Tehran has dismissed US plans to restrict Iran’s overland trade routes as ineffective propaganda, but Iranian businesses report sharp increases in transportation costs and insurance premiums.
Nearly 47 years after Iran's 1979 revolution, a former football chief has asked what Iranians got for its promises, pointing to officials’ children living abroad, oil wealth that never reached wages and a state that answered protests with bullets.
President Donald Trump’s talks with Qatar’s prime minister come amid a renewed diplomatic push to end the Iran war, but securing terms both Washington and Tehran can present as a victory remains a central obstacle, analysts told Iran International.
Task Force Iron Gate, a new US team targeting weapons shipments and other illicit flows across Iran’s land borders and the Caspian Sea, may not fully close Iran’s northern supply routes but could make the arms and equipment Tehran needs harder to obtain.
Even as Iran grapples with war, economic crisis and the threat of renewed US and Israeli attacks, its security forces are breaking up Halloween celebrations, closing cafes and detaining people for gathering in public.
Iran may be able to repair much of its war-damaged energy infrastructure without new Western technology. Whether it can rebuild a modern, reliable energy industry is another question.
Iran has turned to Beijing and Moscow for backing in talks with Washington over the Strait of Hormuz. Mediators are weighing whether China could help guarantee that Washington delivers on sanctions relief in return for Iranian nuclear concessions.
Putin’s rare call to Iran’s security chief and a state TV commentator’s account of Chinese preparations for the Islamic Republic’s possible collapse raise a question about Tehran’s most powerful partners: how far would Moscow and Beijing go to ensure its survival?
US Vice President JD Vance’s reported bid to meet Iran’s security chief Mohsen Rezaei for peace talks with Tehran raises a troubling question for Washington: Does it understand the man it would face across the table?
Iran could face an economic contraction comparable in scale to the Great Depression in the United States, economists say, as the loss of oil revenue and wartime disruption threaten to drive an ailing economy into a deeper crisis.
Regional powers are intensifying efforts to prevent a wider war with Iran, but their diplomacy comes with explicit demands of Tehran: reopen the Strait of Hormuz, stop threatening Persian Gulf states and allow international nuclear inspectors to work without obstruction.
Talks involving Saudi Arabia and its defense partners in Tehran may offer a final diplomatic opportunity before a collective military response, a regional affairs analyst said Monday, amid attacks on Saudi territory and threats of renewed US-Iran fighting.
The war with Iran raises a familiar question for Israel: Can battlefield gains produce lasting peace? Its military history offers mixed answers, from unresolved victories to withdrawals and ceasefires that left adversaries armed.
A possible resumption of US strikes on Iran would serve an increasingly economic war, weakening Tehran’s ability to challenge a blockade that Washington appears prepared to maintain for the foreseeable future.
China's imports of oil recorded as Malaysian have plunged alongside the collapse of Iranian exports under the US naval blockade, suggesting how heavily Iran relied on relabeling its crude for its biggest customer.
Turkey will host the foreign ministers of seven countries on Friday for talks on the Iran-US war, security in the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab, developments in Yemen and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Iranian leaders raised the conditions for negotiations with the United States and issued fresh warnings of a wider military response on Wednesday, even as signs persisted that Tehran was leaving room for diplomacy.
The Revolutionary Guards' threat to target undersea internet cables in the Strait of Hormuz raises questions about its feasibility, as the waterway carries a fraction of global bandwidth and damaging its cables would not shut down the world's internet.
Washington and Tehran may still reach a limited deal, but fundamental disagreements leave open the prospect of renewed escalation, analysts told Iran International, with the period after elections in Israel and the United States emerging as a potential turning point.
Investment in trade routes linking Asia and Europe through Central Asia and the Caucasus is putting pressure on Iran’s ambitions to become a major transit hub, with neighboring countries developing transport and digital networks that bypass Iranian territory.
Iran’s central bank governor has dismissed claims of economic collapse, while domestic media reports describe wages failing to cover basic living costs and families struggling to afford medicines, housing and car repairs.
Iran's surge in attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz may be an attempt to exploit US restraint ahead of the midterm elections and undermine a recovery in Persian Gulf oil shipments, experts told Iran International.