Senior Iranian military and security officials have been photographed wearing smartwatches, drawing fresh criticism of their basic security discipline after years of reports that Israel has used electronic devices around Iranian commanders to track and kill them.
The Islamic Republic is in a "slow meltdown" that may not bring it down soon but is narrowing its options as the economy sinks, repression deepens and divisions open up among its own hardliners, analysts told Iran International's Eye for Iran podcast.
Iran’s worsening economic crisis has opened an increasingly bitter argument over who is responsible, as the government points to outside pressure and market psychology while hardliners accuse Tehran’s own economic officials of making the situation worse.
Iranian officials and media have sharply condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the UAE, warning Abu Dhabi over its deepening ties with Israel amid renewed tensions over three disputed Persian Gulf islands.
Tehran media see diplomacy with Washington as increasingly precarious but not yet dead, with the two sides far apart over the sequencing of any deal and the window for compromise appearing to narrow.
Continued contacts between Tehran and Washington, mediated by Qatar and Pakistan, have intensified debate inside Iran over whether diplomacy can still produce a deal despite President Donald Trump’s rejection of Tehran’s latest proposal and what should happen if it fails.
Iran’s receipt of Washington’s response to its seven-point proposal for ending the Strait of Hormuz crisis has sharpened divisions in Tehran over whether to pursue further compromise or intensify pressure on the United States.
Attacks by hardliners on Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf and Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei following hardline lawmaker Hamid Rasaei’s imprisonment have intensified the rift among Iran’s conservatives.
Hardline Iranian lawmaker Hamid Rasaei was transferred to Evin Prison on Sunday to begin a 10-month sentence stemming from a complaint by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s judiciary said Monday.
Iranian reformists are helping sustain Washington’s pressure campaign by signaling that sanctions and other coercive measures are pushing Tehran toward negotiations and concessions, the IRGC-affiliated Fars news agency argued Monday.
Iran on Saturday expanded limited imports of South Korean home appliances through its border trade system, five years after Ali Khamenei ordered restrictions on products from LG and Samsung.
Iranian hardliners have intensified attacks on President Masoud Pezeshkian after he signalled nuclear flexibility and backed negotiations with Washington in a Fox News interview.
The IRGC-affiliated Fars News criticized Iran’s executive vice-president on Friday for joining Saudi officials in a cake-cutting ceremony marking the kingdom’s National Day in Tehran, which it said created an overly “friendly” image at a time of heightened regional tensions.
Talks between Iranian and US diplomats have continued in New York despite increasingly harsh rhetoric from both capitals, but the emerging dispute is less over whether to negotiate than over who must move first.
President Masoud Pezeshkian’s UN speech won unusual praise across Iran’s political establishment Thursday, but emerging details of negotiations with the United States could soon test the president’s careful balancing act.
Masoud Pezeshkian told the UN that Iran would not accept the language of force. Iranians writing to Iran International had one reply: that is the only language his government uses at home. Their messages picked apart what he said, what he left out, and how he said it.
Iran's generals and hardliners spent the week warning Masoud Pezeshkian not to smile in New York. After his UN speech they lined up to praise him. He had not changed their minds about talking to Washington. He had given a speech that did not require them to.
Iranians writing to Iran International this week did not see a diplomatic visit. They saw the men they hold responsible for January's massacre walking free in New York, and they asked the city's mayor, who once promised to arrest Netanyahu, why.
Iran warned Wednesday that any renewed US attack would draw a stronger military response, even as officials from the two countries pursued a new diplomatic opening in New York that has triggered a backlash among hardliners in Tehran.
Any effort to end the Iran war faces a fundamental obstacle even after the resumption of US-Iran diplomacy in New York: apparent divisions within Tehran over who has the authority to negotiate and how far those negotiations can go.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian is facing competing pressure at home over whether to use his UN visit for direct diplomacy with US President Donald Trump or strike a more defiant tone as the two countries remain at war.
Iranian state media on Tuesday published what they said was a handwritten letter from Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei to a military commander, potentially offering the first physical indication that he survived the February attack on his father’s office.