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 we mark four years after Mahsa Jina Amini’s death. Iran executed seven people in two days, and a new report found at least 100 January protesters are now under death sentences.
In south Tehran, shopkeepers are extending bread and food on credit as real prices outpace frozen official rates. Washington sanctioned Russia’s VTB Bank over its Iran ties. The Supreme Leader remains unseen in public six months into his leadership, even as relatives reveal he’s a Christopher Nolan fan. He also has a new economic adviser. And President Pezeshkian is pushing remote work and car-free days to cut fuel use.
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 talk to Alan Eyre, former diplomat, the first-ever Persian language spokesperson of the U.S. State Department and lifelong Iran watcher. We take up how 9/11, the current conflict, the motives of the Tehran regime, and the sweep of Iranian history are all connected.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
The agents would shoot anyone in their sight, not caring if they were women, children, passersby or protesters.
—Iman, an eyewitness in Sanandaj, Kurdistan province, as quoted in an Amnesty International report published on the fourth anniversary of the death of Mahsa Jina Amini and the ensuing Woman, Life, Freedom protests.
TOP OF THE NEWS
1. Four Years After Mahsa Amini’s Death
Four years ago this week, 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian Mahsa Jina Amini died in “morality police” custody after being arrested for allegedly not wearing her hijab correctly. The widespread outrage over her death developed into protests that spread quickly across the country. The “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement that captured the world’s imagination was ultimately harshly suppressed by the regime.
Following a call by the Kurdish opposition for a general strike on the fourth anniversary of her death, shops and markets across Iran’s Kurdistan and West Azerbaijan provinces went dark on Wednesday. The authorities are reported to have put pressure on businesses and shops to stay open, in some cases asking for written pledges to stay open on the anniversary. In Sanandaj, the capital of Kurdistan province, two shopkeepers were reportedly detained for refusing to sign the pledges.
Amnesty International marked the day by releasing two reports: one a 1,000-page study mapping the command structures of the state’s organs of repression and naming 87 officials it says should face criminal investigation, the other a registry of 377 protesters and bystanders – 56 of them children – with photos and images of gravesites.
Amnesty notes that “Iranian authorities disproportionately targeted Kurdish and Baluchi communities” and also observes that most of the officials responsible for the repression continue to hold positions of power (or have even been promoted) since 2022.
Executed: Farzad Ahmadpour. Photo: CSHDI
2. Seven Executions in Two Days
Farzad Ahmadpour, a 35-year-old father of two from Saqqez in Iranian Kurdistan, was executed at dawn on Sunday after nearly three years in detention. The same day, five Baloch men were hanged in Zabol, Zahedan and Iranshahr, and a sixth, Abdolrahim Narouei Rouzaneh, a 47-year-old father of nine, followed on Monday in Isfahan’s Dastgerd prison.
At least 100 people arrested during Iran’s January protests have been sentenced to death, according to a new report by Iran Human Rights. The Norway-based organization says the list includes five women and at least five people who were under 18 at the time of the alleged offences.
The cases come from 13 provinces, although the protests took place across all 31. Isfahan has by far the largest number on the list. Iran Human Rights says it has documented 46 cases there, followed by 22 in Tehran and Alborz and ten in Fars.
There is an important challenge regarding the numbers: Most of these cases have never been publicly announced by Iran’s judiciary. Iran Human Rights says only five of the 100 cases have been reported by official sources. Two others were disclosed by defense lawyers speaking to Iranian media. The organization says it independently verified 66 cases, while 27 were reported by other human rights groups.
That means the figure cannot be independently confirmed in full. It may also be an undercount.
The report comes after a series of executions connected to the protests. Iran Human Rights says 29 men arrested over the January demonstrations have been executed since March. Hundreds of other protesters are facing charges that can carry the death penalty.
The organization has also raised concerns about how these cases have been handled, including allegations of torture, forced confessions and restrictions on defendants’ ability to choose their own lawyers.
A baker in south Tehran. Photo: AFP.
3. In South Tehran, Shopkeepers Are Selling Bread on Credit
In south Tehran’s working-class Mokhtari and Shoosh neighborhoods, shopkeepers are now extending credit to customers who cannot pay up front for bread, meat and other basic food items. One vivid report describes a real crisis: “[P]overty is no longer a hidden phenomenon or a number in official statistics, but has become a daily occurrence on the streets, where new towers and commercial complexes rise into the sky, and in their heavy shadow, people stand in line to buy a few hundred grams of meat or chicken bones.”
Although the price of bread is officially set, in practice shopkeepers are charging more. One report quotes a labor activist and retired coal miner as saying that many people have had to cut out some of their usual daily purchases or even take on second jobs to cover their essential purchases.
