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.
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.
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.
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.
The editorial board also attributed the killings to an order from Ali Khamenei approved by senior Islamic Republic officials.
Videos from the Kahrizak forensic facility near Tehran showed rows of body bags and families searching for missing relatives.
Dadkan’s dare, let your opponents into the streets and count them, is one the state answered in January.
Years that cannot be returned
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 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.
France is weighing measures against Iran, some of which it may never make public, over cyberattacks it blames on the Revolutionary Guards that made refrigerators and freezers overheat in about 700 supermarkets, Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said on Tuesday.
“We rule nothing out and will take all measures, including those we may not disclose publicly, that we deem proportionate and necessary to deter any further attacks,” Barrot told Franceinfo television. The aim, he said, was to deter anyone “in Iran or elsewhere” from trying the same.
France summoned Iran’s ambassador on Tuesday morning, a day after announcing that it had identified the Revolutionary Guards as responsible, and said it would seek European Union sanctions against those behind the attacks.
Barrot called the hacking “unprecedented in both its scale and its level of aggression” and the first large-scale cyberattack aimed at sabotaging infrastructure on French soil.
700 stores, one weekend
The attacks on October 11 and 12 hit refrigeration systems at about 700 supermarkets and other businesses across France, according to French authorities.
The hackers took remote control of temperature settings and let fridges and freezers warm up. Some stores had to throw out their entire stock of fresh and frozen food. French officials said the attacks caused heavy financial losses and, at some sites, fires.
Reuters has reported that some of the systems were obsolete or ran outdated software, which may have left them open to intrusion.
A Guards unit and its fronts
Paris prosecutors have opened an investigation into Shahid Kaveh, an offensive cyber unit of the Revolutionary Guards, on suspicion of sabotage in the interests of a foreign power.
A joint report by French intelligence and cybersecurity agencies named the unit as responsible and identified three alleged members: Hamid Reza Lashgarian, Mahdi Lashgarian and Reza Salarvand.
It said they worked behind front groups posing as independent hacker collectives, among them “CyberAveng3rs” and “Cyber Isnaad Front.”
Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said France had requested international arrest warrants for suspects.
Iran routinely denies carrying out cyberattacks.
Freezers across Europe
On November 2, supermarkets in at least nine European countries, including Belgium and Luxembourg, reported suspected cyberattacks that sent fridge and freezer temperatures soaring and forced units to shut down.
French authorities have not said whether the same group was behind those incidents.
The attacks are among several on civilian infrastructure since the war began on February 28. There other suspected cyber operations against US transit systems, water treatment plants and shipping.
The US military moved tankers and tiltrotor aircraft out of RAF Mildenhall in eastern England on Monday over a threat from Iran, the Wall Street Journal reported, the second British base it has thinned out since a suspected Iran-linked plot at RAF Fairford in September.
Flight-tracking data showed nine KC-135 refueling tankers and three V-22 Ospreys leaving Mildenhall in Suffolk on Monday afternoon and evening, Sky News reported. Most of the tankers went to bases in Germany and Spain and one to Prestwick in Scotland. The Ospreys moved to nearby RAF Lakenheath.
The exact nature of the threat was still under discussion among US officials, the Journal said. Washington raised the security level at Mildenhall and Lakenheath to FPCON Charlie, the second-highest on the Pentagon’s scale, which applies when intelligence indicates that some form of terrorist action is likely.
US European Command said aircraft move between locations “for a variety of reasons” and that it could not discuss force protection measures.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense said it did not comment on other nations’ activity. “We’re constantly keeping the security of our bases under review,” cabinet minister Lucy Powell told Sky News, “and as we’ve seen with other cases recently, we take firm and quick action where we need to.”
The move comes six weeks after police arrested five men in the early hours of September 27 near RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, which US bombers used to strike Iran during the war, after a local farmer reported three white vans and a group of men, some with their faces covered. The United States pulled all 12 of its B-1B bombers from Fairford on October 4.
Two men were charged last month under the National Security Act. Prosecutors said one, a British-Iranian dual national, had arranged for the men to drive to the base on the instructions of a man known only as “Ali,” and accused him of assisting a foreign intelligence service; police said they believed that country to be Iran. Six others remain on bail. Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the plot was “almost certainly” directed by the Revolutionary Guards.
Iran’s ambassador in London has denied any involvement. The Revolutionary Guards warned Britain in July that Fairford and any other base used to attack Iran would be a legitimate target.
President Donald Trump’s talks with Qatar’s prime minister come amid a renewed diplomatic push to end the Iran war, but securing terms both Washington and Tehran can present as a victory remains a central obstacle, analysts told Iran International.
