Welcome back to the MBN Iran Briefing.
This week: Why Hungary’s ousted leader was Iran’s best friend in Europe. The talks in Islamabad fail to yield a result. And the world holds its breath as the U.S. and Iran stare each other down in the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, the children of the Iranian elite are being kicked out of the U.S.
Find out more below.
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And don’t forget to check out the latest Iran Briefing podcast. In this edition MBN correspondents Joelle El Hajj Moussa in Beirut and Yehya Kassem in Jerusalem join MBN Editor in Chief Leila Bazzi and yours truly to talk about Lebanon, Israel, and the ceasefire in the war with Iran. Was Lebanon excluded from the ceasefire? How much has Hezbollah been weakened? Do Shia in Lebanon feel abandoned by Iran? Watch in English, or Arabic.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Good will begets good will. Enmity begets enmity.”
— Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi
MBN Iran Briefing Podcast
Expert conversations unpacking the latest developments in Iran and how they are reshaping security, energy markets, and geopolitics across the Middle East.
TOP OF THE NEWS
Four days before Hungarians voted Prime Minister Viktor Orbán out of office on Sunday, the Washington Post published a transcript of a call from September 2024 between Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó and his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi. Szijjártó told the Iranian that Budapest’s intelligence services had made contact with Tehran and would share everything they had gathered on Israel’s pager operation against Hezbollah. “Every possible document will be shared with your services,” Szijjártó told the Iranian, according to the Post. The article appeared during U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Budapest last week.
Orbán had sought to exploit the regional instability generated by the war for domestic advantage by presenting himself as a security guarantor in an uncertain region and leaning on the energy price shock to reinforce his narrative about Hungary’s vulnerability.
It’s worth noting that Orbán had also positioned himself publicly as Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest European ally. Their friendship, which dates to 2005, was on display in April 2025, when Orbán withdrew Hungary from the International Criminal Court days before Netanyahu arrived in Budapest, explicitly to shield him from arrest. At the CPAC Hungary conference last month, Netanyahu’s son Yair said Israel has “no better friends in Europe” and that “Hungary also has no better friends in the Middle East” than Israel. Now it turns out that Israel’s best friend was also eager to cozy up to the Iranians.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance speaks during a news conference after meeting with representatives from Pakistan and Iran in Islamabad, accompanied by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. Photo: Reuters
THE TALKS
Six weeks into the Iran war, the diplomatic track that briefly seemed to offer an exit has collapsed. The U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz took effect a few hours ago, and the question of what comes next has no clear answer.
Talks that Failed. Saturday’s 21 hours of talks at Islamabad’s Serena Hotel were the highest-level direct engagement between the United States and Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. After they ended without agreement, Vance, accompanied by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff, declared bluntly that Iran had “chosen not to accept our terms.” The core American demand was a commitment from Tehran not to seek a nuclear weapon and not to pursue the tools that would allow it to build one quickly. U.S. President Donald Trump’s Truth Social post on the talks said that “the meeting went well, most points were agreed to, but the only point that really mattered, NUCLEAR, was not.”
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliament speaker and leader of Tehran’s delegation, presented the outcome not as a failure but as a matter that was still pending: “The U.S. has understood Iran’s logic and principles. It’s time for them to decide whether they can earn our trust or not,” he said on X.
The American non-negotiables include dismantling Iran’s major nuclear enrichment facilities; the relinquishing of over 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium believed to be buried underground; an end to Iranian funding for Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis; and acceptance of a regional de-escalation framework. Tehran’s demands included an end to Israeli strikes on Hezbollah, the release of frozen assets, control of the Strait of Hormuz, and war reparations. Israel, not represented in Islamabad, declared that it would continue its campaign against Hezbollah, directly contradicting one of Tehran’s main conditions.
A vessel at the Strait of Hormuz. Photo: Reuters
Blockade. Within hours of the U.S. vice president’s departure, President Trump announced that the U.S. Navy would begin blockading the Strait of Hormuz. CENTCOM confirmed enforcement at 10 a.m. Eastern Time today, targeting all maritime traffic entering or departing Iranian ports on both the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman sides. The announcement adds that “CENTCOM forces will not impede freedom of navigation for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz to and from non-Iranian ports.”
