iran, despite the president acknowledging that the conflict had contributed to Republican losses in the November 3 midterm elections.
"I did the right thing. I would have done it again," Trump told The Wall Street Journal.
Trump also said the military campaign was necessary to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
"We had no choice. You can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon," he told reporters last Wednesday.
Hegseth discusses strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities
Hegseth also referred to Operation Midnight Hammer, the earlier US strikes involving B-2 bombers against Iran's nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.
"The largest and most successful B-2 strike in American history. Nuclear sites obliterated," he said.
Hegseth reiterated Washington's position that Iran must not acquire nuclear weapons.
"The crazy Islamists in Tehran will never, ever have a nuclear weapon," he said.
He credited Trump with ordering military action that previous administrations had avoided.
"History will judge the Iran war quite differently than conventional wisdom right now," Hegseth said.
"We didn't start this war. Iran did 47 years ago," he added, referring to the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Hegseth says operations were lawful
The Secretary of War also addressed the legality of the military operations conducted under Trump's administration, including the campaign against Iran.
"Iran, the cartels, Maduro, Yemen, every one was a lawful operation ordered by the commander in chief, then ordered by myself, notified to Congress, and executed by American warriors who did their jobs," he said.
His remarks followed an impeachment effort by Republican Representative Thomas Massie, who accused him of launching military operations without congressional authorization.
Hegseth rejected suggestions that the operations had been unlawful.
"Their service was not a crime. These are heroes, and no politician in Washington will tell them otherwise while I hold this office," he said.
He added that the operations had targeted military capabilities and criminal activities.
"We destroyed terror regimes' capabilities. We sank the boats carrying poison into our communities," Hegseth said.
Hegseth acknowledges 18 US military deaths
Hegseth said 18 American service members had died during Operation Epic Fury.
"Nobody was lost in the mission in Venezuela, but 18 Americans have given their lives in Operation Epic Fury," he said.
"We know their names. I've been to Dover. We honor them every day, but their sacrifice only stiffens our resolve."
He compared the Iran campaign with previous US military conflicts that lasted for years and resulted in thousands of American deaths.
"For generations, my generation fought other Middle Eastern wars that dragged on for years, for decades. We lost thousands, thousands of Americans," he said.
Hegseth said the Iran campaign would not follow the same course.
"This Epic Fury has never been that, and it never will be," he said.
The United States continues to enforce its naval blockade of Iranian ports while diplomatic efforts involving Washington and Tehran remain underway.
A street view of Iranshahr Street in central Tehran, a popular cultural and social gathering place that has recently faced security crackdowns, arrests and the closure of bookstores and cafes.
Iranian authorities have arrested several people accused of encouraging women to defy mandatory hijab rules on a popular cultural street following a series of security operations and business closures in the area, the judiciary said on Tuesday.
The arrests on Tehran's Iranshahr Street followed instructions from judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei to identify and confront what authorities described as organized efforts to promote violations of compulsory hijab and public morality rules, the judiciary's Mizan news agency reported.
Several people accused of promoting "immodesty and indecency" were detained following the intervention of the Tehran Prosecutor's Office, Mizan said.
Prosecutors also warned that individuals accused of encouraging women to appear without hijab or promoting conduct deemed inappropriate would face legal action in coordination with security and judicial enforcement agencies.
The judiciary did not disclose the number of detainees or provide details about their identities.
Crackdown follows bookstore and cafe closures
The arrests mark the latest enforcement action on Iranshahr Street, a popular gathering place for young Iranians near Artists Park that has faced growing scrutiny from authorities and supporters of compulsory hijab.
Two bookstores, Dey Bookstore and Arsa Book House, were reportedly sealed on November 7, days after security forces dispersed Halloween celebrations in the neighborhood.
Journalist Yaghma Fashkhami reported the closures on X, while Dey separately announced it would suspend operations and book deliveries until further notice.
The bookstore had previously been shut down in October 2023 over alleged violations of mandatory hijab regulations.
The latest closures followed an October 30 operation in which police blocked Iranshahr Street before Basij militia members and plainclothes security personnel moved against Halloween gatherings.
Witnesses told Iran International that security personnel beat and detained people, ordered families out of Artists Park and forced nearby cafes to close.
The operation followed a nationwide directive prohibiting businesses from organizing or advertising Halloween celebrations, with authorities warning of closures and prosecution.
Supporters of compulsory hijab had previously called for intervention against women appearing without headscarves on Iranshahr Street.
