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).
The war widened again this week. Riyadh wants to borrow $8 billion, the rial broke 2.2 million to the dollar for the first time, and more prison sentences are coming even as 2,500 convicts received an amnesty. Overdue pensions are being doled out to retirees in alphabetical order rather than all at once, and nobody can agree on whether Hormuz is open or closed.
I’m joined by our new Iran reporter Tara Rad, who is writing under a pseudonym, for this edition of the MBN Iran Briefing.
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 Alex Grinberg, Iran expert at the Turan Center and the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, and Mehdi Yahyanejad, internet freedom activist and founder of Persian-language discussion platform Balatarin. We take up the issue of where Iran’s real online conversations actually happen now that the old public square has splintered, why the IRGC has lost its grip on the online narrative even as it holds on to power, and why most Iranians want the regime gone but may not be willing to pay the high price it would take to get that outcome now.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
The state of neither war nor peace cannot be a sustainable solution, just as the policy of targeting the Arab Gulf states and Jordan has proven to be a failure.
– Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the president of the UAE, on X
TOP OF THE NEWS
1. The War Just Widened Again
Events in the region are unfolding apace. The makeshift temporary peace has unraveled. CENTCOM and the official Iranian press issue repeated announcements of strikes and counterstrikes. Following a series of American strikes on Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that “If the failed Nation of Iran retaliates for this very justified attack, they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level, but it will not be the biggest attack of them all, that is waiting in the wings and, when it is over, there will be very little left of the Islamic Republic of Iran!” Meanwhile the Iranian press is reporting that a U.S. strike killed people in a wedding party in Sirik, on the Hormuz coast directly across from the UAE.
Although the American strikes have been narrowly focused on Iranian territory, concentrated on the Hormuz coastline, Iran’s strikes have thus far included targets in Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, and Iraqi Kurdistan. These followed on a strike on UAE that I covered in this briefing on Monday. By all accounts, the Iranian missiles were intercepted or fell in remote areas.
In a separate post, the U.S. president said he was “not trying to force Iran to the bargaining table … I couldn’t care less if they sign a worthless, to them, agreement. I like our position now much better, with almost total control of the Hormuz Strait, and their economy totally collapsing. They are just playing out the inevitable. When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?”
Iran, meanwhile, is focusing on their allegation that civilians were killed in the Sirik strike and intends to take the matter to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
The Tuwaiq Tower in Riyadh, with a mural of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on its facade. Photo: AFP.
2. Riyadh’s War Bill Comes Due
Saudi Arabia’s National Debt Management Center has begun talking to international banks about at least $8 billion in fresh loans. The state-owned oil company Aramco is pursuing a similar deal.
Iran struck Saudi Arabia directly with missiles and drones in the early weeks of the war, including a barrage near Riyadh, before scaling back attacks on the kingdom. It then shifted the burden of hitting Saudi targets onto its Houthi allies.
Iranian media lost no time in crowing about the Saudis’ seeking loans. As state-controlled Press TV put it, “the U.S.-Israel war of aggression on Iran has severely impacted the economy of the oil-rich kingdom.”
Although the pressure on the Saudi budget has been mitigated somewhat by the rise in oil prices since the beginning of the conflict, the kingdom had a $9.1 billion deficit in the quarter ending June 30.
Saudi Arabia ran deficits for years before the war, and in the first quarter of 2026 the deficit ballooned to $33.5 billion. Essentially what’s happened is that the economic damage caused to Saudi Arabia by the war has been offset by another consequence of the war: higher oil prices.
3. The Rial Plummets Even Further
As I reported in a recent edition of this briefing, the Iranian rial-to-dollar exchange rate breached the two million mark in late August. The rial has continued to plunge and yesterday passed 2.2 million to the dollar and has now lost 63% of its value since the start of the war.