With American consumer confidence already at a record low, the markets were quick to react. The blockade announcement sent Brent crude above $104 on Sunday. It was trading around $102 this morning, up from around $95 at Friday’s close. Dow Jones futures fell as much as 517 points overnight before the index closed up 300 points on the day.
The ripple effects were felt internationally. India, which had negotiated special passage for its vessels through the Iranian-controlled strait and still has more than a dozen ships trapped in the Persian Gulf, now faces the prospect of those vessels being marooned by the blockade. According to an Indian labor union, nearly 20,000 crew members stuck on vessels in the Strait of Hormuz are running short of basic supplies. In Europe, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced today that Berlin would cut fuel taxes by around 17 euro cents per liter.
Iran declared the blockade illegal and an act of piracy. Ghalibaf posted a map of gas prices near the White House on X: “Enjoy the current pump figures. With the so-called ‘blockade,’ Soon you’ll be nostalgic for $4–$5 gas.” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told the BBC “We’re not supporting the blockade … we’re not getting dragged into the war.”
Before the war, roughly one-fifth of the world’s seaborne oil passed through the strait. Karen Young of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy told CNN that the global economy currently lacks approximately seven million barrels of crude and four million barrels of refined petroleum products.
What Now? Last week’s ceasefire is nominally still in place, but it now exists in direct tension with a blockade Iran has described as an act of war. IRGC units are in the same waterway as the U.S. Navy today. The foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia spoke by phone this morning, while France’s President Emmanuel Macron called for a peaceful multinational mission to restore navigation, with France and the U.K. to convene a conference of partners. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the blockade would “continue to negatively impact international markets.”
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that President Trump is considering resuming limited military strikes, a step that would formally violate the ceasefire. Just hours ago, he posted that “If any [Iranian] ships come anywhere close to our BLOCKADE, they will be immediately ELIMINATED, using the same system of kill that we use against the drug dealers on boats at Sea.”
Masoumeh Ebtekar, former spokesperson for the Iranian hostage-takers. Photo: Reuters.
Son of the Master
There is a term for it inside Iran. Aghazadeh, loosely translated as “son of the master,” refers to the children of the Islamic Republic’s elite who live abroad in comfort while their families enforce ideological restrictions at home.
One such case made the news this week. It involves the family of Masoumeh Ebtekar, who served as the English-speaking spokeswoman for the Iranians who seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held fifty-two Americans hostage for 444 days. Her son, Eissa Hashemi, has been living in Los Angeles, working as an adjunct professor of psychology. On Sunday, federal agents arrested Hashemi, his wife, and their son. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had revoked all three green cards. They are now in ICE custody pending deportation.
Then there’s the Larijani case. Ali Larijani, former secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on March 17. His daughter, Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, had been teaching medicine at Emory University in Atlanta before the university parted ways with her in January. A February 2026 report in the Guardian documented how members of the Larijani family had built lives in Britain and Canada alongside other senior officials’ relatives. Rubio revoked her legal status and that of her husband in March.
U.S. federal agents also detained the niece and grand-niece of late IRGC Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani after Rubio revoked their lawful permanent resident status. The accompanying State Department statement said that “While living in the United States, [Soleimani’s niece] promoted Iranian regime propaganda, celebrated attacks against American soldiers and military facilities in the Middle East, praised the new Iranian Supreme Leader, denounced America as the ‘Great Satan,’ and voiced her unflinching support for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a designated terror organization. Afshar Soleimani pushed this propaganda for Iran’s terrorist regime while enjoying a lavish lifestyle in Los Angeles, as attested to by her frequent posting on her recently deleted Instagram account.”
For years, the Western press has covered the lives and business dealings of regime-linked Iranians in the West. Just a few weeks ago, the Times of London reported on a sanctioned Iranian businessman winning permission to build luxury flats in the UK capital. Other reports have covered the presence of the children of senior Iranian figures at U.S. and UK universities.
For decades, Western governments looked the other way. Now, with the U.S. and Iran in open conflict, Washington is using immigration law as a weapon, and the question is whether others will follow suit.
Andres Ilves
Andres Ilves is Iran Editor and Senior Adviser at MBN. His career as a journalist and writer includes two decades at the BBC and Radio Free Europe.
