Iran held by Egypt, waits on results in bid for first World Cup knockout place

The billboards, installed this week along the route to Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport, carried the slogan “Thank you to loyal Iran.” They appeared days after a ceasefire was announced between Israel and Hezbollah as part of wider US-Iran negotiations, and as Lebanese and Israeli officials continued direct US-mediated talks over southern Lebanon.

Interior Minister Ahmad Hajjar said Thursday he had ordered the banners and posters removed within two days. Speaking on the sidelines of a Cabinet meeting, he said the decision was part of efforts to regulate public spaces and enforce existing laws.

But the timing gave the order wider political weight. Hezbollah and its allies have portrayed the ceasefire as proof of Iran-backed “resistance” leverage, while Lebanon’s government is trying to show that decisions over the country’s territory, security and public space still belong to the Lebanese state.

The airport road is one of Lebanon’s most visible political corridors. For years, posters and banners linked to Hezbollah, Amal and Iran-aligned figures have lined parts of the route into Beirut.

100%

In 2022, Lebanon’s Tourism Ministry asked Hezbollah and Amal to remove billboards showing religious and political figures from the same road and replace them with signs promoting tourism.

The latest posters carried a sharper message. By thanking Iran days after the ceasefire, they presented Tehran not as an outside power in Lebanon’s war but as the loyal patron whose support helped shape the outcome.

That message comes as the ceasefire itself remains unsettled. Lebanese and Israeli officials have been engaged in US-mediated talks over southern Lebanon, including proposals for Israeli forces to hand some areas to the Lebanese army and for Hezbollah to be kept out of those zones.

Israel, however, has signaled it does not intend to leave southern Lebanon quickly. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will remain in a southern security zone as long as required, while Defense Minister Israel Katz has said Israeli troops will not withdraw even under US pressure.

The ceasefire has also been strained by continued violence. Local and international reports have described Israeli strikes and gunfire in southern Lebanon since the truce was announced, while Hezbollah has accused Israel of violating the agreement.

Hezbollah, for its part, has rejected any settlement that resembles normalization with Israel. In a televised Ashura address on Friday, Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said Israel must leave Lebanon “unconditionally” and said the group would accept no normalization, no end to hostility with Israel, no gains for Israel and no partial Israeli presence on Lebanese soil.

His remarks placed Hezbollah on a collision course with the logic of the US-mediated talks, which depend on a negotiated security arrangement in the south. They also reinforced the message carried by the airport road billboards: that Iran and Hezbollah see the ceasefire as part of a wider regional struggle, not merely a Lebanese border arrangement.

For Lebanon’s government, the posters created an immediate sovereignty problem. Leaving them in place would allow an Iran-Hezbollah victory message to dominate the country’s main international gateway at the very moment Beirut is trying to negotiate under its own authority.

Removing them, however, exposes the limits of that authority. The Lebanese state can clear a road, but it cannot easily resolve the deeper conflict behind the posters: Hezbollah’s weapons, Israel’s presence in the south, Iran’s role in the ceasefire and Washington’s attempt to keep Lebanon’s track separate from its broader deal with Tehran.

The arrangement follows months of confrontation and is designed to reduce the risk of renewed escalation. But it does not settle the core dispute between Washington and Tehran: how much uranium enrichment Iran will be allowed to retain, and under what conditions.

That question has long been the hardest part of any agreement. The latest understanding may ease immediate tensions, but it leaves unanswered what comes next and whether follow-on talks can produce a more durable settlement.

"The question is, do the follow-on talks yield a final deal that everyone can live with, do we go back to conflict, or do we just keep kicking the can down the road," Priddy said. "I think the most probable outcome is that they keep extending it."

Iran is unlikely to give up enrichment permanently, while the Trump administration has shown little interest in returning to a JCPOA-style framework that would allow limited enrichment under international safeguards.

Priddy said any long-term arrangement would probably need to include monitored enrichment, even if that remains politically difficult for Washington to accept.

"Iran is not going to concede to giving up enrichment forever," he said. "If we got to the point where the US could say yes, you could have limited enrichment under safeguards, a lot of other things start to become negotiable."

Priddy also said hardliners in Tehran may believe they have gained leverage after threatening the Strait of Hormuz, particularly after demonstrating they could use energy pressure to shape Washington's response.

"What I'm worried about at this point is I think there's a lot of hubris in Tehran right now among hardliners that they won the war," he said. "They can ask for everything now and get away with conceding very, very little."

Fears of higher gasoline prices and broader economic disruption helped push Washington toward restraint, while Persian Gulf energy infrastructure remained exposed.

Priddy described the situation as "mutually assured vulnerability," saying both sides now know they can target each other's energy infrastructure even if neither can eliminate the threat.

The regional fallout is likely to shape the next phase as much as the nuclear talks themselves. Persian Gulf states are likely to diversify their defence partnerships, while the United States may maintain a military presence in the region but with a smaller, more cautious footprint.

Israel remains the biggest wildcard in the next phase of negotiations. Washington appears intent on limiting further escalation, particularly in Lebanon, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may still favour a more confrontational approach.

Priddy said he does not expect the current understanding to produce a grand bargain or a warmer relationship between Washington and Tehran. Instead, he said, the most likely outcome is a hostile but transactional relationship that is repeatedly extended rather than fundamentally resolved.

The 39-year-old man, who holds Iranian and Turkish citizenship, was identified by Montenegrin media as Amir Barati and was arrested in the Adriatic resort town of Kotor, Montenegro’s police directorate said Thursday.

He is wanted by the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on charges including conspiracy to commit computer fraud, hacking and identity theft. The case will now go before a High Court judge in Podgorica for extradition proceedings.

Montenegrin police said the suspect had carried out large-scale cyberattacks from 2013 onward, targeting more than 150 universities in the United States and causing damage estimated at more than $3.4 billion.

Police said the stolen data and access to compromised university accounts were used for the benefit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other Iranian entities, including universities.

Barati’s name does not appear on the FBI’s public list of nine Iranian hackers charged in 2018 over the Mabna Institute campaign, but the allegations described by Montenegrin police closely match that case, including the 2013 start date, the university targets, the IRGC connection and the $3.4 billion damage estimate.

The overlap leaves open the possibility that Barati was tied to the same broader operation or to a related US case, though neither US nor Montenegrin authorities have publicly linked him to the 2018 indictment.

100%

The FBI said in 2018 that the Mabna Institute, an Iran-based company created in 2013, was used to steal access to non-Iranian academic and scientific resources through computer intrusions. US authorities said members of the institute were contracted by the IRGC and other Iranian government clients.

According to the FBI, the campaign compromised about 144 US-based universities and 176 foreign universities in 21 countries. It also targeted private companies, US government entities, the states of Hawaii and Indiana, and the United Nations.

US authorities said the hackers targeted more than 100,000 professor accounts worldwide and successfully compromised about 8,000 of them. They stole more than 30 terabytes of academic data and intellectual property, including journal access, research papers, electronic books and other proprietary academic material.

The campaign relied heavily on spearphishing emails that appeared to come from other academics. Victims were directed to fake university login pages, where their credentials were captured and later used to access library databases and research platforms.

The FBI said the stolen material covered a wide range of fields, including science, technology, engineering, medicine, social sciences and other academic disciplines.

US investigators also said the hackers used password-spraying attacks against companies and government targets, gaining access to email accounts and sensitive data. Victims included academic publishers, media and entertainment companies, technology firms and investment firms.

When the 2018 charges were announced, then-FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich said apprehending the suspects would be difficult but “not impossible,” adding that the defendants could be arrested if they traveled outside Iran.

“Where we can’t apprehend these individuals quickly, we will resort to different methods – naming and shaming, sanctions, and a lot of publicity,” Bowdich said at the time. “We will keep at it, because the FBI and our partners at the Department of Justice have a very long memory.”

The arrest in Montenegro suggests that warning may now be playing out years later, as one suspect allegedly linked to the campaign faces possible extradition to the United States.

The case comes amid renewed US warnings about Iranian cyber operations. In April, US cybersecurity, law enforcement and intelligence agencies warned of escalating Iranian hacking campaigns targeting equipment across critical infrastructure.

