Iran refuses to return body of executed teen protester to family

The strikes were spread across 20 provinces, according to the Washington-based monitoring group Human Rights Activists News Agency, and represented the highest rate of attacks recorded in the past 10 days.

Among those killed were four children and two women, HRANA said, adding that the figures remain preliminary and could rise as more information emerges.

In total, the group documented at least 573 individual strikes across 215 separate incidents during the past day, a scale of bombardment that analysts say reflects a widening focus on strategic sectors of Iran’s economy.

Many of the attacks targeted infrastructure linked to the country’s core industries, including elements of Iran’s energy sector, HRANA reported.

The latest wave of strikes comes as President Trump has warned that the United States could launch sweeping new attacks on Iranian infrastructure if Tehran does not agree to negotiations by Tuesday evening.

In a statement Monday, the White House said Iran would be “sent back to the stone ages tomorrow night if they fail to engage in a serious way” with diplomatic efforts.

The war, now in its sixth week, has already inflicted heavy losses across the region.

Iranian authorities and monitoring groups estimate that more than 2,000 people have been killed inside Iran since the conflict began. Israeli officials say at least 26 people have been killed there, while missile and drone attacks launched by Iran have also caused dozens of casualties in the Persian Gulf countries.

With negotiations uncertain and attacks intensifying on both sides, Tuesday is shaping up as one of the most consequential moments in the conflict since it began more than five weeks ago.

The latest executions took place on Sunday, when authorities hanged Mohammadamin Biglari and Shahin Vahedparast, accused of attempting to storm a military site during the January protests and trying to reach an armory, according to the judiciary’s news outlet Mizan.

State media said the two were part of a group that entered a military facility in Tehran, damaged the site and attempted to access its weapons storage area.

Authorities also accused the group of planning to enter other military and security locations, including police stations and Basij bases, to obtain weapons.

The executions followed the hanging on Saturday of two other prisoners, Abolhassan Montazer and Vahid Bani-Amerian.

Iran’s judiciary described the pair as “terrorists,” saying they had been convicted of “armed rebellion,” membership in the opposition Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) and plotting attacks using rocket launchers.

Both men had been sentenced to death in December 2024 by Tehran’s Revolutionary Court.

Earlier in the week, authorities executed Amirhossein Hatami, an 18-year-old protest detainee convicted in connection with a fire at a Basij base in Tehran during the January protests.

Hatami was among a group of detainees held responsible for events at the “185 Mahmoud Kaveh” Basij base on January 8.

Families of those arrested told Iran International that Hatami and others had been pushed into the building by unidentified armed individuals during the protests and became trapped inside when the base caught fire.

Human rights groups say the executions form part of a broader rise in capital punishment tied to protest-related cases.

Amnesty International recently warned that at least 11 men detained during the January protests are at risk of imminent execution.

The organization said detainees had been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment in custody and convicted in trials it described as grossly unfair and based on forced confessions.

Rights groups have called for an immediate halt to executions linked to the protests, warning that the rapid pace of death sentences could deepen the crackdown on dissent.

An Israeli source told Iran International that two Israeli commando units, Shaldag and Sayeret Matkal, took part in the operation to rescue the American pilot.

According to the source, the mission lasted about 36 hours.

The source also said a US helicopter came under fire during the operation but was able to return safely to base.

Mizan identified the two as Mohammadamin Biglari and Shahin Vahedparast and said their death sentences had been upheld by the Supreme Court.

State media accused the two men of taking part in the protests in January 2026, entering a military site in Tehran, helping damage and set fire to the facility, and trying to reach its weapons storage area.

The report also said authorities accused a group involved in the case of trying to enter military and security sites, including police stations, Basij bases and other restricted locations, with the aim of stealing weapons and military equipment.

The two were among four defendants in the same case who had faced execution, according to Amnesty International.

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  Two more political prisoners executed in Iran

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  Iran executes protest detainee over Basij base fire case

On Saturday, Iran executed two men, Abolhassan Montazer and Vahid Bani-Amerian, over charges including “armed rebellion,” membership in the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) opposition group and plotting attacks using rocket launchers.

