You can read it in Arabic here, and check out MBN’s flagship Arabic-language Alhurra news platform (also in English).
This week’s edition of the briefing is a joint effort by our new Iran reporter Tara Rad, who is writing under a pseudonym, and myself.
This week: The U.S. and Iran escalate their attacks on each other, Houthi missiles put Saudi Arabia’s new defense pact to its first real test, and Tehran goes on the offensive against the IAEA board days before a possible UN referral. At home, a fight over medicine shortages and a spreading wave of pension protests show the war’s continuing toll, while a hardline newspaper editor takes aim at two former presidents over how, or whether, to end it.
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.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
[Former president Hassan] Rouhani’s real meaning and intention (without the slightest doubt) is to give up defense and surrender the country to America and Israel.
– Hossein Shariatmadari, editor-in-chief of the hardline newspaper Kayhan
TOP OF THE NEWS
1. Riyadh’s New Alliance Meets its First Test
Houthi missiles and drones wounded 73 people and halted operations at Saudi Aramco sites in Abha, Najran and Jazan and at the King Khalid air base on Tuesday. This was the most significant Houthi barrage on the kingdom since the UN-brokered truce between the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition in 2022 broke down in July. The Houthis said the strikes answered Saudi-led raids this week on Bayda, Hodeidah, Jawf, Marib and Taiz. Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry vowed a firm response, and the price of Brent crude oil jumped to $99 a barrel. These latest attacks come a month after Saudi Arabia joined Pakistan and Turkey in a defense pact whose tenets include the stipulation that “any armed attack against any one of the three states shall be regarded as an attack against them all.”
Satellite image courtesy of Vantor shows vehicles at the western entrance of the Pickaxe Mountain tunnel complex adjacent to the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran. Photo: AFP.
2. Tehran’s Counterattack on the IAEA Board
Iran’s delegation to the IAEA board argued this week that past breaches of the agency’s own confidentiality obligations have enabled sabotage against safeguarded nuclear facilities. A related statement said the agency bears responsibility for attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites. The rebuttal came as IAEA chief Rafael Grossi told the board it has gone more than a year without any accounting of Iran’s near-weapons-grade uranium stockpile. The U.S., Britain, France and Germany have drafted a resolution that would refer Iran to the UN security council. The board meeting ends Friday.
3. Pharmacists Say Prices Could Triple. The Government Says Shortages Are Shrinking.
Iran’s Pharmacists Association spokesman Hadi Ahmadi warned this week that supply-chain disruptions could triple the price of some medicines. He explained that the “situation of drugs in the country this year is not like previous years, because we neither have enough raw materials for domestic production nor do we have adequate imports of drugs.” Reports describe the shortage spreading from pharmacy counters into hospitals, blaming unpaid insurance debts and currency shortages. The head of Iran’s Food and Drug Organization has countered that shortages have fallen, and blamed “the enemy” for “targeting the pharmaceutical sector,” noting that “content is being published through foreign media and cyberspace that aims to show the inadequate pharmaceutical situation in Iran.”
A woman crosses a street while carrying a bag of bread in the center of Tehran. Photo: AFP.
4. Retirees Take Their Pension Fight to the Street
Retired telecom workers protested Monday across a dozen provinces, demanding the government enforce a pension bylaw and an administrative justice court ruling. Separate accounts from Isfahan and Kermanshah and a rights-monitor tally of at least ten gatherings nationwide that day show oil and gas workers, unemployed youth and idled textile workers joining in with their own grievances. The protests represent an escalation of complaints over payment delays that were covered in this briefing last week, when retirees were told pensions would arrive five months late and be delivered in alphabetical order by last name.
Iranian daily newspapers on sale in Tehran on September 12, 2001. Photo: AFP.
5. 9/11 and Iran
This week, on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Iran’s press had nothing to say about the attacks themselves. State media did, however, criticize President Donald Trump’s anniversary speech, in which he tied the war on Iran to the anniversary and said that “[w]e’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon.
Iran’s government did not always treat Sept. 11 as evidence of American perfidy. Then-president Mohammad Khatami swiftly sent Washington condolences, telling CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that, “I would like to again express my deepest condolences to the nation of America, and express my sorrow for the tragic event of September 11. What occurred was a disaster.”
Shortly thereafter, then-supreme leader Ali Khamenei said on television: “Mass murder of human beings is condemned…. If we are supposed to condemn such deeds, which we must, we must condemn it everywhere,” albeit not without adding that “America’s expansionist policies were the cause of recent developments.”
By 2010, then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the UN that factions inside the U.S. government had orchestrated the attacks to protect Israel. The claim triggered a walkout by the U.S. and several European delegations.
