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). If you were forwarded the MBN Iran Briefing, please subscribe.
Just out: My latest piece on the MBN website, published today: Why Tehran Doesn’t Want the War to End. I argue that the conflict has tightened the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ grip on power—and that peace could bring a reckoning the IRGC can ill afford.
Here is what you need to know this week: June’s U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding lapses today, and neither side is showing much public appetite to extend it, with the U.S. president promising to declare the Strait of Hormuz U.S. territory “pretty soon” and Tehran saying it hasn’t decided to restart talks. Iran’s army chief puts a $30,000 bounty on American troops – doubled if carried out by a “courageous Iranian woman.” A Houthi missile barrage shuts down a Yemeni port. And Iran’s parliament votes to jail anyone who talks to U.S. or “Zionist” media.
And in other news: Tehran’s housing crisis has landlords and tenants moving in together, and a fresh dispute over an oil spill has set off the blame game.
I’m joined by our new Iran reporter Tara Rad, who is writing under a pseudonym, for this edition of the MBN Iran Briefing. Share your thoughts, analysis, and predictions with me at ailves@mbn-news.com.
And don’t forget to check out the latest Iran Briefing podcast. In this edition I’m joined by Farzan Sabet, Middle East expert at the Geneva Graduate Institute, and MBN Editorial Chair Matthew Kaminski, as we dig into whether Tehran actually wants this war to end or has decided continued confrontation now serves it better. We’ll also be discussing how the IRGC and hardliners emerged more entrenched despite an unprecedented wave of leadership losses in the war’s opening days, and why the bet on a quick “regime modification” misjudged both Iran’s resilience and its own follow-through on defending the Strait once fighting resumed. Farzan also makes the case that the war’s lasting legacy may not be regime change at all, but a reshuffled regional map.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
The Strait of Hormuz cannot be seized by tweet, nor by aircraft carrier, nor by issuing an order, nor by an election speech.
Kazem Gharibabadi, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs
Iranian women enjoy a dip in the sea as vessels are seen in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas, in southern Iran last week. Photo: AFP.
TOP OF THE NEWS
1. Nobody’s Talking
Key clauses of the memorandum of understanding signed between Washington and Tehran in mid-June expire today. “The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America commit to negotiating and achieving the final Deal [sic], in maximum 60 days extendable with mutual consent,” the document dated June 17 says.
Two key sections of the MOU have specific sixty-day sunset clauses:
· Iran “using its best efforts” to allow ships to pass safely and free of charge between the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman free of charge and
· The U.S. developing a $300 billion plan “for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran”
The rhetoric does not suggest that talks are about to resume. At a rally in New York on Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump said that “pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz strait a territory of the United States.” Iranian spokesmen responded with choice words of their own, and on Saturday, Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said on his Telegram channel that “we have not yet made a decision to restart negotiations with the United States.”
Watch whether the lapsed deadline today leads to an extension or a resumption of talks.
Iran’s army chief Amir Hatami speaking to military academy students in Tehran. Photo: AFP.
2. Iran’s Army Chief Puts a $30,000 Price on the Heads of US Troops
Army Commander-in-Chief Amir Hatami announced yesterday that Iran “has guardians who will break your leg” as he unveiled a reward of 50 billion rials (about $30,000) for anyone who kills or captures a U.S. soldier and hands them over to Iranian authorities. Iranian women who carry out the act will get double the reward, he said, and the weapon used will be bought by the Army at twice its market value for display in a museum.
Tehran putting a bounty on the head of Americans is not a new notion. It was reported during the war in Afghanistan that Iran was paying Taliban commanders roughly $1,000 per dead American and $6,000 per destroyed vehicle.
The U.S. has had no known sustained ground deployment inside Iran during the current war apart from an April rescue mission for a downed pilot. At press time there was no response from the U.S. to the Iranian army chief’s announcement.
Watch for a U.S. response, especially during this week of possible talks on an MOU extension.
Sunken vessel in the Port of Mokha after an attack by the Houthis. Photo: AFP.
