US pressure builds on Iran as Trump says Tehran not ready for ‘right deal’

An Iranian military official said three pilots from two Su-24 aircraft shot down over Qatar are being held “on water” in poor physical condition, renewing an allegation that Doha has rejected.

Mohammad Bagherzadeh, commander of the Armed Forces General Staff’s committee for missing personnel, called on Qatar to move the pilots to land and transfer them to a properly equipped hospital as soon as possible, according to Tasnim.

He also urged the International Committee of the Red Cross to send an air ambulance to return the pilots to Iran, saying their current location was unsuitable for protecting their health.

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  Qatar rejects Iran's claim it captured three Su-24 pilots alive

Qatar last week rejected Iran’s assertion that the three pilots had been captured alive and held for about six months.

Doha said it recovered the remains of only one pilot after the Iranian aircraft were shot down in March and had invited Tehran to review details of the search-and-rescue operation.

Iran has deliberately stopped many public weapons unveilings and military exhibitions to keep new capabilities hidden from its adversaries, Defense Ministry spokesperson Reza Talaei-Nik said.

“One of the reasons we did not hold a military exhibition on Defense Industry Day last year or this year, and stopped a large part of our unveilings, was to surprise the enemy and protect defense information and secrets,” Talaei-Nik said in a televised interview.

He said commanders were still being briefed on developments involving ballistic and cruise missiles, drones, air-defense systems and other weapons, but that the ministry had sharply reduced what it disclosed publicly.

Talaei-Nik also said overall production of weapons and military equipment had doubled over the past year, while output of some strategic products needed during the war rose more than threefold.

He said Tehran now planned to triple weapons production, with increases of four or five times envisaged for some categories.

According to Talaei-Nik, Iran was also seeking to replace weapons and ammunition at roughly the same pace they were being used on the battlefield, relying on continuous production alongside existing stockpiles.

He described a dispersed defense-industrial network involving the armed forces, universities, research centers and thousands of private and knowledge-based companies. Around two-thirds of components, systems and raw materials for Iran’s defense industry were supplied through that broader network, he said.

Talaei-Nik said the number of private companies working with the defense sector had risen from about 8,000 to more than 9,300 in a year, while the volume of cooperation had increased by around 70%.

He also said some domestically produced weapons cost one-tenth to one-twentieth as much as comparable foreign systems, though he did not identify the weapons involved.

Iran has granted special permission for a number of Iraqi oil tankers to pass through the Strait of Hormuz after repeated requests from Baghdad, state-run IRNA reported Saturday.

IRNA said Iraq had raised the issue through several channels and that securing passage for the tankers was one of Baghdad’s main requests during Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf’s recent visit to Iraq.

Iran’s wealthiest households consume around 23 to 24 times more gasoline than the poorest, First Vice President Mohammadreza Aref said Saturday, as the government confronts widening pressure over fuel consumption, production and prices.

“Gasoline consumption today is not distributed fairly across income groups,” Aref said. “Consumption by the tenth decile, meaning the highest-income group, is about 23 to 24 times that of the first decile.”

He also revealed the scale of the supply gap during last year's war. “On one day of the 12-day war, gasoline consumption reached 197 million liters, while the country’s normal production is around 110 million liters and sometimes reaches 125 million,” he said.

Aref warned against filling the shortfall with lower-quality imports. “Importing substandard gasoline to meet consumption is not a sustainable solution,” he said, asking whether the country should accept the financial and environmental cost simply to provide motorists with a few additional liters of fuel.

He said Iran could not continue using national resources to sustain current levels of energy consumption. “We cannot spend several billion dollars every year from public wealth and the people’s resources on energy consumption,” Aref said, arguing that oil and energy resources also belong to future generations.

Aref also delivered an unusually direct assessment of Iran’s environmental record. “If you ask me whether we have succeeded, I will not give a political answer,” he said. “As a university teacher, I say we have not succeeded and we should have done better.”

Iran’s army says its military doctrine is shifting from defensive to offensive, including the possibility of preemptive strikes and retaliation more extensive than the attack it is responding to.

Army spokesperson Brigadier General Mohammad Akraminia told state-run IRNA that the shift had emerged through the two recent wars.

He cited an Iranian attack on a US base in Jordan as an example of a preemptive operation and said any future attack on Iran would receive an immediate response that could be broader than the original strike.

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  Mojtaba Khamenei orders integration of Iran’s top military command bodies

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  Iran hardliners tout offensive posture as Khamenei reshapes military command

Akraminia also said the military had used the pause in fighting to rebuild and upgrade systems damaged in the war, introduce new equipment and revise training based on lessons from the conflicts. He said Iran had no trust in its adversaries and was using the ceasefire to increase combat readiness.

He confirmed that the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters had been merged with the Armed Forces General Staff to create greater unity of command, faster decision-making and quicker responses under what he described as current wartime conditions.

Akraminia also described the Strait of Hormuz as a geopolitical tool that could advance Tehran’s foreign-policy objectives.

Separately, he said civilians who kill or capture US troops in the event of a ground incursion into Iran would receive a five-billion-toman (about $30,000) reward, doubled for women, with the army also offering to buy the weapon used at twice its value and preserve it in a military museum.

Iranian crude loadings have fallen to about one-seventh of their pre-war level under the US naval blockade, while Chinese receipts of Iranian oil and fuel exports have also dropped sharply, tanker-tracking data reviewed by Iran International shows.

Data from commodities intelligence firm Kpler shows Iran has loaded an average of about 287,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude so far this month, compared with roughly 2 million bpd before the Middle East war.

China, meanwhile, has received an average of just 523,000 bpd of Iranian crude so far this month. That compares with an average of about 800,000 bpd over the previous two months and more than 1.7 million bpd at the beginning of the war.

The United States reimposed a maritime blockade against the Islamic Republic in mid-July. As a result, more than 40 million barrels of Iranian oil stored on tankers in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman have become effectively trapped, Kpler estimates.

Iran has stored 83 million barrels of oil outside the blockade zone, including 43 million barrels in the South China Sea, Yellow Sea and East China Sea. But with China sharply reducing its purchases, Tehran could run out of oil available for delivery to China in roughly five months if the current export rate persists.

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Iran’s exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi criticized the Islamic Republic’s plan to raise gasoline prices, calling the move an “unforgivable mistake” that would put further pressure on struggling households.

In a post on X, Pahlavi said fuel prices in Iran could not fairly be compared with those in other countries while Iranians earn their incomes in rials and many live below the poverty line.

He blamed the country’s fuel problems on government mismanagement, alleged large-scale smuggling by networks linked to the IRGC and the high fuel consumption of domestically produced cars.

Pahlavi also called for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic and said his Iran Prosperity Project had developed plans to balance fuel production and consumption during a future political transition.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said new US sanctions on Iran went beyond what he called “economic warfare” against Tehran and amounted to an attempt to impose US authority over other countries.

In a post on X, Baghaei argued that Washington had no legal right to force foreign banks, companies or airports to stop lawful trade with Iran, saying secondary sanctions violated the principle of sovereign equality.

He said the sanctions, combined with the US naval blockade, threatened to make other countries’ sovereignty conditional on Washington’s approval.

Baghaei warned that widespread compliance with such measures could erode the sovereignty of UN member states and lead to what he described as a return to “classic colonialism.”

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