Persian Gulf states told the UN Security Council on Friday that Iran had launched more than 7,000 missiles and drones against their territories since the war began in February, while a senior UN official warned that maritime incidents in the Persian Gulf were occurring daily.
The meeting, requested by Bahrain, focused on escalating regional tensions and threats to maritime security, with representatives of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), UN officials and the United States addressing the council.
“The security of civilians cannot constitute a bargaining chip or a tool for extortion,” Bahrain's UN Ambassador Jamal Fares Alrowaiei said, speaking on behalf of the GCC.
He called for full implementation of Security Council Resolution 2817, which condemned Iran's attacks on neighboring countries and threats to maritime navigation, and demanded guarantees against further attacks.
GCC Secretary-General Jasem Mohamed Albudaiwi said Iranian strikes since February 28 had targeted airports, ports, oil and gas facilities, power stations, desalination plants and residential areas.
He said the attacks violated international law and threatened international peace and security.
Alrowaiei said approximately 1,600 vessels had been disrupted in the Strait of Hormuz and more than 23,000 seafarers stranded. He also insisted that Persian Gulf countries participate in regional security negotiations.
“Every day brings new reports of maritime incidents,” UN Assistant Secretary-General Khaled Khiari told the council.
Khiari said commercial shipping remained below prewar levels despite reports that regional energy exports had largely recovered.
“This should not be mistaken for a return to normality,” he warned.
US Ambassador Jennifer Locetta accused Iran of threatening regional security and disregarding Security Council demands.
“The regime attacks its neighbors, fires on commercial ships, arms terrorist proxies, and defies this Council at every turn,” she said.
She also cited attacks claimed by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis against Saudi airports and energy infrastructure, and criticized the group's restrictions on shipping through the Bab al-Mandab Strait.
According to figures from UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), shipping transits through the Strait of Hormuz remain approximately 65 percent below prewar levels, with October recording the highest number of maritime security incidents since the conflict began.
The Security Council adopted Resolution 2817 in March, condemning Iran's attacks and threats to navigation. China and Russia abstained.
A 60-day US-Iran ceasefire mediated by Pakistan in June expired in August without a peace agreement.
Iranian hardliners are demanding that Iraq take sides in Tehran's confrontation with Washington, criticizing Baghdad for restricting border crossings and flights under US pressure while seeking to keep the war out of its territory.
Iraq has closed or restricted several border crossings with Iran, including al-Sheeb-Chazabeh and Mandali-Sumar. The Mandali crossing was shut on Friday by order of the federal government and will remain closed until further notice.
Iraqi officials have described the restrictions as temporary, citing technical and security concerns and efforts to combat smuggling.
However, Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein acknowledged in a November 7 interview with Al Jazeera that Washington had formally asked Baghdad to close all but two of its land crossings with Iran. He said the United States continued to press for the closures, but warned that shutting all crossings would be difficult and would harm Iraq's economy, given the numerous official and unofficial routes along the border.
Air travel has also been affected. Iranian flights to Iraqi airports were largely suspended in late September after ground-handling companies refused to service Iranian aircraft because of the risk of exposure to U.S. secondary sanctions.
Following protests from Tehran and talks with Washington, Baghdad secured a limited exemption. From early October, Iranian airlines were permitted to operate up to 40 daily flights to Najaf International Airport, except Mahan Air, which is affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Iraqi Airways also resumed flights between Najaf and several Iranian cities.
Direct Iranian flights remain largely limited to Najaf, while services to Baghdad, Erbil, Sulaymaniyah and Basra remain heavily restricted.
In a recent incident, an aircraft carrying Iran's national soccer team was reportedly denied permission to land at Basra airport, forcing the team to travel overland from Abadan.
‘A tougher response’
The restrictions have prompted criticism from Iranian commentators and hardliners, who accuse the Iraqi government of yielding to American pressure despite its economic and political ties with Tehran.
Speaking on a panel discussion broadcast on Iranian state television, Ebrahim Naddafzadeh, an analyst on Iraqi affairs, argued that Iraq had failed even to make a symbolic attempt to resist Washington's demands, despite what he described as its own interest in standing alongside Iran.
Naddafzadeh said Baghdad should stop describing itself as neutral and clarify whether it stood with Iran or the United States.
"Everyone says that Iran is the only country that benefits from Iraq's strength and stability. Well, then why don't you stand alongside Iran?" he asked.
Mehdi Azraqi, another guest on the Thursday-night program Be Vaght-e Iran, argued that American intervention in Iraq was not merely intended to counter Iranian influence. Washington's principal objective, he claimed, was to "control and set a ceiling on Iraq's development," because Iran also benefits from Iraq's economic progress.
