US President Donald Trump said US attacks in June on three nuclear sites had left Tehran weakened to the point that it is no longer respected, adding in an interview with TIME magazine that his actions knocked out a "big bully" in the region.
“(Iran) was a very big, strong bully. And they used that power very strongly across the Middle East, and they really controlled it. But they don't control it anymore. They're not respected anymore at all,” Trump said in the interview conducted on October 15 and published on Thursday.
Trump said US airstrikes in June “bombed the hell out of” Iran’s nuclear facilities and “knocked out their nuclear potential,” leaving Tehran “fighting for survival."
The return last month of UN sanctions triggered by European powers has further strained Iran's economy after a punishing 12-day war with Israel and the United States.
Trump added that sanctions had left Iran “very weak,” citing the killing of senior Iranian military commanders, including Qassem Soleimani in a US drone strike in 2019, as key to curbing Tehran’s power.
Talks with Tehran over its disputed nuclear program began earlier this year with a 60-day ultimatum. On the 61st day, June 13, Israel launched a surprise military campaign which was capped with US strikes on June 22 targeting key nuclear sites in Esfahan, Natanz and Fordow.
“By doing it, we were able to—you see, if Iran was sitting there, powerful and a bully, it would have been impossible to make a deal like this, because you would have had this looming threat over the region. Now it’s not a looming threat,” Trump said, referring to a Gaza ceasefire he clinched this month.
Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons and has called the attacks illegal.
The US President told the Israeli Knesset last week that it would be ideal if Tehran could be folded into a broader Middle East peace deal. Still, he has often mooted bombing Iran again if it seeks to rebuild its nuclear program.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appeared to rule out any renewed talks with Tehran in a rare speech on Monday. He denied the attacks had destroyed the nuclear program, telling Trump, to "keep dreaming".
Bush invasion, Obama deal
Trump criticized previous administrations for their Middle East policies, saying the so-called War on Terror disrupted the balance between Iran and Iraq.
“The problem was when Bush went in and blew up Iraq, he destabilized the region, because when we blew up one of the two powers, all of a sudden you had one bully," Trump said, referring to Iraq and Iran. "See, they weren’t bullies when they were fighting each other. But when one fell, Iran became a serious bully.”
Trump called the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran under the Obama administration another grave mistake, arguing it failed to stop nuclear proliferation.
“Under the Iran nuclear deal, they would have had a massive nuclear weapon by now. You know, it expired a long time ago. I canceled it, but I said it was ready to expire anyway. They had a clear road to a nuclear weapon—unchallenged,” Trump said.
Iran said its nuclear program was peaceful and that repeated US accusations were aimed at justifying aggression.
Jalilian, who held a senior scientific role in the nuclear medicines field and had previously worked for the IAEA for about nine years, was arrested in August 2024.
His wife, Saeedeh Varesteh, said that he was convicted without access to a lawyer of his choosing and denied family contact for months.
“The court found him guilty of espionage for Britain and imposed a 10-year sentence,” Varesteh told Iran International.
Over the years, Jalilian made several trips to Iran to visit his family and attend scientific conferences, but “each time, he was summoned and interrogated by security agents at undisclosed locations, including some hotels in Tehran,” his wife said.
According to his wife, Jalilian attended a meeting just days before his arrest with Amirhossein Faghihi, then head of Iran’s Nuclear Science and Technology Research Institute, who was later killed in Israeli strikes during the 12-day war in June.
Varesteh said her husband told her he was “under intense pressure from security forces” in the days leading up to his arrest, though she did not specify what that pressure involved.
On August 7, 2024, five agents accompanied him to his mother’s home and seized his belongings. “After that, we had no information about where Amirreza was being held,” she said.
The family sought help from several senior officials, including Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, and his predecessor, Ali Akbar Salehi. “All we were told,” Varesteh said, “was to wait and pray.”
According to her, Jalilian’s family also reached out to Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and other senior officials within the organization to seek his release, but their efforts have so far yielded no results.
