Hopes that the memorandum of understanding between Iran and the United States could evolve into a broader deal appeared increasingly remote on Monday as both sides carried out fresh strikes and clashed over control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei renewed his vow Saturday to avenge his father’s killing after US President Donald Trump said he had ordered the US military to “decimate and destroy” Iran if Tehran attempted to assassinate him.
War has erased Iran’s already weak growth prospects. The economy shrinks as prices rise at one of the region’s fastest rates, forcing households to bear war, sanctions and years of economic mismanagement through fewer jobs, weaker incomes and collapsing purchasing power.
Less than three weeks after Washington and Tehran began implementing a 60-day memorandum, the ceasefire is broken, commercial ships have again come under attack in the Strait of Hormuz, and US forces have struck Iran. Yet the two sides are still talking.
Friday prayers across Iran became a synchronized campaign for revenge on Friday, with clerics rejecting further negotiations with Washington, defending Tehran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz and demanding visible retaliation for the killing of Ali Khamenei.
Iranian officials are calling for national unity after Ali Khamenei’s death, but the message is increasingly being shaped by demands for revenge, attacks on officials accused of compromise and warnings that internal division serves the enemy.
Iran’s media landscape is sharply split over the latest escalation, with moderate outlets warning that ordinary Iranians will pay the price and hardline voices calling for forceful retaliation against US interests and regional energy routes.
A reported US strike on a railway bridge in northern Iran has drawn attention to a lesser-known front in the widening conflict: the battle over the transport corridors linking Iran to Central Asia, Russia and China.
Iran’s slain supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, was buried Thursday evening at the shrine of the eighth Shia imam in the northeastern city of Mashhad after days of funeral processions in Iran and Iraq, while his successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, remained absent from all public ceremonies.
The fragile memorandum between Tehran and Washington is facing its biggest test yet after two days of US strikes on targets along Iran’s southern coast and Iranian attacks on commercial shipping near the Strait of Hormuz raised fears of a return to full-scale war.
The Islamic Republic sought to turn Ali Khamenei’s funeral ceremonies in Iraq into a regional show of loyalty, using processions in Najaf and Karbala to suggest that his authority reached beyond Iran even as Tehran’s allied network faces growing pressure.
Hamas says it is stepping away from governing Gaza. But is it actually giving up power or turning away from its longtime backers in Tehran?
Iranian authorities are preparing for the possibility that Ali Khamenei’s week-long funeral ceremonies could leave between 1,500 and 3,000 people dead, Germany’s WELT reported, citing a classified document and municipal sources in Tehran.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has deployed special forces along Iran’s Persian Gulf coast to identify in advance vessels using the Oman-side route through the Strait of Hormuz, sources familiar with the matter told Iran International.
Global oil prices have fallen back to around where they stood before the Iran war. But the decline reflects not a recovery in supply but a combination of emergency measures including strategic reserve releases, alternative export routes and, above all, weakening global demand.
The preliminary memorandum of understanding between Tehran and Washington to end the 70-day conflict and reopen the Strait of Hormuz has reshaped the regional balance, with consequences extending far beyond the battlefield.
Lebanon has ordered the removal of billboards showing Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei and his late father from the road to Beirut’s airport, turning a dispute over public posters into a test of who gets to define the country’s fragile post-ceasefire moment.
A cargo ship was struck by a projectile off the coast of Oman on Thursday, underscoring the fragility of the US-Iran understanding as tensions over navigation through the Strait of Hormuz resurfaced.
An airstrike on a civilian lodging complex in Shiraz in the early days of the Iran war likely targeted IRGC personnel sheltering inside rather than a nearby military base, killing nine civilians at an adjacent emergency center, an Iran International investigation found.
Lufthansa Group pushed back against Iranian media claims that its airlines are preparing to return to Iran, saying flights to and from Tehran remain suspended until October 24 and any resumption depends on a security review.
Qatar’s prime minister said a hotline between the US and Iran was essential to stop rogue actors from disrupting the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
The US-Iran memorandum is being implemented before Washington and Tehran have agreed what it means, turning the fragile deal into a battle over interpretation across the Strait of Hormuz, frozen funds, nuclear inspections, oil sanctions and Lebanon.