Welcome back to the MBN Iran Briefing. You can read it in Arabic here, and check out MBN’s flagship Arabic-language Alhurra news platform (also in English).
Here is what you need to know this week:
The U.S. and Iran have now traded strikes for nine straight nights, and Washington’s targets include bridges and power plants inside Iran, not just military sites. Three American troops are dead. Tehran says the ceasefire memorandum is dead too. Nonetheless, both sides gave indications today that they are open to talks.
Kuwait, Qatar and Jordan all took hits this weekend, and Gulf states are closing ranks. Inside Iran, hardliners are accusing the government’s own negotiators of staging a “coup.” Iran’s currency, meanwhile, is hovering at record lows.
Find out more below, and share your thoughts, analysis, and predictions with me at ailves@mbn-news.com. If you were forwarded the MBN Iran Briefing, please subscribe.
And don’t forget to check out the latest Iran Briefing podcast. In this edition I’m joined by Scott Wilcox, Senior Advisor at the Sicuro Group, a global risk management and operational resilience firm. We discuss how the war has affected business in the region – and why Iran’s cyber and disinformation campaigns worry Scott more than its missiles. Watch here.
TOP OF THE NEWS
1. Strikes Escalate Toward All-Out War
CENTCOM says strikes it conducted last night hit Iranian “military command centers, air defense and coastal surveillance sites, maritime capabilities, missile and drone launch sites, and communications networks to further diminish Iran’s ability to attack commercial vessels and civilian mariners transiting the Strait of Hormuz.” A U.S. service member was confirmed killed in northern Iraq during a “controlled detonation” of an unexploded Iranian drone. That death constituted the third American fatality of the weekend, coming after an attack that killed two American service members and left a third missing at a base in Jordan on Friday. America’s death toll in the Iran war now stands at 18.
The U.S.’s target list has already moved well beyond military hardware. The bridges-and-power campaign U.S. President Trump threatened days earlier is now visibly underway, as strikes on Friday hit highway and railway bridges as well as energy sites in Hormozgan province and collapsed a tower at Chabahar port.
During the weekend, Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization said the United States struck the Darkhovin nuclear power plant in Khuzestan province, which is still under construction. The IAEA said it is “looking into reports of an overnight attack on the construction site of a planned nuclear power plant in Darkhovin, Iran,” and IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi renewed his call for “military restraint in the vicinity of all nuclear-related sites.”
Separately, after missiles were fired at the Jordanian city of Aqaba on Sunday, Jordan’s foreign ministry summoned Iran’s chargé d’affaires in Amman to protest “ongoing, unjustified Iranian attacks on the Kingdom.” The Israeli Air Force fired Iron Dome interceptors at fragments from the missile that drifted toward Eilat. Jordan’s stance of summoning the Iranian diplomat rather than retaliating militarily will be tested if Tehran keeps firing at Aqaba. Amman has so far refrained from the direct retaliation Bahrain and Kuwait have pursued, and officials insist the port and airport are still operating normally.
Three things to watch for: whether the bridges-and-power campaign that hit Hormozgan province and Chabahar port extends to other provinces this week, whether the IAEA’s Darkhovin inquiry forces Washington to address nuclear-adjacent targeting, and whether Iran fires at Jordanian territory again after Amman’s diplomatic protest.
2. Talks Might Happen Anyway
Over the weekend, Iran’s foreign ministry said that “the U.S. has practically violated and suspended all of its commitments, and we have also suspended our commitments under that Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding and are not implementing our commitments.” In a separate message carried across Iranian state media, the office of the Supreme Leader called the U.S. president’s signature “worthless and invalid” and said the Iranian nation has “unforgettable lessons” in store for its enemy. Washington disputes that the door is shut. On Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt asserted that “Iran very much continues to talk to the United States of America and expressed that they want to make a deal with us because they are suffering devastating blows.”