Vahid Khazab, a political and military analyst, argued that Baghdad had demonstrated its ability to negotiate exemptions from American sanctions when its own interests were at stake.
Iraq imports electricity and natural gas from Iran to prevent serious domestic social and economic problems and has obtained U.S. waivers to continue those imports, he noted.
Khazab acknowledged that Washington has financial leverage over Baghdad through its control over arrangements for transferring Iraq's oil revenues. But he argued that this should not prevent Baghdad from negotiating exemptions, just as it had done to maintain its energy imports from Iran.
He added that Tehran could retaliate by suspending electricity exports to Iraq but was reluctant to take a measure that would shift the burden onto ordinary Iraqis.
Instead, Khazab suggested that Iran could revive its demand for compensation for the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. He argued that Iraq was obligated to pay reparations under United Nations resolutions.
"We don't want to seek compensation now, but we also have these levers," he said.
US ground operation?
Another source of concern in Tehran is the possibility that Iraqi territory could be used in a future US military operation against Iran.
Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi has said Iraq will not allow its territory to be used to attack neighboring countries. However, the Iraqi newspaper Al-Mada reported on November 9 that al-Zaidi had informed Shiite political leaders of an alleged U.S. military plan to use Iraqi territory for a ground operation in southern Iran.
The report described several possible military scenarios and suggested that Washington's planning went beyond limited airstrikes or missile attacks against Iranian nuclear and military facilities.
Iran-aligned armed groups
Iranian hardliners are also calling for an active role by the “Islamic Resistance” current in Iraq in any future confrontation between Tehran and Washington.
Azraqi said Iraqi resistance groups had the capacity to enter a future conflict in support of Iran and take action within their capabilities against “certain targets in the region and American interests.”
The issue is particularly sensitive for al-Zaidi's government, which is seeking to bring Iran-aligned armed factions under state control. Several groups have resisted demands to surrender their weapons.
In his Al Jazeera interview, Hussein confirmed that Baghdad was negotiating with Iran-aligned factions to bring their weapons under government control and was also discussing the matter with Tehran.
He said al-Zaidi had reached understandings with four Iraqi armed groups on the issue, while emphasizing that the process should proceed through dialogue rather than force.
The Emirati outlet Eram News has also reported that al-Zaidi warned Shiite armed-group leaders against taking unilateral action that could draw Iraq into a confrontation between Iran and the United States.
According to the outlet, he warned that any group using Iraqi territory to attack American forces or interests and giving Washington a pretext for military action against Iran could face immediate legal prosecution. The government could also arrest the groups' leaders and declare a state of emergency.
Iraq seeks to mediate
While facing growing US pressure to curb its economic and security ties with Iran, Baghdad has also pursued diplomatic efforts to mediate between Tehran and Washington.
On Thursday, Hussein told France 24 that a US special envoy had asked Iraq to mediate in negotiations with Iran, adding that al-Zaidi's visit to Tehran had also been part of that effort.
Al-Zaidi made an unannounced visit to Tehran late last week, apparently on Friday, following discussions with US President Donald Trump and his special envoy for West Asian affairs, Tom Barrack.
Iraq's ambassador to Tehran and Iranian sources confirmed the visit and described it as part of Baghdad's diplomatic efforts to reduce regional tensions.
According to Iranian reports, al-Zaidi met with Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, who heads Iran's negotiating team, and President Masoud Pezeshkian.
Iran's Tasnim news agency reported on November 9, citing informed sources, that al-Zaidi had failed to secure any outcome during the visit that would satisfy the Americans.
The visit was reportedly also seen as an opportunity for Baghdad to explain its position on restrictions along the Iranian border and allay Tehran's concerns.
Tehran Governor Mohammad Sadegh Motamedian, a former intelligence official accused of overseeing deadly repression of protesters, has emerged as a potential intelligence minister as Iran considers opening the position to non-clerics.
Fars News has identified him as a leading candidate if lawmakers remove the religious qualification for the post.
Motamedian previously headed Intelligence Ministry offices in West Azerbaijan and Ilam provinces, according to a 2021 profile by the Tasnim news agency. Born in Kermanshah in 1970, he holds a master's degree in management and has no clerical background.
He became governor of South Khorasan in November 2018, moved to Razavi Khorasan in October 2020 and took charge of West Azerbaijan in October 2021.
President Masoud Pezeshkian's cabinet appointed him Tehran governor in October 2024. His successive appointments under Hassan Rouhani, Ebrahim Raisi and Pezeshkian demonstrate his ability to retain senior office across administrations with different political identities.
