Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was taken to a secret Tehran location and allowed only minutes in a dark, tinted-window car with a man presented as Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, sources familiar with the episode told Iran International.
Donald Trump's decision to abandon a planned large-scale military strike against Iran has accelerated regional diplomatic efforts to revive US-Iran negotiations, while deepening political divisions inside Tehran over engagement with Washington.
Formal backchannel negotiations between Iranian and Western envoys resumed in Muscat on Monday after President Donald Trump suspended strikes on Iran's energy infrastructure over the weekend, even as Tehran publicly denied direct contacts with Washington.
Iranian officials on Saturday responded to reports of a possible large-scale US attack with threats to strike Israel and regional energy infrastructure, as public anxiety grows and motorists form long queues at gas stations.
Iran's latest wave of public hangings of protesters amounts to "killings" and "murders" that form part of a continuing crime against humanity, former United Nations prosecutor Professor Payam Akhavan told Iran International's Eye for Iran.
A gathering of thousands of teenagers at a Tehran mall to meet a popular YouTuber exposed a widening blind spot in Iran, some sociologists suggested: a generation whose values, social lives and sources of authority increasingly lie beyond the state's understanding.
Signs of reluctance to widen the conflict are emerging in Tehran, with conservative politicians and media urging restraint even as they accuse the United States and Israel of orchestrating Ukraine's attack on an Iranian vessel.
Iran's state broadcaster has ignored a formal order from its own watchdog to stop censoring senior officials, highlighting the gap between the country's formal institutions and where authority is exercised in practice.
Ukraine's attack on an Iranian merchant ship has sparked a debate in Tehran over whether retaliation would restore deterrence or draw Iran into a broader confrontation involving Europe and NATO.
The pause in US airstrikes has opened a new debate in Tehran over whether the military lull should be used to revive diplomacy or intensify pressure on Washington before another round of fighting begins.
The suspension of US and Iranian attacks has revived hopes for diplomacy, but in Tehran the military lull has exposed a widening divide over whether the Islamic Republic should negotiate with Washington or press what hardliners see as a battlefield advantage.
As international attention remains fixed on the Iran-US war and regional escalation, human rights advocates say Tehran is intensifying another campaign largely outside the global spotlight: the execution of protesters and political prisoners.
President Donald Trump’s increasingly explicit threats of a wider Iran war have fueled anxiety and speculation inside the country, as analysts and social media users debate whether the conflict is approaching a more destructive and unpredictable phase.
The surge in oil prices appears to be hardening Tehran's resolve against renewed negotiations with Washington, giving ammunition to those who argue that a prolonged conflict puts more pressure on the United States than on Iran.
President Donald Trump’s threat to strike Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain nuclear-linked facility has intensified hardline calls for Tehran to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and develop a nuclear weapon.
The US may be peeling away layers of Iran's leadership, but without a plan for what comes next, bombing the coast and seizing islands cannot reach the problem in Tehran, and risk delivering an IRGC takeover rather than real change, experts said at an Iran International town hall.
Iran's leading economists warned Monday that renewed conflict with the United States risks pushing the country's long-festering economic problems into a more dangerous phase, arguing that inflation is becoming increasingly difficult to contain.
Qatar and Pakistan have launched a joint effort to revive Iran-US diplomacy as military exchanges entered their ninth day, while Tehran confirmed receiving new mediation proposals even as hardliners continued to oppose negotiations.
Moderate voices in Iran are sharpening their criticism of hardline calls for continued confrontation with the United States, arguing that diplomacy has become a patriotic necessity as renewed war exacts mounting economic and human costs.
Iran's chief negotiator, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, and US Vice President JD Vance both defended diplomacy backed by military strength on Wednesday, making strikingly similar arguments as Iranian hardliners intensified demands to scrap Tehran's agreement with Washington.
A confidential report by Iran's presidency, leaked this week, records the highest public anger ever measured in any country and finds that nine in ten Iranians want change. Its advice to the leadership: manage the anger, not its causes.
Iran's hardliners suffered a setback after losing key posts on parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, highlighting growing conservative divisions over talks with Washington and the leadership of Speaker and lead negotiator Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf.