Iran foreign minister says enemies seek to fuel unrest through economic pressure
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned on Thursday of what he called a new attempt to destabilize the country through economic pressure, urging national unity.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned on Thursday of what he called a new attempt to destabilize the country through economic pressure, urging national unity.
“A new plot is underway, with the enemy seeking to worsen economic conditions in order to fuel dissatisfaction and create internal problems for the system,” Araghchi said, dismissing what he described as attempts to destabilize the country from within.
Araghchi said Iran’s adversaries were aiming to exert economic pressure to provoke unrest, but vowed such efforts would fail, drawing parallels with what he called Iran’s resilience during a recent 12-day war.
“Just as we overcame the 12-day war using domestically built missiles, the resistance of our armed forces and the efforts of our people and government, we must now stand together to defeat this economic crisis and the enemies’ attempts to impose harsh conditions,” he said.
Iran had weathered four decades of sanctions and the presence of global military powers, Tehran’s top diplomat adding that the country had emerged from the latest conflict “with pride,” and would do so again in the face of economic pressure.
“Any sounds of explosions or gunfire heard during these two days will be related to the drill and will be fully controlled,” Ghorban Valizadeh said, according to Mehr news agency. He urged residents to remain calm.
Valizadeh, commander of the Sayyed al-Shohada Guards unit in Tehran province, said the exercise, known as “Beit al-Moqaddas 16,” will include staged scenarios and will be carried out by ground units.
He said the drill is held every year under the same name by ground forces of the Revolutionary Guards in different parts of the country, framing it as a standard exercise rather than a new development.
The Guards’ ground forces are tasked with homeland defense and the suppression of internal threats.
Contradictory reports on missile activity
The announcement follows contradictory reports earlier this week after an IRGC-aligned outlet reported missile tests over several Iranian cities, including Tehran, Isfahan and Mashhad. State television later denied that any missile launches had taken place, saying circulating images were not linked to a test.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel was aware Iran was conducting military exercises and was making preparations.
Defense analyst Farzin Nadimi told Iran International that the reported drills could be read as a signal, saying the Guards were showing they could carry out coordinated military activity across different parts of Iran.
Iranian officials have repeatedly said the country’s military activities are defensive. Earlier this week, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said Iran’s defense capabilities were not open to discussion.
Abolfazl Shekarchi, the armed forces’ cultural deputy, said a “wide spy network” had taken shape over several years with significant investment in training and organization.
“A large network of spies and enemy agents had been formed, and years of effort and heavy costs were spent to build it,” Shekarchi was quoted as saying by Iranian state media.
Shekarchi said the arrests started months before the fighting and continued through the end of the war.
“From a few months before the start of this war, because of the readiness in place, until the end of the war, around 2,000 of these agents were arrested,” he said.
He said rebuilding such networks would take time. “Reconstructing a network like this is not simple and requires years of time and cost,” Shekarchi said.
'Severe punishment'
Iran’s judiciary chief also cited roughly the same number of arrests in comments made in July, and said some detainees could face execution if convicted of working with Israel.
“In our law, anyone who cooperates with a hostile state during wartime must be arrested and prosecuted,” judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei said in an interview with state TV.
“Some of these individuals face severe punishments, including the death penalty,” he said, adding that others could receive lighter sentences or be released after investigation.
US cites executions, student case draws rights focus
The US State Department said on Tuesday that Iranian authorities executed more than 17 prisoners within 48 hours, including Aghil Keshavarz, a 27-year-old architecture student convicted of spying for Israel.
“Only in 48 hours, the Islamic Republic regime executed more than 17 prisoners,” the US State Department said in a post on its Persian-language account.
Iran’s judiciary said Keshavarz was executed after the Supreme Court upheld his death sentence and legal procedures were completed.
The execution prompted condemnation on social media and renewed focus by rights groups on Iran’s use of the death penalty in national security cases linked to alleged cooperation with Israel.
The Human Rights Activists News Agency said on Monday that at least 17 people have been executed in Iran over the past two days in prisons across Iran.
