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. president says talks with Iran begin today, a day after he called off a planned strike on Iran’s energy infrastructure. Tehran isn’t confirming any of it, and kept fighting through the weekend, hitting tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and U.S. forces at a base in Kuwait. A separate Iran-Oman channel on managing strait traffic is now, Tehran says, in its “final stage.” Iran executed a 19-year-old protester and two accused “Mossad spies.” Meanwhile, Iranians are fuming over the price of tea.
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 MBN’s Editor-in-Chief Leila Bazzi, just back from spending time in the region, and Senior Correspondent Abubakar Siddique, as we take up how five months of war have turned Iran’s fight from one with the U.S. and Israel into one with its Arab neighbors, why Tehran’s hardliners may be overplaying their hand, and what’s really happening in Beirut and Baghdad behind the official talking points. Leila also tells us why she thinks the region’s real test ahead isn’t about redrawing borders at all, but about who ends up controlling the gates.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Under no circumstances is the situation of the Strait of Hormuz going to return to the conditions before February 28th.
Esmaeil Baghaei, Spokesperson for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Sunday
TOP OF THE NEWS
1. U.S.-Iran Talks, Maybe
This week opens with a promise of talks: U.S. president Donald Trump says U.S.-Iran negotiations begin this afternoon, a day after he announced he was canceling a planned attack on Iran’s energy infrastructure, writing that he’d agreed “to cancel the attack, subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL” that would include “the Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and an end to Iran’s nuclear threat.” Trump claimed the strike he called off would have been “the biggest attack since World War II.”
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called Trump Saturday and urged him to de-escalate. Bin Salman was one of several regional leaders, including those of Qatar, the UAE, Turkey and Pakistan, pressing Washington toward diplomacy instead of the strikes on Iranian energy targets that Trump had been weighing. Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi held separate calls with Turkey’s foreign minister and Pakistan’s army chief the same day.
The U.S. president told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday that today’s talks will cover two issues: the strait and Iran’s nuclear efforts.
This isn’t the first time the possibility of such a deal has been raised, of course. The 14-point memorandum of understanding the U.S. and Iran signed on June 17, which reopened the strait and ended the naval blockade, fell apart within weeks, after Iran struck commercial vessels transiting Hormuz and the U.S. retaliated.
Tehran isn’t confirming the U.S. president’s version of events either way. On Sunday, Iran’s Mehr news agency rejected his claim that Tehran itself had asked for the halt, calling it “nothing but a new lie.”
What to watch for: whether both sides confirm the existence of the talks, and, if so, whether they produce anything concrete
2. The War at Sea Doesn’t Pause for Diplomacy
While the deal talk played out, Iran kept fighting through the weekend. Kuwait’s Ministry of Defense said its armed forces detected and destroyed hostile drones entering Kuwaiti airspace, causing material damage from falling shrapnel but no casualties. Iran’s army said the attacks targeted aircraft shelters, satellite communications systems and equipment storage facilities at Kuwait’s Ahmad al-Jaber Air Base, and that they were carried out in response to recent U.S. military attacks on Iran, including an airstrike on a residential home on Qeshm Island. U.S. Central Command’s own tally shows the blockade it launched this month keeps growing. As of Sunday it had redirected 35 commercial vessels, disabled two and boarded two.
Three things to watch for: whether Iran keeps targeting shipping and regional bases even as this week’s talks proceed, whether CENTCOM’s blockade numbers keep climbing, and whether another base strike like that on Kuwait draws a U.S. response.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi shaking hands with the Sultan of Oman, Haitham bin Tariq, before their meeting in Muscat in April. AFP photo / Iran’s foreign ministry.
3. Iran-Oman Talks
Parallel to the on-again, off-again efforts to find a U.S.-Iranian solution to the Strait of Hormuz crisis, Iran and Oman have spent weeks negotiating a narrower arrangement to manage traffic through the strait. The tentative plan is to split it into an Omani-controlled southern corridor and an Iranian-controlled northern one. These talks aren’t new: Tehran and Muscat began them the day after the April 8 ceasefire, when Araghchi’s first trip after the ceasefire took him to Oman, and have gone through several rounds since. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said this week the strait will “under no circumstances” return to its pre-war status. He tied the new arrangement to a clause in June’s memorandum of understanding with the U.S. under which Iran manages the strait “in consultation with Oman.”
Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi told Iran’s cabinet on Sunday that those talks are now in their “final stage.”
Watch whether Oman and Iran actually sign a corridor agreement this week.
Executed: Arvin Kheirkhahan, aged 19. Photo from Human Rights Activists News Agency HRANA.
4. Iran Carries Out More Executions
A 19-year-old man was executed at dawn Saturday in Shahrud Prison in Semnan Province. Arvin Kheirkhahan was hanged after his conviction was upheld through the appeals process and by the Supreme Court. Iran’s judiciary said today that it had also hanged two men, Omid Behzad and Pouria Safvat, convicted of spying for Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. They had been accused of passing coordinates and images of Iranian military and security sites to Israeli intelligence officers during the war.
In another case, a defendant named Alireza Sepahi was being taken to the execution site alongside two others when he suffered a stroke, was resuscitated, and was returned to Dastgerd Prison in Isfahan instead of the gallows.
The death sentence of a defendant named Benyamin Naghdi was upheld by Iran’s Supreme Court, exhausting his appeals. Six other named defendants in the same case, including Shervin Bagherian, an 18-year-old whose forced confession was aired before trial, remain among 60 more people at risk of execution over the January protests.
Watch whether the pace of executions picks up.
A man serves tea to patrons outside the historic Grand Bazaar in Tehran. Photo: AFP.
WHAT THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT
The Strait of Hormuz isn’t the only topic on Iranians’ minds this week. A new crisis has emerged: the price of tea. An article on the Qudsonline site today looks at the myriad factors contributing to a rise in the price of tea in Iran, in particular highlighting the exchange rate as well as a multi-billion-dollar corruption scandal and an explosion at a port in the south of Iran.
Tea is a cornerstone of Iranian daily life, consumed at virtually every meal and social gathering. Iran produces only about a third of its domestic consumption, making the country heavily dependent on imports from Kenya, Sri Lanka, and India.