4. The Third Bank in Three Weeks: Treasury Widens Its Hunt for Iran’s Financial Back Doors
As part of the U.S. Treasury Department’s “Economic D-Day” campaign, Russia’s VTB Bank was sanctioned on Monday for establishing correspondent ties with sanctioned Iranian banks and helping move billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets. It is the third institution targeted under that campaign, following, as reported in this newsletter, Egypt’s Banque Misr and a Turkish bank and its subsidiaries. VTB was already among the most heavily sanctioned banks in the world, cut off since 2022 because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and foreign banks that keep dealing with it now risk exposure to additional U.S. penalties, including being cut off from the dollar system.
IN OTHER NEWS
The Supreme Leader Who Likes Christopher Nolan
Six months after becoming Iran’s Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei remains largely invisible.
He has not made a public appearance since succeeding his father, Ali Khamenei, in March, and no new photograph, video or audio message of him has been released. There have been written statements ostensibly emanating from him, while Iranian officials and people close to the leadership have attributed his absence largely to security concerns. Even his mother-in-law has said that Iran’s enemies want him to appear in public so they can reach him.
There have, however, been some interesting details about his private life coming from his family.
One of them concerns renowned filmmaker Christopher Nolan, of The Odyssey and Oppenheimer fame.
Fereydoddin Haddad-Adel, the brother of Khamenei’s late wife, Zahra Haddad-Adel, recently said that Khamenei watches a lot of films and follows Nolan’s work. He said Khamenei and his wife also used to watch television series together, and that the family itself was surprised to discover that he followed the British-American director.
This is not the only slightly unexpected detail to emerge from the family.
Tayebeh Mahrouzadeh, Khamenei’s mother-in-law, has said that Mojtaba had already passed the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) when he came to ask for her daughter’s hand in marriage. She made the comment while arguing that the family was not opposed to learning foreign languages.
These are, of course, stories told by relatives, and they tell us little about how Khamenei is actually governing Iran.
But there is something curious about the contrast. Iranians have still not seen their new Supreme Leader in public. In the meantime, they are learning that he’s a fan of a Hollywood big shot and has some command of English.
Not sure what the Supreme Leader thinks of Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises.
People and traffic in Tehran. Photo: AFP.
Work From Home — to Save Fuel
Iran’s government wants more civil servants to work from home. The reason is not office culture. It is fuel.
President Masoud Pezeshkian has ordered government agencies to make greater use of remote work as part of a wider effort to reduce fuel consumption.
Under the new directive, government bodies should arrange remote work, where possible, for employees whose jobs can be done from home. It specifically mentions people who live in cities outside the one where they work and therefore may have longer daily commutes.
There is also a new “car-free day.” Government agencies are supposed to designate one day each week when employees and managers leave their cars at home and travel to work by public transport, including buses and the metro.
The measures are part of a much bigger problem for Iran: energy shortages.
Pezeshkian has repeatedly argued that the government should start by cutting its own energy use. He recently said some government offices could work remotely during the winter and that less necessary government buildings could be closed. He specifically mentioned buildings at Tehran’s renowned Saadabad complex, a big estate in the well-to-do north of the city.
Iran has already used changes to government working hours and remote work to reduce energy consumption, so this is not quite a new work-from-home revolution.
A New Economic Adviser at the Supreme Leader’s Office
There has been a change in one of the less visible parts of Iran’s leadership.
Ehsan Khandouzi, Iran’s former economy minister, has been appointed head of the Economic Studies Working Group in the Supreme Leader’s Office. He replaces Ali Aghamohammadi, who held the position for 36 years.
The group studies major economic issues and provides analysis to the Supreme Leader’s Office. It does not run Iran’s economy — that remains the job of the government and other state institutions — but the position puts Khandouzi inside the institution surrounding Iran’s most powerful political authority.
Khandouzi is an economist and a faculty member at Tehran’s Allameh Tabataba’i University. He was elected to parliament from Tehran in 2020 before becoming economy minister under President Ebrahim Raisi in 2021. He remained in the post after Raisi’s death in 2024, leaving when President Masoud Pezeshkian formed his government.
As economy minister, Khandouzi was one of the main public faces of Raisi’s economic team during a period of high inflation and continued pressure on the rial.
The man he replaced was much less visible. Aghamohammadi spent decades close to Iran’s leadership and is a member of the Expediency Council, a body that advises the Supreme Leader and helps resolve disputes over legislation.
Iran hasn’t had quite this combination hit at the same time before: sanctions, currency collapse, and an active war. Gasoline is being rationed because the war has choked off imports Iran used to rely on, the rial has plummeted in value since spring, and inflation is over forty percent. To the extent that the Supreme Leader is in a position to hear what Khandouzi is saying, there’ll be a lot to talk about.