Trump and Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani met behind closed doors in the Oval Office on Monday, and Axios reported that their discussions focused on Iran. The Qatari prime minister also met Vice President JD Vance earlier in the day.
An Iranian official told Al-Monitor on Friday that the country’s nuclear program was “under discussion” with mediators. Tehran has said negotiations depend on Washington meeting its demands, including sanctions relief and the release of billions of dollars in frozen assets.
Trump needs a nuclear achievement to justify the war, not just the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, said Aaron David Miller, a former US Middle East negotiator now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“It’s the nuclear issue. He needs a win to justify this war,” Miller told Iran International.
“And I don’t know whether the Iranians are prepared to make that concession or what Trump would consider to be a win that they could accept. So I think that’s a huge problem.”
Who moves first?
The new round of diplomacy has not settled the basic dispute: whether economic and military concessions should come before progress on Iran’s nuclear program, or after.
Danny Citrinowicz, a former head of the Iran branch of Israeli military intelligence and now a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said an interest in ending the war should not be mistaken for an agreement in sight.
“I believe both sides genuinely want to find a way to end this war, but that does not mean they are close to an agreement,” he told Iran International.
Iran wants Washington to meet its conditions on Hormuz, the naval blockade, oil exports and other economic restrictions before nuclear talks begin. Washington wants movement on the nuclear issue much earlier, he said. “The problem is not simply what each side wants, but who moves first.”
A breakthrough was possible, Citrinowicz said, if Washington accepted a different sequence of reciprocal steps. “Without meaningful American flexibility, however, I see little reason to expect Iran to abandon its red lines.”
Miller criticized the interim memorandum of understanding reached in June, which was meant to open the way to nuclear talks but collapsed soon afterward. It committed Washington to a sequence that favored Iran, he said, calling it “one of the worst negotiated documents in the history of US diplomacy.”
Two definitions of victory
Even if negotiators settle the order of steps, both governments would have to defend the concessions at home as achievements.
Trump could claim victory by reopening Hormuz, lowering energy prices, ending the fighting and securing an Iranian commitment not to build nuclear weapons, Citrinowicz said. Tehran would need an outcome it could present as a success too.
“After surviving months of attacks, the Iranian leadership is not going to accept an agreement that looks like surrender,” he said.
Iran could reopen Hormuz, stop attacks on shipping and regional infrastructure, return to nuclear talks and possibly accept tighter international monitoring, he said. In return it would expect real steps on sanctions, oil exports, frozen assets and guarantees against further attacks.
Miller doubted Trump’s wish to end the war would outweigh his fear of looking beaten. “I think he’d want to be done with this, but I don’t know if he’s prepared to spend the next three years being called a loser,” he said.
Eric Mandel, founder of the Middle East Political Information Network, said a deal could let Trump declare victory while leaving the nuclear dispute open.
“The president would like to have a diplomatic solution. The president is looking for victories. He may claim victories where there aren’t,” Mandel told Iran International.
Tehran was drawing out the talks to wait Trump out, Mandel said, and economic relief in exchange for promises of future nuclear concessions could throw the Islamic Republic a lifeline without securing lasting limits.
A meeting is not a breakthrough
Conflicting reports over a possible meeting between Vance and Iran’s security chief show how uncertain direct contact remains.
Turkey’s intelligence chief, Ibrahim Kalin, said Qatar would host Vance and Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, next week, the Turkish newspaper Türkiye reported. The Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, then quoted a senior Iranian security official as denying any meeting was planned and saying Washington must first act on Iran’s seven conditions.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Tuesday there were no plans for Rezaei to meet Vance. The war, he said, would end neither through military action nor through more sanctions. “The only way to end it is diplomacy and acceptance of the Islamic Republic’s conditions.”
Citrinowicz said Rezaei should not be expected to break with the Islamic Republic’s established positions. “He is deeply rooted in the Iranian political and security establishment,” he said. “He is not someone who can simply be persuaded to abandon the regime’s fundamental positions in exchange for an American offer.”
Rezaei is the subject of an Interpol Red Notice over his alleged role in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people. He and Tehran deny involvement. As commander of the Revolutionary Guards during the Iran-Iraq war, he led the failed Karbala-4 offensive of December 1986, in which Iran suffered heavy losses.
The decisive question, Citrinowicz said, is whether Vance has Trump’s authority to offer something substantially different.
“A failed meeting could be more dangerous than no meeting at all,” he said. Trump might conclude that diplomacy had run its course and order more strikes to force concessions.
Continued economic pressure, indirect talks and a limited interim deal would remain options, he said, but failure to close the gaps could raise the risk of a return to war.
