Iran Insights

A dispute over Iran’s nuclear enrichment program has escalated into a broader political fight after President Masoud Pezeshkian’s son and adviser Yusef Pezeshkian defended remarks questioning whether enrichment is worth its costs during wartime.

China’s refusal to bow to US sanctions has raised hopes in Tehran that Beijing could blunt Washington’s new economic offensive, but a debate inside Iran reveals doubts over how far China is willing or able to go on Iran’s behalf.

Mohsen Rezaei on Friday set out four Iranian conditions for an agreement with the United States, another sign that the former IRGC commander who once championed an “offensive doctrine” may be moving from advocating war to contemplating a deal at the right price.

Dying has become one of the costs Iranians can no longer meet. Burial plots are advertised at years of wages, families are selling the graves they had reserved for themselves, and some are taking their dead to villages where burial is still free.

As Washington targets the financial and trading networks Iran has used to withstand years of sanctions, economists and analysts in Tehran are debating how much more economic hardship the country can absorb to survive a prolonged economic war.

Three regional mediators have visited Tehran in three days in an intensifying diplomatic push to revive Iran-US talks, even as the two sides remain deeply divided over the Strait of Hormuz and Washington’s economic pressure campaign.

As Washington intensifies its economic campaign, Iranian politicians and analysts are offering sharply different prescriptions for dealing with the United States: from resistance and phased negotiations to new trade routes or waiting Donald Trump out.

Washington has launched a global campaign to cut off Iran's remaining trade, and its central message is aimed at third countries: keep doing business with Tehran and lose access to the United States. Treasury is calling it an economic D-Day.

Mohsen Rezaei’s threats to halt Iranian oil exports, target countries cooperating with the United States and comments suggesting a possible nuclear shift have triggered a debate in Tehran over his authority to outline such policies as tensions escalate.

Iranian officials have dismissed Washington’s “Economic D-Day” as another failed attempt to cripple the country, but analysts inside Iran warn that an economy weakened by war may be far less capable of absorbing the latest US pressure campaign.

Iran's central bank governor says hyperinflation has not happened. A leading Tehran economist says it already has. Whatever it is called, the shelves tell the same story.

A warning by parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf that Iran cannot endure if its people go hungry has exposed tensions in Tehran over acknowledging economic strain, with hardliners arguing that signs of weakness will encourage further US pressure.

The men who spent the war demanding control of the Strait of Hormuz have returned to demanding control of women's clothing. As the fighting subsides, Iran's hardliners are pressing to revive a hijab law the state itself suspended for fear of new protests.

A gasoline policy survey by Iran’s energy optimization chief has reignited debate over how the Pezeshkian administration should tackle the country’s fuel deficit without triggering another politically dangerous price shock.

Donald Trump has promised an “Economic D-Day” against Iran, a threat Tehran dismissed as another failed US policy. But with inflation, shipping costs and supply strains already biting, how much more pressure can Iran’s fragile economy absorb?

Days before he was killed, Ali Khamenei gave a poem to a translator, a senior cleric says. Iranian outlets published it as his prophecy of his own martyrdom. Then readers ran down the first letters: I am Ali Khamenei, born of Satan.

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 aborted move in Kerman Province revived one of the most politically explosive questions in Iran: how to curb gasoline consumption without repeating the upheaval that followed the last major nationwide price increase in 2019.