Last week, Iran executed 18-year-old Amirhossein Hatami, who had been convicted in the same case linked to the nationwide anti-government protests that the Islamic Republic repressed in what became its broadest crackdown to date.

In a recent report, Amnesty said 11 men were at risk of imminent execution over participation in the protests. The rights group said they had been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment in detention before being convicted in grossly unfair trials based on forced confessions.

Earlier this week, UAE authorities detained dozens of money changers tied to financial entities linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, shut down associated companies and closed their offices, sources familiar with the matter told Iran International.

The crackdown followed days of mounting regional tensions and came after other measures targeting Iranian nationals, including visa revocations and tighter travel restrictions through Dubai.

While the initial crackdown appears focused on exchange houses and foreign-currency procurement, the bigger question now is whether Emirati authorities are prepared to move deeper into the far larger ecosystem of front companies and free-zone entities that have long enabled Iran’s oil, petrochemical, metals and procurement networks.

That next step could determine whether this is a structural threat to one of Tehran’s most important offshore financial systems.

“It’s unclear, I think we’ve got to wait and see the extent of the crackdown,” Miad Maleki, former senior US Treasury sanctions strategist and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) said on Eye for Iran podcast.

“If it only has to do with the current crackdown....whether it’s really limited to IRGC's foreign currency procurement activities in Dubai, which is significant or it goes beyond that and they’re going after Iranian connected companies in free zones," said Maleki.

That distinction matters.

For years, Dubai’s exchange houses were only the most visible layer of Iran’s shadow economy. Beneath them sits a much deeper network of shell firms, nominee ownership structures, commodity brokers and free-zone companies often run by third-country nationals.

According to Maleki, many of those firms were designed precisely to hide any direct Iranian fingerprints.

“Usually, the connections to Iran are nothing. There are no Iranian hands or fingerprints over these companies,” he said.

“There are third country nationals, Indians and Pakistani nationals who are running these companies and you have an Emirati national who is only on paper as the owner.”

That architecture has allowed Iranian petrochemical, petroleum and metals businessmen to move funds, settle transactions and procure goods while remaining beyond the immediate reach of sanctions enforcement.

Daniel Roth, research director at United Against Nuclear Iran, said the sophistication of those structures is exactly what makes the next phase of enforcement so consequential.

“It has been a sophisticated operation to the extent that anybody working in just the general compliance AML unit, say in the west wouldn’t necessarily know that this is,” Roth said on Eye for Iran.

He warned that seemingly generic corporate branding can make sanctions-linked entities difficult to detect.

“If I’m going to be a little bit more clever than that, and obviously I’m getting to use a name like some generic name, some boilerplate name.”

Roth added that the opacity of Dubai’s business ecosystem has historically made ownership trails difficult to establish.

“The Dubai environment or the financial system, it is quite opaque.”

That opacity becomes even more important when looking beyond money changers and toward the free-zone corporate structures that may still remain untouched.

Mohammad Machine-Chian, a senior journalist covering economic affairs at Iran International, said the economic stakes of a broader move into shell companies could be enormous.

“So all in all, I think it’s fair to estimate around $8 to maybe $15 billion a year,” he said, referring to the Dubai channel’s role in supplying hard currency.

“In this scenario, they’re expected to lose much more, maybe between at least $15 to $20 billion.”

If authorities expand the crackdown into those deeper layers, the consequences for Tehran could extend far beyond exchange houses.

It would raise the cost of moving oil proceeds, complicate hard-currency conversion, threaten procurement channels, and strike at the free-zone companies that have long helped disguise Iranian-linked exports.

For now, that remains the unanswered question.

The arrests have exposed the first layer of Iran’s financial architecture in Dubai.

Whether the UAE is prepared to absorb the economic and political costs of moving against the deeper shell-company maze may determine whether Tehran’s most important offshore pressure valve is merely disrupted or fundamentally dismantled.

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