Iran Insights

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 officials and media are increasingly looking to China as a possible diplomatic bridge to Washington, as Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s second wartime visit to Beijing coincides with preparations for President Xi Jinping’s talks with Donald Trump next week.

Iran’s nightly pro-government rallies have become an increasingly visible show of political force, occupying streets and squares for 200 consecutive nights and, more recently, turning their fire on rivals within the Islamic Republic itself.

Renewed talk among Iranian hardliners of removing President Masoud Pezeshkian has revived comparisons with Iran’s only presidential impeachment, but there is little evidence so far of a coordinated effort capable of unseating him.

Some cancer patients in Iran are selling essential household goods or abandoning medication as soaring drug prices and gaps in insurance coverage put treatment beyond the reach of low-income families, a charity director said on Thursday.

Calls for Iran to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty are gaining ground among hardliners after the IAEA referred the country to the UN Security Council and its nuclear chief was barred from attending the agency’s annual conference in Vienna.

Iranian lawmakers, hardline media and analysts have blamed Washington for postponing Oman-hosted talks on Strait of Hormuz shipping arrangements, despite officials attributing the delay to regional objections and Saudi concerns over Yemen.

Iranian newspapers that agree on almost nothing agreed on Monday that the Muscat talks had collapsed. Kayhan, Shargh and Donya-ye Eghtesad all reported it, and the argument has already moved to what Tehran does next.

Iranian hardliners are demanding that Tehran abandon restraint and restore deterrence through military confrontation following the latest Israeli attack on Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon.

A reported attempt by a hardline lawmaker to raise President Masoud Pezeshkian’s removal from office has triggered a fierce confrontation not between Iran’s hardliners and moderates but within the conservative camp, exposing divisions that have deepened during the war.

Hardliners in Tehran are pressing for further military and nuclear escalation despite mounting economic pressure and a widening confrontation with the United States. Is it a reckless gamble, or a realistic response to Iran’s dwindling options?

Soaring food prices in Iran are increasingly reflected in reports of theft, with groceries appearing in cases ranging from first-time shoplifting to warehouse raids and armed robbery.

Iran is seeking to turn the US maritime blockade back on Washington by expanding its retaliation beyond the Strait of Hormuz, threatening shipping across a wider area after US attacks on Iranian tankers.

Moderate and reformist figures in Tehran are increasingly warning that the country cannot sustain a prolonged war, challenging hardline calls for Iranians to accept further economic hardship as the price of resistance.

Calls by former presidents Hassan Rouhani and Mohammad Khatami to end Iran’s war with the United States have triggered a fiercer political confrontation after they invoked public opinion in support of diplomacy rather than continued fighting.

Donald Trump said again on Friday that the United States may soon strike Pickaxe Mountain, the underground complex near Natanz that is the last significant site linked to Iran's nuclear program still untouched after two wars.

When a refrigerator breaks in Iran now, the family often cannot replace it, and increasingly cannot afford to repair it either. Behind that is an industry losing its raw materials, its customers and, since March, two of the industrial hubs that supplied it.

A debate is widening in Tehran over whether Iran is exhausting one of its most powerful weapons against the United States, with growing warnings that the Strait of Hormuz could lose its effectiveness the longer restrictions continue.