Iran Insights

The child understands every word her grandmother says in Persian. She answers in English. She can ask what's for dinner in her parents' language, but not describe her anxiety, her love or her future in it. She calls herself Iranian. Persian is no longer the language of her life.

Iran's latest military appointments are consolidating its command structure after the recent war, with hardliners portraying the reshuffle as a shift toward a more unified and offensive posture.

Masoud Pezeshkian may have a claim to being Iran’s unluckiest president, with his two years in office dominated by wars that have battered an already ailing economy to the point that keeping households above subsistence would count as an achievement.

Iranian officials and analysts are publicly playing down the threat posed by a new defense pact between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey, even as some commentators warn Tehran against underestimating an emerging regional alignment.

Mojtaba Khamenei’s continued absence from public view has created an unusual system of authority in Tehran, where decisions are made and justified through written messages attributed to him while responsibility appears dispersed across a core establishment network.

Late last month, Iran's finest striker sat across from the country's judiciary chief and asked him to help her find a job. Last week, two of her former teammates became Australian citizens. Between those two scenes lies everything the Islamic Republic offers its sportswomen.

Iran is moving to ratify the Caspian treaty it left dormant for seven years, choosing the depths of a war to settle the status of its one quiet frontier, and reopening the oldest wound in its modern diplomacy: the belief that Tehran signed away half a sea.

A cleric tied by marriage to Iran's ruling family has declared the Islamic Republic obsolete, telling followers that a shadow government already exists and urging them to build a 250,000-strong network to replace the system with an "Islamic government."

Iran and Oman appear close to agreeing new navigation arrangements in the Strait of Hormuz, but Tehran insists any reopening must take place under a new post-war security framework rather than a return to the pre-war status quo.

A return to the pre-war status quo between Iran and the United States now appears out of reach for both sides, despite their competing claims of victory.

Iran's parliament has become all but irrelevant since the war, as power has shifted further toward the Revolutionary Guards and decision-making has moved ever deeper behind closed doors amid the unresolved leadership transition.

The latest figures released by the Statistical Center of Iran offer the starkest assessment yet of the country's economy, as record inflation intensifies debate over whether the war or government mismanagement is primarily to blame.

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.