What is his record on repression?
The most detailed public allegations against Motamedian concern his tenure in West Azerbaijan during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising.
Justice for Iran's Faces of Crime database holds him responsible, in his capacity as governor and chairman of the provincial security council, for mass arrests and the use of lethal force against protesters.
The organization documented at least 56 protester deaths in the province and reported violence in cities including Urmia, Bukan, Mahabad, Piranshahr and Takab.
Why would the law need to change?
The existing qualification requires the intelligence minister to have religious education at the level of ijtihad, the ability to independently interpret Islamic law.
Established in legislation rather than the constitution, the requirement has kept the ministry's leadership in clerical hands. Motamedian's non-clerical background makes its removal central to his prospects.
Supporters of changing the rule argue that intelligence expertise and managerial competence should take precedence.
Former culture minister Ezzatollah Zarghami publicly backed reconsidering the requirement, while parliamentary national security committee deputy Amir Hayat-Moqaddam said its removal would allow non-clerical intelligence specialists to be considered.
The debate has gained urgency since Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib was killed in an Israeli attack in March. The ministry has since operated under an acting head.
Would a non-cleric have greater independence?
The proposed changes would create two bodies inside the ministry: an intelligence protection organization and an ideological-political organization, both headed by appointees of the supreme leader.
Parliamentary spokesman Abbas Goudarzi said on November 10 that the expedited proposal would reach the chamber the following week. The president would still nominate the minister for parliamentary approval.
The proposal would therefore broaden eligibility for the minister's job while formalizing direct oversight by the supreme leader through the two new bodies.
For Motamedian, it could remove a barrier to promotion without necessarily giving the next intelligence minister greater independence from the supreme leader.
Iranians struggling with mounting debts and soaring living costs are offering multiple organs and body tissues for sale, including testicles and corneas, in an online market where even finding a prospective buyer can come at a price.
An Iran International examination of more than 600 advertisements posted on a Telegram channel between late May and late October found that roughly one in three offered more than one organ or tissue.
One man who advertised several parts of his body, including a testicle, told Iran International: “I can still live after losing these organs.” He appeared unaware that some of the procedures he was proposing were not established transplant options in Iran.
Kidneys remained the most frequently advertised organ, appearing in 498 advertisements. But bone marrow was mentioned in 279, liver in 51, testicles in 15 and corneas in two.
In 142 advertisements, kidneys and bone marrow were offered together, while another 26 listed kidneys, bone marrow and liver. In 110 advertisements, kidneys were not mentioned at all, with sellers offering only other organs or tissues.
Prospective sellers interviewed by Iran International described financial pressures ranging from bankruptcy and mounting debts to the struggle to provide for their children.
One man said he was prepared to give up even vital organs to secure the financial future of his young daughter.
Another, who previously owned a clothing business, said he had accumulated debts and bounced checks after going bankrupt. Unable to meet his financial obligations, he hoped selling an organ would allow him to repay at least some of what he owed.
A third man, exhausted by years of renting and moving between homes, hoped the proceeds would enable him to buy a property of his own.
A woman raising two daughters on her own said she was looking for a buyer simply to cover her family's everyday expenses.
Year-on-year inflation reached nearly 89 percent in October, further eroding household incomes and pushing up the cost of housing and basic necessities.
A 2024 academic study of 215 people in Tehran's kidney market found that approximately 83 percent had entered the market to meet longer-term financial needs, including repaying debts and purchasing durable goods. Nearly three-quarters were renters.
The amounts sought by prospective sellers have also risen dramatically over the past decade, although advertised prices do not necessarily reflect completed transactions.
In 2016, kidneys were commonly advertised for around 20 million to 30 million tomans. By 2020, media reports cited asking prices of 100 million to 150 million tomans, rising to 150 million to 200 million tomans in 2021.
Some advertisements examined in the latest investigation listed kidneys for as much as 30 billion tomans, around 1,000 times the upper end of the asking-price range reported a decade earlier.
Asking prices for liver also reached 30 billion tomans, while bone marrow was advertised for up to 23 billion and testicles for up to 10 billion tomans. Sellers offering corneas generally said prices would be negotiated.
There is no evidence that transactions were completed at these prices, or that prospective sellers received the amounts they requested. Medical expenses and subsequent care could also reduce any proceeds.
Not everything being advertised, however, can be transplanted from a living donor.
Living donors can donate a kidney or part of their liver, although both procedures carry health risks, particularly the more extensive surgery required for liver donation.
