Iran rules out defense talks, weighs next steps with IAEA

Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang works closely with the Cartel of the Suns, a network of military elites long accused of moving cocaine in collaboration with Hezbollah, the report said.

“President Trump has taken numerous actions to curtail Iran’s terrorist proxies like Hezbollah,” State Department spokesperson Anna Kelly said.

“The president has proven that he will hold any terrorist group accountable that threatens the national security of our country by smuggling narcotics intended to kill Americans.”

Hezbollah’s role: laundering and logistics

Brian Townsend, a retired DEA special agent, called last week’s US maritime strike near Venezuela “a decisive blow against narco-terrorists.” He said Hezbollah’s role is pivotal yet often out of view.

“They don’t get their hands dirty. Instead, they launder and provide networks to help cartels send money through the Middle East. Simply, they take a cut from the drug trade, which then funds their operations in the Middle East,” he said, adding that Hezbollah has become “a main finance and money launderer for narco-terrorism groups like Tren de Aragua.”

Townsend and other experts pointed to state complicity as the key enabler. Under Nicolás Maduro and Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan officials and infrastructure have been tied in US indictments and sanctions designations to cocaine shipments protected by senior officers in the Cartel of the Suns, they said, with Hezbollah-linked facilitators processing portions of the proceeds.

Diaspora links and state support

Danny Citrinowicz, a senior fellow at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, said Hezbollah’s reach hinges on the region’s Lebanese Shia diaspora. “Hezbollah is the connector between the diaspora and Iran,” he said.

Through family ties, imams, religious centers and educational programs, he added, the group forges contacts with local cartels, sells drugs and channels profits back to Lebanon via elaborate schemes.

Citrinowicz cast Venezuela as Iran’s anchor in the Western Hemisphere, pointing to deepening military and economic ties -- from Iranian-assembled UAV production for the Venezuelan army and regular Quds Force flights via Africa, to training on sanctions evasion and billions in capital injections.

He said Tehran’s footprint is effectively tethered to Nicolás Maduro’s rule and would lose its most important Latin American stronghold if he left office.

“As long as Maduro is there, the Iranians will be there,” he said. “If Maduro goes, Iran will lose the most important stronghold of its activity in Latin America.”

Townsend argued the most effective leverage is financial: target facilitators, disrupt logistics, pursue indictments, and squeeze the money flows so cocaine shipments become less profitable.

“The priority is to attack the financial and logistical networks, indict everyone we can and pressure Maduro,” Townsend said. “If we can cut off the financial arteries, the cocaine won’t be as profitable.”

“Today the price of chicken has turned into a symbol of mismanagement and poor coordination in execution and policymaking,” Ghalibaf said.

The rising costs “have made life hard for families and left fathers ashamed.”

He pressed the Pezeshkian administration to “urgently and in full coordination reorganize the market for essential goods, especially chicken.”

Once the affordable alternative to red meat, chicken has grown harder to access for many Iranian citizens.

Protein staple turns costly

A whole slaughtered bird is about 1,250,000 rials per kilo (≈$1.25); breast around 2,500,000 (≈$2.5); thighs roughly 1,150,000 (≈$1.13); and fillet near 3,500,000 (≈$3.43). Retailers often sell above official rates, narrowing access to animal protein for low-income households. The average income in Iran is roughly $200.

Official data show food inflation in May 2025 rose 41.5% year-on-year, with the food, beverages and tobacco basket up 3.9% month-on-month.

Annual inflation hit 36.3% in August 2025. These figures reflect a persistent surge that daily market directives have failed to contain.

Ghalibaf cited international sanctions as a driving force behind rising prices. “Main remedy is to neutralize sanctions through domestic measures and that waiting for their removal is no solution."

“Sitting and waiting idly for the optimistic lifting of sanctions is no solution,” he said, adding that diplomacy has its place but cannot substitute for internal fixes.

Yet the pricing and inflation data he cites highlight problems that sanctions rhetoric may not resolve: official rates routinely flouted at retail, uneven enforcement, and a sustained rise in staple costs despite repeated announcements of market reorganization.

In June, secretary of the Meat Production and Packaging Association said Iran’s average meat consumption had dropped to as little as seven kilograms per person annually from an average of 18, with some citizens eating none at all.

“Meat consumption in Iran is deeply unequal—some eat nothing, while others manage 20 kilograms a year,” Masoud Rasouli said a few days before the beginning of Israeli war, pointing to the vast economic inequalities in the country.

Iran once averaged 18 kilograms of meat consumption per person annually, while the global average remains around 32 kilograms, he added.

