
Iran weighs attacks on military targets in Europe – FT
Iran has considered attacking military targets in Europe if US President Donald Trump escalates the war, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing two insiders.

Iran has considered attacking military targets in Europe if US President Donald Trump escalates the war, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing two insiders.

With the 60-day period set by the June US-Iran memorandum now over and no final agreement in place, Washington faces a choice between intensifying pressure, renewing major strikes or settling into a prolonged and unstable holding pattern.

President Donald Trump has halted diplomatic engagement with Iran until further notice, the White House said on Tuesday, as Tehran hardens its position over the Strait of Hormuz and presses Washington to meet its demands.

Journalists are not supposed to become the story. We are usually on the other side of it. Someone lives through an event and we write about it. Someone is gone and we report their passing. A crisis unfolds and we try to find the right words to tell its story.

Allegations by Iran’s Intelligence Ministry that two French diplomats briefly detained in Tehran last month were involved in espionage are “completely false,” a French diplomatic source told Iran International.

Canada has deported a former Iranian Interior Ministry spokesman who served during the deadly crackdown on nationwide protests in November 2019, Global News reported.

Iranian security forces detained three relatives of the family of Kian Pirfalak, a nine-year-old killed during the 2022 protests, after raiding a village in the southern city of Izeh on Sunday evening, informed sources told Iran International.

Seven months after the January massacre, Iranians answering an Iran International call-out describe lives still bent around it: sleep and nerves that never recovered, friendships remade or broken, politics hardened, and a future they struggle to picture.

Officials of Iran's Basij militia can be heard on a leaked recording weighing the risk of a new round of protests and the danger that members will be identified online, a rare glimpse of the anxiety inside the force the state sends against demonstrators.

Iranian men conscripted into the Revolutionary Guards for their compulsory military service fear they and their families could lose the right to remain in Canada, after letters warned the mandatory stint may amount to membership in a terrorist organization.

Two Chinese state-controlled shipping companies have stopped sending oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab, instead loading crude outside the Persian Gulf amid heightened security risks, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing industry sources and shipping data.

A bill before Iran’s parliament that would impose new restrictions on contacts with foreign media, universities and organizations has drawn widespread objections over its potential impact on routine academic, cultural and civil-society activity.

The 60-day period associated with the Iran-US interim peace deal ended Monday without a breakthrough, with Washington rejecting an extension and a senior Iranian official saying the US had a few weeks to meet the agreement’s terms before further talks.

Donald Trump’s maximum pressure is usually scored by counting tankers and tracking the rial, but Iran’s budget points to a deeper cost: more than $80 billion in NIOC bank debt and sovereign-fund arrears, repeatedly deferred as Iranians shoulder the burden.

An Iranian state television presenter has sparked widespread criticism after saying “southern Iran be sacrificed for southern Lebanon” while dismissing criticism over the damage caused by recent US airstrikes on Iran’s southern provinces.

I stop people from bleeding to death. As a trauma and vascular interventional radiologist in Los Angeles, I find catastrophic bleeding and stop it within minutes. Still, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw in victims of Iran’s January protests inside and outside the country.

Iranian lawmakers have advanced sweeping legislation that could send people to prison for speaking to journalists, academic cooperation and unauthorized contact with foreign embassies, dramatically expanding the conduct security agencies could treat as foreign infiltration.

Iraqi Kurdistan President Nechirvan Barzani played a role in relaying messages between the United States and Iran and in efforts to ease tensions, a spokesperson confirmed to Iran International on Sunday.

In the Persian classic Shahnameh, Ferdowsi tells the story of Zahhak, the usurper king who is kissed on each shoulder by Ahriman, the spirit of evil, and finds two black snakes growing from the wounds.

Iran’s government is considering three proposals to curb gasoline consumption as war damage, import difficulties and a widening gap between domestic production and demand put growing pressure on fuel supplies.

Jafar Pourkabgani, a lawmaker representing the southern Iranian province of Bushehr and a former longtime member of the IRGC and Basij, personally fired at protesters during nationwide demonstrations in January, witnesses told Iran International.