Even the United Nations representative in Tehran twice requested permission to meet with Jalilian, but both requests were denied by Iranian judicial and security authorities, she added.
“He is a scientist, not a spy,” his wife said.
Jalilian began his career working in radiopharmaceutical development at Iran’s nuclear research institute before being selected in 2014 for a role at the IAEA in Vienna, where he published several papers.
No public comment has been made by Iranian authorities about the case.
The case comes amid an intensifying crackdown by Iranian security services on scientists, dual-citizens and other professionals accused of espionage.
Mohammad Noursalehi, head of Isfahan’s City Council, told the Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA) that the Zayandehrud Dam -- the main source of water for central Iran -- is reaching critically low levels.
“If the current trend continues, even drinking water for citizens will be at risk within the next 45 days,” he said.
According to Noursalehi,the dam is releasing several times more water than it receives, and much of that flow never reaches Isfahan’s main treatment plant because a large portion is diverted or lost along the route through both legal and illegal withdrawals.
Five million people at risk
He warned that more than five million people in Isfahan, Yazd, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, and Qom provinces depend on the Zayandehrud for drinking, agricultural, and industrial water.
“This is no longer just an agricultural or industrial problem. People’s drinking water is in danger,” he said, calling for the immediate suspension of non-drinking water use.
Noursalehi urged the government to accelerate long-stalled water transfer projects such as the Kouhrang-3 tunnel and the southern Isfahan pipeline, saying that decades of delay had compounded the crisis.
“If these projects had been completed on time, we would not be facing this situation today,” he said.
The council head also warned of severe environmental consequences, noting that the complete drying of the Gavkhouni Wetland -- once a UNESCO-listed ecosystem -- threatens the region’s biodiversity.
Land subsidence is already visible across Isfahan’s plains, Noursalehi said, warning that groundwater depletion has caused the ground to sink in several northern districts, prompting the evacuation of some schools.
“If this continues, Isfahan’s centuries-old monuments could face serious structural threats,” he said.
Officials in Iran have recently acknowledged that 19 major dams across the country are below 20 percent of capacity, with some hydropower plants -- including Tehran’s Amir Kabir Dam -- forced to halt operations.
Environmental researchers say the country is nearing “water bankruptcy,” driven by decades of overuse, unscientific dam-building, and poor water management.
Autumn remains dry, reservoirs at record lows
The first month of autumn passed with almost no rainfall across most provinces, according to the national meteorological organization. Officials said precipitation this year has dropped up to 45% below seasonal averages, leaving many regions facing possible rationing of drinking water.
Ahad Vazifeh, head of the National Center for Climate and Drought Crisis Management, said on Thursday that “no significant rain is forecast for at least the next three weeks,” warning that water shortages in major cities, including Tehran and Isfahan, will persist.
“Even if winter brings above-average rain, it will not compensate for the current deficit,” he said.
Government data show that total water stored in Iran’s 193 main dams has fallen to 17.6 billion cubic meters -- just 34% of full capacity and down nearly a quarter from last year.
Inflows since the start of the new water year have dropped 39%, while the outflow from reservoirs has declined by 29%.
The Zayandehrud dam in Isfahan is now only 13% full, the Lar dam near Tehran 2%, and the Independence dam in Hormozgan 6%, according to the Energy Ministry.
Many southern and central reservoirs have reached “dead storage” levels, rendering water unusable for supply or power generation.
Experts say Iran’s worsening drought, coupled with climate change and policy missteps, is transforming water shortages into a potential national security concern. Hundreds of villages now rely on water deliveries by tanker, while protests over shortages have erupted periodically in several provinces.
Shargh described familiar scenes at public hangings: spectators arriving hours early, jostling for a view, with teenagers and children in tow as a crane and rope are readied.
The report cited legal experts and psychologists as saying that public hangings, though permitted under certain judicial conditions, risk normalizing violence and inflicting long-term psychological harm, particularly on young observers.
The practice declined to zero in 2021 before returning from 2022, with Fars, Khorasan and Kermanshah provinces accounting for the largest share, and smaller numbers in cities including Yasuj, Arak, Ahvaz, Marvdasht and Isfahan, the newspaper reported.
