Arab states remain open to negotiations with Iran but need a reciprocal response from Tehran, the head of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) said on Saturday, as senior regional officials warned of a more destructive phase of the US-Iran war.

The US Treasury says a pressure campaign launched against Iran two months ago has sharply reduced its oil revenue and access to international trade and financial channels, deepening the country’s economic isolation.

A court in Iran has sentenced 21-year-old protester Omran Amani to death on a charge of "moharebeh," or "waging war against God," according to information obtained by Iran International.

Iranian security forces and plainclothes officers broke up a Halloween gathering in central Tehran on Friday evening, beating and detaining people and forcing nearby cafes to close, witnesses told Iran International.

Divisions within Iran's political establishment over how to end the country's prolonged state of neither war nor peace are coming into sharper focus as mediators race to secure an agreement with Washington amid preparations for possible renewed US-Israeli strikes.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service told Iran International that in more than one case its efforts to counter Iranian intelligence services and their proxies involved detecting, investigating and disrupting potentially lethal threats in Canada.

An Iranian Baha’i photojournalist sentenced to 26 years in prison has been denied the right to a standard appeal, a source close to his family told Iran International on Friday, as authorities continued to put pressure on members of the religious minority.

Iranian media have highlighted Benjamin Netanyahu's weakened position following Israel's election, but analysts in Tehran say his departure would be unlikely to change Israel's approach to Iran, even if it weakened its ability to pursue the confrontation.

Iran has used a secret network of more than 5,000 military agencies to import at least $2 billion worth of equipment, explosives and heavy-duty trucks since January 2025, bypassing Western sanctions and the US naval blockade, a Reuters investigation published on Thursday found.

Young Iranians are turning from opium, their parents’ drug, to cannabis, methamphetamine and a widening range of synthetic substances, treatment specialists and officials say, as unemployment, hardship and uncertainty about the future reshape the country’s drug use.

Some Iranian families are paying thousands of dollars to put their children in foreign online schools, buying an international education from home and stepping outside the Islamic Republic’s school system, despite the education ministry’s warnings.

As more Iranians build new lives abroad, many parents back home face a less visible consequence of migration: years without seeing their children, family relationships maintained through phone screens, and growing uncertainty about who will be there for them in old age.