Tehran newspapers split over causes of port explosion

Tehran's morning newspapers on Sunday presented divergent accounts of the explosion at Rajaei port in southern Iran, exposing political fault lines over the incident’s cause.

While conservative outlets attributed the blast to safety failures, one reformist-aligned paper warned of sabotage linked to foreign adversaries.

Kayhan, Vatan-e-Emrooz, and Javan, outlets close to Iran’s security establishment, attributed the explosion to negligence in container safety. Javan accused “external enemies of spreading disinformation.”

In contrast, Ham-Mihan, a reformist-leaning daily, suggested the timing of the explosion — coinciding with Iran-US negotiations in Muscat — was unlikely to be accidental.

“It is improbable that the explosion’s concurrence with the start of technical talks between Iran and America is coincidental,” the editorial said.

The paper cited US President Donald Trump’s past comments on Israeli operations, saying Washington might tolerate Israeli non-military acts of sabotage. Ham-Mihan argued the port blast may have been subcontracted to proxies rather than being a direct Israeli operation.

The editorial read, “In a country of 85 million, at least ten thousand individuals have sensitive access; without patriotism, they could deal irreversible blows.”

Kayhan countered that linking the explosion to the Muscat negotiations was based on “unsupported narratives spread by fake news networks,” and urged authorities to clarify whether the explosion resulted from negligence or other factors.

The official cause of the explosion remains under investigation, as calls grow for a transparent and detailed accounting.