Bone marrow donation involves collecting blood-forming stem cells rather than removing an entire organ. Corneas are ordinarily obtained from deceased donors, while the investigation found no evidence of an established procedure in Iran for transplanting testicles purchased from living sellers.
The investigation also found that prospective sellers may be charged simply to advertise their organs or reach potential buyers.
The administrator of one Telegram channel asked an Iran International investigator for 200,000 tomans to publish an organ-sale advertisement.
For an additional 400,000 tomans, the administrator offered to circulate the seller's details through what he described as an association connecting prospective donors with patients awaiting transplants in hospitals.
The combined fee of 600,000 tomans was payable before any buyer had been found. The administrator provided a bank card number for payment.
Iranian media have previously reported that some Telegram intermediaries demand around four million tomans to register prospective sellers and help them find buyers. Some sellers, meanwhile, seek out brokers who claim they can secure higher prices for their organs.
The investigation did not establish whether these intermediaries successfully arranged transplants or whether their advertised services were genuine.
For the people interviewed by Iran International, selling an organ represented a possible escape from debts, insecure housing or the struggle to provide for their families—even though none could be certain of finding a buyer, receiving the money they sought or escaping the hardship that drove them to advertise.
The men convicted of spying on Iran International journalists in London worked from files sent from Iran that listed their targets’ photos, workplaces, cars and even the names of their pets, some of it gathered with ChatGPT, British counterterrorism police said.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Vicki Evans, Britain’s senior national coordinator for counterterrorism policing, set out the evidence at a briefing held before Thursday’s verdicts and embargoed until them.
Mostafa Sepahvand, 41, and Farhad Javadi Manesh, 46, were convicted at Woolwich Crown Court of assisting a foreign intelligence service. A third man, Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori, 57, was acquitted.
“The investigation also highlights the continuing and increasing threat to the UK from Iran,” Evans said. It was the fourth time police had prosecuted people who targeted Iran International staff or offices in London, she said.
The three men were arrested at their homes in west London on May 3, 2025, and held for two weeks, the maximum the National Security Act allows. Officers went through 534 gigabytes of data from their phones and devices, much of it in Persian.
Among it were the tasking documents. Their targets were two Iran International journalists, a lawyer linked to the group UK Lawyers for Israel, and a media production professional.
“The briefing documents were extraordinarily detailed,” Evans said. They included photographs of the targets, their workplace addresses, the makes and colors of their cars and, in some cases, the names of their pets. Some of the background on the targets’ careers and social media had been gathered with ChatGPT, police said.
The files reached Sepahvand from Iranian phone numbers belonging to people police say were Revolutionary Guards members or intermediaries for Iranian intelligence.
One contact, saved in his phone as Mostafa Ghorbani and believed to be an old school friend, was asked at one point to find out how much influence a man called “Haji” had and whether he worked for Iranian intelligence. Another, saved as “Mostafa’s friend, Amin,” was also linked to the Guards, police said.
Sepahvand led the operation, passed on instructions to the other two men and drove them around London in his Mercedes, police said.
In December 2024, the men went to a block of flats where they believed an Iran International journalist lived, and to homes they linked to a second journalist, filming at each. They returned several times that month.
In February 2025, Sepahvand was told to watch two business premises believed to be linked to Iran International, and the men filmed them in early March. They later deleted data from their phones, which may have included more footage.
Sepahvand’s motive was money and help clearing a theft conviction in Iran, police said. One message referred to a promise to resolve his case there and pay him £150,000, about $200,000, for completing the job. He demanded at least £10,000 upfront, and another message appeared to tie the full payment to finding the target and attacking them.
In voice notes to Ghorbani, he complained that he had not been paid for the surveillance. “Often, they receive very little of what they were promised,” Evans said, describing a pattern seen in other cases.
Sepahvand told the court he acted under duress. Police believe the attack he contemplated would have used a relatively unsophisticated weapon, possibly a knife.
Asked whether the aim was to kill, Evans said: “We would certainly say that there was an intention to cause serious harm.”
All three men are Iranian nationals who reached Britain between 2016 and 2022, claimed asylum and were granted temporary leave to remain, police said. They were not a sleeper cell, Evans said. They met through the Iranian community in west London and had no criminal record in Britain.
That marked a shift, she said, from foreign criminal proxies flown in and out of the country to Iranians already living in Britain and directed from abroad. British nationals were also being recruited.
“Those directing the activity seek to remain several steps removed from the people performing it,” she said.