The conspiracy theory faded under his successors, but the underlying criticism of the U.S. government did not. The narrative evolved. An op-ed piece published on the supreme leader’s khamenei.ir site in 2020 argues that “[t]he 9/11 attacks … provided the best excuse for the [U.S.] central government to align various currents through creating enemies and phobias of them.”
IN OTHER NEWS
What Happened Outside the Iraqi Students’ Residence?
Iranian authorities are investigating a confrontation involving Iraqi students in the city of Semnan in central Iran after videos circulated on social media showing a large crowd gathered outside their accommodation.
Mohammad-Sadegh Akbari, the head of the provincial judiciary, said two people involved in the incident had been identified and called to report to police, while investigations were continuing to identify others. Authorities have not publicly established what triggered the confrontation.
Semnan University said the incident took place outside a privately operated residence housing some of its international students. It stressed that there had been no confrontation between Iranian and international students of the university, and said police and other authorities were investigating the cause and those responsible.
The incident has also drawn attention in Iraq. The Iraqi embassy in Tehran and its cultural mission have formed a joint committee to follow the case and the situation of Iraqi students.
A man on a cell phone while walking past a relief on a gate in the ruins of ancient Persepolis, which served as the capital of the Achaemenid Persian Empire (550-330 BC). Photo: AFP.
When a Smartphone Becomes a Luxury
There is a small but revealing change underway in Iran’s mobile phone market: Some people are going back to “dumb phones.”
These are the old-fashioned, button-operated devices primarily designed for calls and text messages. According to interviews with mobile-phone sellers by the economic newspaper Donya-e Eqtesad, the revival is not entirely about nostalgia or people trying to escape their screens. For some Iranians, smartphones have simply become too expensive.
Sellers told the newspaper they are increasingly seeing customers whose touchscreen phones have broken but who cannot afford either the repair bill or a replacement smartphone. Instead, they buy a basic phone to keep themselves connected. Other customers use one as a second device, while some parents buy them for children because they are cheaper and less attractive to thieves.
Donya-e Eqtesad tracked three models over roughly eight months. The price of a Nokia 5310-style handset doubled between January and September, while that of a Nokia 230 more than doubled over the same period.
The newspaper calculates that, using Iran’s official minimum daily wage for the current year, a minimum-wage worker would need more than ten days’ pay to earn the price of that Nokia 230.
Kayhan Wants the Authorities to Look at Two Former Presidents
A political argument over how Iran should end its conflicts continues.
One of the country’s best-known hardline newspaper editors called for the security and judicial authorities to scrutinize two former presidents.
Hossein Shariatmadari, editor-in-chief of the hardline Kayhan newspaper, attacked former presidents Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani over their recent comments about war and peace. Khatami has spoken of a “dignified peace,” while Rouhani has argued that Iranians should have a say in whether the country is expected to remain at war with major powers for years to come. I’ve written about the conservative editor’s attacks in previous editions of this briefing.
Shariatmadari argued that the two former presidents were effectively advocating surrender to the United States and Israel, and claimed their positions echoed those of Iran’s enemies. He went further, saying the similarity could not simply be dismissed as coincidence and that judicial and security bodies should not ignore it.
The exchange matters because Khatami and Rouhani represent two important strands of Iran’s reformist and centrist political establishment, both of which have argued, to differing degrees, for diplomacy and reduced confrontation with the West.
Kayhan has long been one of the most uncompromising voices on the conservative side of Iranian politics.
The dispute reflects a much older divide in Iranian politics over negotiations with the West.
Iran Is Watching the Yemen Front
Fighting in Yemen is raising concerns in Iran about what could happen if the Houthis lose more ground.
The Iran-backed Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah, are fighting Saudi-backed forces in southwestern Yemen. The Houthis have also launched missiles and drones towards southern Saudi Arabia, including at energy facilities.
In Iran, political commentator Ali Gholhaki warned that losing what he called the “Yemen front” would weaken Iran against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
According to him the reason is geography. Yemen sits next to the Bab al-Mandeb, the narrow waterway connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. A large amount of international shipping passes through it. The Houthis’ position in Yemen gives them the ability to put pressure on shipping as well as on Saudi Arabia itself.
Gholhaki is not a government official, so his comments should not be read as an official Iranian position. But they show why developments in Yemen matter to Tehran.
Iran has supported the Houthis for years. They have become an important part of the group of armed movements in the region that are close to Tehran. If the Houthis are pushed back, Iran would have less ability to put pressure on Saudi Arabia and less influence around the Bab al-Mandeb.