3. Houthi Escalation Shuts Down a Red Sea Port
More than 25 missiles fired by Yemen’s Houthi-aligned armed forces in recent days forced the Yemeni government-controlled port of Mocha to suspend all commercial and maritime operations. The port’s director blamed the barrage for seven deaths and roughly $16 million in losses.
The attacks follow Yemen’s declaration on July 20 of a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
The renewed fighting has effectively ended a truce with Saudi Arabia that had mostly held since 2022. On Thursday, Houthi forces struck Saudi Aramco’s Jazan refinery for a second time this month, saying the strike was retaliation for Saudi “violations” of Yemeni airspace.
Two things to watch for: whether Saudi Arabia answers the Mocha closure with strikes of its own, which would mark the 2022 truce’s formal end, and whether the naval blockade Yemen declared last month actually starts deterring shippers from entering Bab el-Mandeb.
On the phone in Tehran. Photo: AFP.
4. Parliament Moves to Jail Iranians Who Talk to U.S. or ‘Zionist’ Media
Yesterday Iran’s parliament approved the general principles of a bill against what it calls foreign infiltration. According to the text of the bill, “Interviewing or participating in a conversation or any communication with hostile media, including American or Zionist media or media financed by the United States or the Zionist regime, is prohibited” and punishable by a sentence of six months to two years.
Only the bill’s general principles were passed yesterday. Each article still needs approval on the floor, and the final text must clear the Guardian Council before it can become law.
Yesterday’s vote builds on a law passed last year after the 12-day war that stiffened prison terms for aiding states Tehran considers hostile.
Watch how the bill advances during the coming week.
IN OTHER NEWS
A woman walking past a house in Tehran. Photo: AFP.
Landlords and Tenants Move in Together
As I’ve reported in this briefing before, Tehran’s housing market is in crisis. The Iranian press continues to cover the story, highlighting that the rate of construction of new housing stock is not nearly meeting the city’s needs.
Average house prices in the capital are now 2.4 billion rials ($1,280) per square meter. A 50-square-meter apartment now costs about 120 billion rials ($65,000). Housing prices are up about 80 percent since before the war.
The average salary in 2026 is approximately 200 million rials ($117) a month.
Poorer residents and retirees have either been pushed out to the city’s edges or forced to leave the city altogether. But not everyone in Tehran can afford to do so. So people are finding other ways to cope. Payam-e Ma, an independent Iranian newspaper that mainly covers sustainability and environmental issues, recently reported on a new phenomenon: joint housing with landlords in Tehran. Landlords are sharing their apartments with tenants, even when the apartments are as small as 40 or 50 square meters. As the newspaper notes, this practice serves the needs of both: landlords bought their properties with loans and need the additional income to repay their mortgages, and some say they have been forced to share their homes with a tenant simply to help cover household expenses. Tenants, for their part, say they can no longer afford to rent a home of their own and have been forced to live with their landlords.
Oil slick along the southern coast of Qeshm Island, Iran. Photo: AFP
Qeshm Oil Spill: Different Accounts
The Iranian island of Qeshm is the largest island in the Persian Gulf. Its location at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz has made it the subject of U.S. and Israeli strikes.
Now it’s at the center of a dispute over an oil spill. Images and videos of oil slicks on Qeshm and other locations along the coastline of Iran’s Hormozgan province have been circulating for days.
Accounts differ as to the cause of the oil spill. TankerTrackers, which monitors global crude shipments, wrote on X that it “appears to derive from the Iranian attack on bulk carrier MINOAN PIONEER … when she was in the Musandam Governorate of Oman. The spillage then drifted across the strait over to Iran. A self-inflicted wound by Iran.”
A few hours later, Esmail Baghaei, spokesperson for the Iranian ministry of foreign affairs, posted on X that “this pollution drifted toward the coast from the Persian Gulf, and preliminary evidence indicates a foreign bulk carrier as the source” without mentioning how the foreign bulk carrier might have come to leak oil.
The head of the Hormozgan Department of the Environment said that the oil slicks had affected around 32,000 square meters of coastline and 90,000 square meters of waters near the shore. An emergency cleanup involving government agencies, environmental activists and local communities is underway along Qeshm’s southern coast.