The earlier cases against people targeting Iran International include an Austrian man jailed for three and a half years after he was caught surveilling the channel’s then offices in Chiswick, west London, in 2023, and two Romanian men jailed this year for a combined 20 years for the 2024 stabbing of presenter Pouria Zeraati outside his London home. Three people were charged in April over an arson attack on Iran International’s new offices.
Iran-linked operations had led to more than 50 arrests in Britain in the past year, Evans said, citing MI5 chief Ken McCallum.
The Islamic Republic will keep pursuing a nuclear weapon as long as it remains in power, and Washington should keep up military, economic and covert pressure even while it talks to Tehran, Roger Zakheim, director of the Ronald Reagan Institute, told Iran International.
Speaking on Veterans Day, Zakheim said President Donald Trump had set “the first principle” right by vowing to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, a promise he said Trump had made more than 90 times.
“My own view is that as long as this regime is in place, it will pursue a nuclear weapon,” he said. “So if he’s going to prevent the nuclear program, the regime will have to change as well.”
The interview came as Qatar stepped up its mediation. Its foreign ministry said on Tuesday that talks had made progress and that both sides had spoken positively about a diplomatic solution, a day after Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, met Trump at the White House. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, called reports of negotiations or a meeting in Qatar “a pure lie.”
Zakheim, author of a new book on Reagan’s doctrine of peace through strength, said he had no objection to diplomacy, pointing to Reagan’s talks with Mikhail Gorbachev, as long as the pressure continues.
“I’m fine with talks to probe, to explore, to push, as long as we’re squeezing them at the same time: the blockade, the covert operation, the military presence, the ability to carry out a military operation at any moment,” he said. “If it’s diplomacy and everything else stops, I’d be very concerned.”
The US naval blockade of Iranian ports, first imposed in April, remains in place alongside a Treasury sanctions campaign the administration calls Economic Fury. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in Paris on Tuesday that the economic campaign was “so devastating that right now there is no need for major combat operations.”
Zakheim called the memorandum of understanding reached in June “a very flawed agreement.” Any new deal would need verification involving the United States, “not some third party we can’t trust or don’t know,” he said, and should be “ripped up” if Iran failed to comply.
The June 17 memorandum declared an end to military operations and set a 60-day window for a final deal on Iran’s nuclear program and sanctions. It soon unraveled over control of the Strait of Hormuz, and the deadline passed in August without an agreement.
“They’re just talking about talking,” Zakheim said.
Zakheim gave Trump high marks for Operation Midnight Hammer, the June 2025 US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, and for Operation Epic Fury, the US-Israeli campaign launched on February 28 that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
“The decapitation, the attacks on the nuclear sites, taking out both the ballistic and cruise missile sites, has made this regime weaker,” he said.
But voters had soured on the war, he said, because the president “didn’t win decisively and got stuck in 140 days of diplomacy with a regime that will never compromise.”
He said he hoped a “very consequential covert program” was under way, with Washington backing those who want to replace the Islamic Republic. “We’ve never had an opportunity like the one we have right now to support the people in Iran who are freedom-loving,” he said, adding that Iran’s borders were “more porous than ever” and its skies open.
“It’s an unnatural regime that oppresses its people,” he said.
Iran executed at least 691 people in the first ten months of 2026, including 36 protesters, according to Norway-based Iran Human Rights, which recorded at least 77 executions in October alone.
No one was calling for US troops on the ground, Zakheim said, but Washington must be ready to strike again if Tehran rebuilds its nuclear or ballistic missile programs.
“After Midnight Hammer and Epic Fury, I felt it was the beginning of the end of this regime, and I still stand by that,” he said.
Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress in the November 3 midterm elections, with anger over the war’s part in pushing up the cost of living helping drive the result, according to Reuters. They also plan to cut Trump’s $1.5 trillion defense budget request, Military.com reported. Zakheim said the president was right to seek it.
The Constitution gives the president, as commander in chief, authority over military and foreign affairs that Congress does not share, Zakheim said, and presidents often turn to foreign policy after midterm losses “because it’s the one thing they can control.” Congress holds the power to declare war and to fund the military.
He warned against a “new generation of détente advocates” and what he called “full-on declinists,” some of whom won seats in the midterms.
“They believe that if only America would retreat from the world and leave, the Iranians would be just fine,” he said. “There’s no evidence of that in the history since 1979.”
He traced Washington’s experience with the Islamic Republic to the 444-day hostage crisis, which ended as Reagan was sworn in in January 1981, and the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, which he described as America’s first encounter with Hezbollah.
“You don’t have to look far back to find the number of times this regime has murdered Americans,” he said