“It’s regrettable. We think what the Australian government did was unjustified,” Esmail Baghaei said in an interview with 60 Minutes.

The remarks came after Canberra expelled ambassador Ahmad Sadeghi following an ASIO-led investigation linking Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) to two anti-Semitic attacks in Melbourne and Sydney.

Baghaei said “no one can believe in Iran that this accusation has any basis in reality. It is simply a fabrication."

The decision was “the easiest way to please or appease” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he said, alleging that the case was the result of a Mossad-engineered plot.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last month described the incidents — one targeting a Melbourne synagogue and another a kosher restaurant in Sydney — as “extraordinary and dangerous acts of aggression.” Albanese said they were attempts to “undermine social cohesion and sow discord in our community.”

The Australian government has since announced plans to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization.

Baghaei dismissed such designations as the product of a “campaign of disinformation and misinformation,” saying the IRGC is a “strong force against Iran’s enemies.”

He also rejected allegations that Iranian authorities have monitored or harassed members of the diaspora in Australia, despite a 2023 Senate inquiry documenting hundreds of such claims.

“We categorically deny any such report, any such allegation of Iran doing surveillance or monitoring on our citizens in Australia,” Baghaei said.

Asked whether Iran would seek to repair relations, Baghaei said: “It was the Australian government that decided to cut down diplomatic relations. It was not vice versa … we have been self-restrained in terms of our reaction to what they did.”

Gil said Venezuela faced “illegal threats” from Washington and thanked Tehran for what he called its principled support of the UN Charter and respect for national sovereignty, according to a readout of the call released by Iranian state media.

He told Araghchi that “the government and people of Venezuela will firmly defend their independence, sovereignty and right to self-determination,” and voiced hope that BRICS members and Latin American states would condemn US actions.

Araghchi strongly condemned what he described as unilateral and bullying measures by the United States, calling them a “clear violation” of the UN Charter and a threat to global peace and security.

He expressed Iran’s solidarity with Venezuela “in the face of US coercion.”

The call came as US President Donald Trump warned this week that Venezuelan jets flying near US naval vessels would be shot down if they posed a threat, after Washington said Venezuelan aircraft had approached an American ship for the second time in two days.

US officials said the incidents followed a strike on a Venezuela-linked vessel they described as a “drug-carrying boat,” which left 11 people dead.

Trump has stepped up anti-drug-trafficking operations in Latin America, sending additional naval assets and thousands of personnel to the region.

CNN, citing multiple sources, reported on Friday that the Trump administration is weighing strikes against drug trafficking groups inside Venezuela.

He told reporters the deployment was to keep the US “strong on drugs,” while Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro accused Washington of seeking regime change.

Maduro urged the United States to “abandon its plan of violent regime change in Venezuela and in all of Latin America,” and called for respect for sovereignty and independence.

“I respect Trump. None of the differences we’ve had can lead to a military conflict,” Maduro said, adding that “Venezuela has always been willing to talk, to engage in dialogue.”

Abbas Araghchi wrote that the European trio, known as the E3, were “enabling the excesses of Washington” by following US President Donald Trump’s strategy, which he said had derailed the 2015 nuclear deal.

“The E3’s gambit lacks any legal standing, chiefly because it ignores the sequence of events that led Iran to adopt lawful remedial measures under the nuclear deal,” he said.

He argued that it was the United States, not Iran, that abandoned the agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in 2018, while Europe failed to deliver on promises to sustain trade and normalize economic relations.

“While failing to uphold its own obligations, Europe has expected Iran to unilaterally accept all restrictions,” he wrote, adding that the E3 “declined to condemn the US attack on my country in June – on the eve of diplomatic talks – and yet are now demanding UN sanctions on Iranians for supposedly rejecting dialogue.”

Araghchi warned that the sanctions push “will only further sideline them by eliminating [Europe] from future diplomacy, with broad negative consequences for all of Europe in terms of its global credibility and standing.”

But he also stressed that Tehran was open to negotiations on what he called “a realistic and lasting bargain.”

He wrote: “Iran remains open to diplomacy. It is ready to forge a realistic and lasting bargain that entails ironclad oversight and curbs on enrichment in exchange for the termination of sanctions.”

The minister said the alternative to diplomacy “may have consequences destructive for the region and beyond on a whole new level,” adding that Europe should “give diplomacy the time and space that it needs to succeed.”

Britain, France and Germany announced last month they had activated the “snapback” mechanism under UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which would restore sanctions unless the Council votes otherwise within 30 days.

Araghchi said on Saturday that Tehran will not return to the negotiating table under the same conditions that existed before the June war with Israel.