RFE/RL’s Radio Farda reports that at a press conference today, foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei announced that “proposals made through the mediators have been communicated to us and we have received them, but for now, let me not go into their details.” Last night, U.S. secretary of state Marco Rubio said that “We’ve tried multiple times with Iran, and we’ll continue to try. If that door opens, we’ll be happy to see it open.”
Neither side has said when, or whether, Qatari and Pakistani mediators will convene a next round of talks.
Three things to watch for: whether Qatar and Pakistan can get both delegations back to a table this week, whether Iran’s negotiating team survives the domestic backlash described below, and whether Washington formally declares the memorandum dead rather than just suspended.
Black smoke and flames billowing over the town of Mangaf, south of Kuwait City. During the weekend, Kuwait accused Iran of targeting civilian sites and vital infrastructure in the country, after reporting attacks on an oil facility and a power and water plant. Photo: AFP.
3. Gulf Neighbors on Alert
The states caught between Washington and Tehran are absorbing near-daily strikes while presenting an increasingly united diplomatic front. Kuwait’s oil sector and a power and water plant were hit again amid a heavy barrage that also struck an airport. Doha’s air defenses intercepted a wave of Iranian missiles Friday morning after the interior ministry twice raised the security alert level, with falling shrapnel from the interception injuring a child. Qatar’s foreign ministry called the renewed attacks on Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait a “flagrant violation” of sovereignty and international law, and the Gulf Cooperation Council’s secretary-general went further, calling the strikes on civilian infrastructure “war crimes.”
Three things to watch for: whether Kuwait’s oil, power and water infrastructure is targeted again after being hit twice in a week, whether Doha faces another alert like this weekend’s, and whether any Gulf state abandons its policy of absorbing strikes without retaliating militarily.
Video footage released on Friday by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Sepah News website showing a missile being launched from an undisclosed location towards U.S. targets in Qatar, Kuwait and Oman. Photo: AFP.
4. Tehran’s Hidden Power Struggle Widens
The war may be widening the cracks within the Iranian leadership. It’s been reported that ultra-hardliners aligned with the Paydari Party, Iran’s most conservative faction, have accused Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and President Masoud Pezeshkian of forcing through the memorandum of understanding in a “coup” against conditions for negotiations set out by the late supreme leader Ali Khamenei. This claim has been circulating through Tehran’s political elite since it first surfaced earlier this month.
Parliamentary speaker and lead negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in a statement last week that Iran has no reason to remain committed to an understanding whose terms aren’t being honored, while insisting the country must stay ready for battle. This was a retreat from the unqualified backing he gave the same deal when he signed it weeks earlier.
Two days before that, roughly 180 members of parliament signed a statement declaring the understanding with Washington finished, demanding revenge for the assassinated supreme leader’s blood, and calling for a special commission to review the negotiations and monitor compliance with the leader’s conditions.
The hardline attacks on the negotiating team narrow the room it has to make concessions, even as Washington keeps insisting Tehran wants a deal.
Two things to watch for: whether Ghalibaf or Pezeshkian directly answers the “coup” accusation, and whether the hardline campaign forces a reshuffle of Iran’s negotiating team.
A barista prepares a drink at a coffee shop along a street in central Tehran last week. Photo: AFP.
5. The Rial’s Volatile Run Continues
The dollar fell to 1,882,500 rials on the open market Monday, down 1.26 percent from the day before and well off the record 1,953,500 it hit over the weekend. Whether that pullback holds or the rial resumes breaking new records is the open question for the week. The currency’s swings are compounded by the strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure and bridges, which add fresh reconstruction costs and supply disruption to an economy already under pressure.
Three things to watch for: whether the rial breaches two million to the dollar, whether the Central Bank intervenes or simply lets the market move, and whether further strikes on energy infrastructure push fuel and food prices up even faster.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
If America continues the war in the coming days, we will enter an offensive phase.
Mohsen Rezaei, Secretary of Iran’s Expediency Council, which advises the supreme leader