The index, produced for Iran in collaboration with Impact Iran, said torture remained deeply embedded in the country’s law, policy and practice, and warned that US and Israeli strikes on Iran during the June 2025 military escalation had further increased the risk of torture, ill-treatment and arbitrary detention.

The report said Iran scored at the most severe level on six of the index’s seven pillars: political commitment, police and institutional violence, impunity, victims’ rights, the right to defend human rights, and protection for all. It rated Iran as high-risk on conditions in detention.

It said Iran had not ratified the UN Convention against Torture, did not criminalize torture as a distinct offense, and continued to allow punishments such as flogging and amputation.

The report also cited the use of confessions in convictions, saying this created incentives for torture and ill-treatment to extract statements, including confessions later broadcast by state media.

It said at least 1,639 executions were recorded in Iran in 2025, including executions of people who were under 18 at the time of their alleged offenses.

The index also pointed to what it called near-total impunity, saying no independent body investigates torture allegations or deaths in custody, while overcrowded detention facilities operate with little or no outside oversight.

Women and girls, ethnic minorities, LGBTQIA+ people, human rights defenders, journalists and lawyers face heightened risks of torture, arbitrary detention and other abuse, the report said.

“In Iran, torture is not a failure of the system – it is the system: written into law, rewarded by the courts, and concealed behind prison walls,” said Rose Richter, Impact Iran’s executive director.

Richter said security forces fired on civilians even inside hospitals during the crackdown of December 2025 and January 2026, when more than 50,000 people were arrested and more than 7,000 killed.

Other rights groups and monitoring organizations have previously reported higher figures for the crackdown, pointing out the difficulty of verifying casualties and arrests amid restrictions on access, intimidation of families and limited independent reporting inside Iran.

• 

  Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

“Behind each of those numbers is a person whose suffering was deliberate, and a family still waiting for the truth,” Richter said.

Gerald Staberock, secretary general of OMCT, said the index was intended to turn “scattered warnings into evidence that cannot be ignored.”

“The Global Torture Index should be read by development agencies, but also by security actors and businesses seeking to engage or invest in the countries covered,” Staberock said.

OMCT urged Iran to halt executions and judicial corporal punishment, ratify the UN Convention against Torture, criminalize torture, end the use of coerced confessions and give the UN Fact-Finding Mission unhindered access.

The game coincides with Seattle’s Pride weekend after December’s draw placed the two Muslim-majority nations in the same fixture. Egypt and Iran had objected, saying such events clashed with cultural and religious values.

Both countries impose severe ​penalties on LGBTQ+ people.

Under Iran’s Islamic Penal Code consensual same-sex sexual conduct is criminalized and punished by penalties ranging from flogging to the death penalty.

A spokesperson for Iran's football federation told The Athletic that the Iranian federation has relayed to FIFA that it does not wish to see symbols or representations of the “movement” within the stadium, referring to the LGBTQ+ community.

FIFA, however, told the outlet it considers this World Cup to be an “inclusive event” and added that “rainbow flags and other flags representing sexual orientation and gender identity are permitted under the FIFA World Cup 2026 Stadium Code of Conduct.”

FIFA said Seattle’s Pride events are locally organized and not an official “Pride Match.”

The decision contrasts with FIFA’s ban on Iran’s pre-revolutionary “Lion and Sun” flag at World Cup venues, with the governing body saying its rules prohibit political symbols.

Earlier this month, a Los Angeles judge upheld FIFA's ban on the pre-revolutionary Iranian flag following an emergency hearing held hours before Iran's opening match against New Zealand.

The lawsuit, filed by the Institute for Voice of Liberty and Sam Kermanian, an Iran fan intending to go to the game, challenged FIFA's prohibition on the lion-and-sun flag associated with Iran's pre-1979 monarchy.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Curtis A. Kin denied the request to block the ban.

"Free speech is incredibly important, it is sacred, a bedrock of our society, but it is not without limitation, such as private actor, on private property, and as shown by previous cases, regulating in reasonable way. I deny the application," Kin said, according to The Athletic.

The report said that FIFA has deemed the flag political in nature under its stadium code of conduct, which prohibits political, offensive or discriminatory materials at World Cup venues.