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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.
Here’s what you need to know. U.S. president Trump hosts six Gulf leaders in New York this week. Tehran says it sent Washington seven conditions for talks. The Houthis pushed toward Taiz and fired a missile at Riyadh, which the kingdom says it intercepted.
Ghalibaf pushed back on his critics, a Tehran court handed down twenty-one and thirty-year sentences to two protesters, and intelligence officers raided a Bahai family’s homes in Shiraz.
130 MPs signed a call for Iran to leave the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Fuel shortages are hitting the mining industry, and two dead marine mammals washed up on the southern coast.
Share your thoughts, analysis, and predictions with me at ailves@mbn-news.com .
And don’t forget to check out the latest Iran Briefing podcast , when 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 and are all connected.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
The U.S. will continue to ban Iranian UN Mission officials, visiting officials, and their dependents from buying wholesale club memberships or luxury goods here.
— Tommy Pigott , U.S. State Department spokesman .
TOP OF THE NEWS
1. Maneuvering in the Shadows of UNGA
The United Nations General Assembly is meeting this week. Although the Iran war is not on the formal agenda, it looms over the gathering.
U.S. President Donald Trump will reportedly host six Gulf leaders – from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman – in New York on Tuesday. On Sunday, the president told Fox News that his “question is if and when do I blow the entire nation up,” and that his choices on the table include “wiping Iran out, letting them rot economically, or making a deal.” In any case, he said, “very big things are going to be happening in the not so distant future.”
The U.S. has approved visas for a limited Iranian delegation to attend the General Assembly. State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott noted in a post on X that “The U.S. will continue to ban Iranian UN Mission officials, visiting officials, and their dependents from buying wholesale club memberships or luxury goods here,” adding “New York-area retailers: be on guard, don’t become complicit in these violations.” In a repeat of a rule put in place during last year’s UN gathering, the Iranian officials are restricted from “obtaining or otherwise retaining membership at any wholesale club store in the United States, to include but not limited to Costco, Sam’s Club, or BJ’s Wholesale Club.”
Thus liberated from a shopping spree at Sam’s Club, Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian will be able to address the General Assembly on Wednesday. No word on whether he’ll be having any conversations with U.S. officials while in the country.
On Saturday, secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council Mohsen Rezaee said that Tehran had sent Washington seven conditions for starting negotiations.
Meanwhile, IRNA reports that Iran sent 30 government officials and 180 businesspeople to Moscow and St. Petersburg, in what it says is its “largest trade delegation in the past decade to Russia,” and Beijing hosted Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi a week before Chinese president Xi Jinping is set to travel to Washington.
Three things to watch for: what comes of the Trump-Gulf leaders’ meeting, any surprise announcements in the speeches or on the sidelines of the General Assembly session, and if the Iranian delegation goes shopping.
Houthi supporters in Sanaa, Yemen. Photo: AFP.
2. Houthis Push to Expand
Fierce fighting broke out Sunday in southwestern Yemen as the Houthis pushed to cut off the government-held city of Taiz and advance on high ground overlooking the Bab al-Mandab strait.
The spokesperson for the Saudi-led Arab military coalition backing Yemen’s government against the Houthis said that a ballistic missile fired by Houthi forces toward Riyadh had been intercepted and destroyed . The Houthis, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, said their missile and drone attack on Riyadh and Saudi oil facilities was retaliation for hundreds of Saudi strikes inside Yemen.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman appealed this month for increased U.S. military support against the Houthis, a request President Trump is said to have rebuffed.
Three things to watch for: whether the Houthis advance further, what action Riyadh takes, and whether the U.S. reconsiders MBS’s request for military support.
3. Ghalibaf Criticizes His Opposing Camps
On Sunday, Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf criticized the two main camps he sees making “strategic errors” with regard to the war. One camp, he said, speaks of war but has no horizon or mechanism for ending it, rejecting diplomacy outright and risking endless attrition, while the other underestimates Iran’s strength and would surrender to the enemy’s terms.
As he put it, “The first mistake keeps the country in a state of permanent crisis, and the second mistake offers national resources and dignity to the enemy.”
His own formula, he said, is to talk when necessary and fight when necessary. The remarks can be seen to be in response to withering criticism of Ghalibaf by Hossein Shariatmadari, long-standing editor of ultraconservative newspaper Kayhan .
Watch how the ongoing debate among camps unfolds.
Homes of five members of a Bahai family raided. Photo: Iranwire .
4. Wartime Crackdown Shows No Sign of Abating
Iran’s wartime crackdown shows no sign of easing this week: The notorious Tehran Revolutionary Court judge, Iman Afshari, sentenced Hossein Zare to 21 years and a second detainee, Ali Zinati , to 30 years. Both are being held at Tehran’s main prison on charges of “acting in support of Israel,” tied to their arrests during last winter’s nationwide protests. Zare’s lawyers have filed an appeal.
Separately, intelligence officers in Shiraz raided the homes of five members of a Bahai family. They confiscated passports, electronics and religious texts, and ordered all five to report for questioning at a local intelligence detention site on October 1. Adherents of the faith are brutally persecuted by the regime.