Many events occurred in provincial centers with large populations or cases that drew unusual media attention, the newspaper added.
“Public executions can have broad negative effects on society. They are not deterrents and instead strengthen violent behavior while harming the mental health of children and adolescents,” lawyer Abdolsamad Khorramshahi told the daily.
Under Iran’s judicial principles, executions should ordinarily be conducted out of public view, Khorramshahi noted.
“Article 4 of the Islamic Penal Code allows a public execution only in specific circumstances, when the executing prosecutor proposes it and the prosecutor general approves.”
Repeated exposure to violence in public desensitizes society and fosters imitation, social psychiatrist Amirhossein Jalali Nadoushan told Shargh.
“When violence becomes a spectacle, it seeps into families and daily life,” Jalali said. Public executions can stir what he called “collective anger” -- repressed frustration that surfaces when citizens lack lawful ways to express grievances.
Deterrence needs equity, not spectacle
Severe penalties have not curbed crime despite heavy sentences for drug traffickers, murderers and thieves, jurist and former Central Bar Association chief Ali Najafi Tavana told the daily.
“No country has managed to control delinquency through executions or corporal punishment.”
Punishment, according to him, only works within a framework grounded in meeting basic needs -- work, housing, social security and psychological calm -- and in visible fairness. When poverty, corruption and discrimination persist and elites flaunt privilege, fear of punishment erodes, he added.
Shargh also cited two public executions in July and August -- one in Larestan and one in Golestan -- where onlookers applauded and whistled at the conclusion, stressing the paper’s finding that the display does not reduce violent crime.
Iran’s execution rate surges in 2025
Twenty-eight inmates were executed nationwide on October 22, bringing the total number of executions that month to 280, the Iran Human Rights Society wrote on Wednesday.
The group called October “the bloodiest month for prisoners since the mass executions of 1988.” The deaths, it said, mostly linked to drug offenses or murder, included several Afghan nationals and were sometimes carried out without notifying families or allowing final visits.
Amnesty International on October 16 also urged an immediate halt to executions, saying more than 1,000 had been recorded so far in 2025, many following unfair trials aimed at silencing dissent and persecuting minorities.
“UN Member States must confront the Iranian authorities’ shocking execution spree with the urgency it demands. More than 1,000 people have already been executed in Iran since the beginning of 2025 -- an average of four a day,” Amnesty said.
Hengaw said Javad Naeimi, a resident of Qom and a specialist working at the Natanz site, was hanged at dawn on October 18 in Qom Central Prison “under conditions of total secrecy.”
Iranian state media had earlier reported the execution of an unnamed man for espionage for Israel but did not identify him.
The rights group said Naeimi had been arrested by security forces in February 2024 and sentenced to death after what it described as an opaque judicial process.
It said he was subjected to torture and coerced confessions during interrogation, citing a pattern of forced admissions in Iranian espionage cases.
Iran’s judiciary has not commented publicly on the latest claims.
Earlier reports by the judiciary-linked Mizan news agency said the executed man had “admitted to communicating with Israeli intelligence for personal and professional reasons.”
Hengaw said Naeimi’s burial took place under heavy security at Qom’s Behesht-e Masoumeh cemetery on October 21, and that his family had been warned not to speak publicly about the case.
The execution comes amid an intensified crackdown on alleged Israeli-linked espionage cases following Israel’s June strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.
In August, Tehran executed another scientist, Rouzbeh Vadi, for allegedly passing classified information to Mossad, while in September and October several other men were hanged on similar charges.
Last month, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran said the country had executed 11 individuals on espionage charges this year, with at least nine carried out after Israel's military strike on Iran on June 13. Saturday's execution brings the total to at least 12.
Rights groups, including Amnesty International and Iran Human Rights, have condemned the surge in executions, saying trials for alleged espionage often fail to meet international standards of due process.
Tehran maintains that it is acting within its laws to counter what it calls “organized intelligence infiltration” targeting its nuclear and defense programs.