Abdolnaser Hemmati, governor of Iran’s central bank, said Tuesday that the bank is “ready to supply two billion dollars in foreign exchange to the market,” adding that “the dust created in the foreign exchange market will settle, and the recent increase in the exchange rate is more influenced by the psychological atmosphere than by real factors.”
The central bank also announced that during the Iranian month of Mordad, which ended Aug. 22, inflation was 84.4% over the previous August. This is the eighteenth consecutive monthly increase.
Sentenced to death: Ali Zarei, a political prisoner who suffered an eye injury during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests. Photo: Iranwire.
4. Amnesty for Thousands, Gallows for Protesters
Tehran’s “revolutionary court” sentenced Ali Zarei, a protester who lost his right eye to gunfire from security forces during the Woman, Life, Freedom demonstrations in 2022, to death. He had fled to Germany via Turkey but had to return to Iran. As I reported in a previous edition of this briefing, the regime’s security forces deliberately target protesters’ heads and torsos. One report describes the regime’s policy of targeting eyes as follows: “[T]he use of blinding is now widespread, denied by the authorities, carried out using weapons termed ‘non-lethal.’” Iranian security forces have engaged in this practice for years. An article on the website of the American Academy of Ophthalmologists in 2023 described police using “weapons with paint balls to mark protestors’ faces for identification and later arrest. Hollow-point metal bullets expand on impact, ensuring that they wreak maximum damage on orbital structures and remain lodged in soft tissues … The injuries include mutilated retinas and punctured irises.”
Meanwhile Iran’s Supreme Court upheld a death sentence against Ali-Asghar Peyghambari, a defendant from the January protests who, according to human rights groups, did not even participate in demonstrations and was detained while on his way home from work. His defense attorney said the verdict was issued “despite the complete absence of any organizational link or connection of any kind between my client and hostile entities.”
This all took place as judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejel ordered an amnesty, sentence reduction, or commutation for 2,577 convicts to mark the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. According to the Iranian press, the authority to do so was delegated to him by the supreme leader.
Women shop at a store selling chador gowns at the Grand Reza Bazaar near the shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, northeast Iran. Photo: AFP.
5. Retirees Paid One Letter of the Alphabet at a Time
Iran’s minister of cooperatives, labor, and social welfare announced this week that retirees’ overdue pensions will start being distributed in alphabetical order by surname. The payments are five months late, dating back to April. He apologized for the delay, saying that “I know that we always make payments with a delay regardless.” He didn’t offer a timeline for retirees whose last names fall late in the Persian alphabet. The pension system is in arrears for the month of May.
IN OTHER NEWS
Vessels near the Strait of Hormuz. Photo: Reuters.
Nobody Agrees on Whether Hormuz is Open or Closed
Speaking about the Strait of Hormuz, President Trump said the other day that “That sucker is open. The Iranian response is very mild.”
Iranian officials keep insisting that the strait is closed. In the words of Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi, “the Americans claim that the Strait is open, but it is not worth considering. The Strait of Hormuz is under the control of the Iranian armed forces.”
Open? Closed? Ajar?
People inside Iran are confused, and in the last few days, most Iranian media outlets have had an article about this.
Khorasan, one of the Iran’s oldest local newspapers, printed in Mashhad and close to conservatives, wrote: “The reality on the ground reveals that we are not facing a ‘black-and-white, binary’ situation. Hormuz is neither a fully open commercial gateway nor a completely blocked dam; rather, it has transformed into a ‘gray zone’ where available evidence confirms that its management is in Iran’s hands.”
The newspaper noted that Iran uses closely managed routes to export its own oil under third-country flags. In fact, a portion of the barrels being transported, as reported in statistics, is Iranian oil being exported by evading sanctions and utilizing foreign-flagged vessels.
Even if Khorasan’s editorial was written for a domestic audience, its core admission is clear: the strait is not closed.
According to the Strait Tracker website, the Strait is both open and closed. To summarize: yes, it is open, but at the same time no, because Tehran can attack ships selectively.