Watch for further judgments and sentences against protesters and Bahais.
IN OTHER NEWS
A woman walks past model missiles and nuclear enrichment centrifuges during a rally outside the former U.S. embassy in Tehran. Photo: AFP.
Iran and the NPT
The idea of Iran leaving the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is back in parliament. This time, 130 out of 290 MPs have signed a statement calling for the legal process for Iran’s complete withdrawal from the treaty to begin. Among the reasons cited are “the cowardly assassination of nuclear scientists and… the repeated threats of nuclear attacks against Iran by American and Zionist officials.”
The NPT is one of the main international agreements governing nuclear weapons. Iran became a party to the treaty in 1970 , before the Islamic Revolution. As a non-nuclear-weapon member, Iran agrees not to acquire nuclear weapons and to accept safeguards administered by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The treaty also recognizes the right of its members to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, provided they comply with its non-proliferation obligations.
The debate over leaving is not new. Iranian MPs have raised the possibility before, and a bill seeking to require the government to withdraw was introduced in June 2025. The new statement brings the issue back into the spotlight.
Supporters of the bill argue that the NPT and the international system around it have failed to protect Iran’s nuclear facilities or deliver the benefits Iran should receive as a member. They want parliament’s leadership to activate the legal process for withdrawal.
The new statement signed by 130 MPs is not a vote to withdraw , and even passage of legislation would not make withdrawal immediate. Article X of the NPT allows a member to leave if it decides that extraordinary events have jeopardized its “supreme interests.” It must give three months’ notice to the other treaty members and the UN Security Council and explain those extraordinary events.
Iran’s Fuel Shortage Reaches the Mines
Iran’s fuel problems are reaching another part of the economy: its mines. Mining industry officials say shortages and restrictions on diesel are forcing some mines to reduce production. Mehrdad Akbarian, head of the Iran Iron Ore Association, says some mines are operating at only 40% of their capacity because they cannot get enough fuel.
Iran mines coal, iron ore, copper, zinc, lead, gold, bauxite and, famously, uranium.
The problem is serious because mining is heavily dependent on diesel. Excavators, trucks and other heavy machinery need it, while some remote mines also depend on diesel generators.
For coal mines, this can become a safety issue. The Iran Coal Association says that its diesel allocation has been cut by about 40% since early summer. It has warned that some mines rely on diesel generators to keep ventilation systems running when electricity is unavailable. Underground ventilation needs to operate around the clock, even when mining itself has stopped.
The fuel shortage is also hitting smaller mines particularly hard. Industry representatives say they can struggle to obtain their full allocations or buy additional diesel at much higher prices.
Iran had serious energy shortages before the recent war. But damage to gas processing , fuel storage and other energy infrastructure during the fighting has added to the pressure. The government is already trying to reduce consumption elsewhere, including through more remote work for some civil servants. For the mining industry, working from home is obviously not an option.
A man sits in a gazebo overlooking the Gulf waters as vessels in the background transit the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Iran’s southern port city of Bandar Abbas. Photo: AFP.
Tehran and the Hormuz Card’s Shelf Life
The question of how long can Iran keep using the Strait of Hormuz as leverage was raised this week by Iranian economist Hossein Tavakolian in an analysis published by economics site Donya-e Eqtesad.
Tavakolian argues that the Strait of Hormuz, as a source of geopolitical leverage, has what he calls a “shelf life.” He doesn’t deny that it’s still important, given how much of the world’s oil and gas passes through the narrow waterway. By his analysis, however, the longer the pressure on the strait continues, the more reason other countries have to adapt and find workarounds. Oil importers can look for different suppliers. Governments and companies can invest in alternative routes and infrastructure.
In other words, continuing to play the Hormuz card could eventually encourage other countries to become less dependent on it.
Iran also pays a price. Disruption around Hormuz can make its own trade more difficult and expensive.
A Bryde’s whale, alive. Photo: AFP.
Something Is Happening to Marine Life in Southern Iran
Two dead marine mammals have recently washed up on Iran’s southern coast, adding to concerns about the pressures facing marine life there.
Payam-e Ma, an Iranian site focusing on environmental issues, reported on the death of a roughly ten-ton Bryde’s whale found near Bandar Charak. Hormozgan environmental officials later said deep injuries to its abdomen indicated that it had died after being struck by a ship or a vessel’s propeller.
About a week earlier, an Indo-Pacific finless porpoise was found dead on a beach in Bandar Abbas. Environmental officials said that it may have become trapped in fishing gear, causing it to suffocate. They were also examining whether recent oil pollution played a role.
Though there is no evidence that the war directly caused either death, it has added new pressures to an already busy marine environment. Payam-e Ma mentions increased maritime activity, oil pollution and underwater noise as possible threats. This last point is well established more broadly: whales, dolphins and porpoises rely heavily on sound to communicate and navigate, while intense human-made underwater noise can disrupt their behavior.
There is also measurable evidence of increased oil pollution. University of South Florida researchers using NASA satellite observations found that oil spills in waters to the south of Iran covered an area roughly four times greater in March 2026 than in the same month one year earlier.