Trump has the upper hand, and the Islamic Republic is running out of options. Its seven-day offer shows how much leverage it has lost. It wants the United States to lift the blockade and let Iranian oil flow before nuclear talks produce a result. In exchange, it promises to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway it has used to threaten the region. The order is the point: the regime gets revenue first, while the United States waits for a possible nuclear agreement. Trump rejected the deal. He is refusing to give the regime immediate revenue for a promise it could reverse once the money arrives. The blockade is cutting into the cash that funds the state, the Revolutionary Guard, and its war machine. U.S. sanctions are also targeting the shadow fleet that Iran uses to move oil around those restrictions. The Islamic Republic needs relief badly enough to put a rapid proposal on the table. It can still disrupt shipping and drive up costs across the Persian Gulf. But those threats have failed to make the United States lift the blockade. Other oil producers are adapting, moving cargo through the strait under protection and using costly transfers near Oman. Each shipment that gets through limits the regime’s ability to hold regional oil exports hostage while its own remain under pressure. The regime is now trying to trade the leverage it has left for access to the revenue it has lost. Reopening a waterway it has helped make dangerous is its offer. Ending the pressure on its oil exports is its demand. Those are not equal concessions. Trump holds the stronger hand on the central question: whether the Islamic Republic gets oil money before it makes verifiable concessions. He has refused to pay first. The seven-day timetable suggests the regime cannot afford to wait indefinitely, even as it insists the United States is the side that must give way.

“We all urged the Shah to stay in Iran. We believed that if he left, the army would collapse, and if the army collapsed, the country would be brought to ruin. Unfortunately, that is what happened. “At least three grand ayatollahs, Khoei, Shariatmadari, and Khansari, also asked the Shah to remain in Iran and not leave the country. But unfortunately…” Dr. Houchang Nahavandi recalls the pressure on the Shah to remain in Iran as protests intensified. Those urging him to stay believed his departure would cause the army to collapse and leave the country vulnerable to the forces seeking power. The three grand ayatollahs he names were major Shi’a marjas with religious authority and followers across the Shi’a world. Their appeals show that concern about what would follow the Shah’s departure extended well beyond his own circle. The army fractured, Khomeini’s government purged and executed opponents, and Iran was soon drawn into a devastating war with Iraq. What followed was 47 years of clerical dictatorship that has brought political isolation, mass impoverishment, and devastation to nearly every part of Iranian life. The Shah’s left rather than order bloodshed against Iranians. The contrast with the Islamic Republic is stark. Its security forces carried out mass killings during the January 2026 protests - over 45,000 Iranians were massacred by the Islamic Republic and the United Nations fact-finding mission concluded that the crackdown was "crimes against humanity."

The Islamic Republic is losing its grip on Iraq. Iraq’s foreign minister says his country is an economic victim of the war and that Iraqi oil is moving through the Strait of Hormuz in cooperation with the United States. At the same time, flights between Iraq and Iran have come to a standstill. Ground handling companies stopped servicing them amid the threat of U.S. sanctions; flights through Baghdad, Najaf, Erbil, and Sulaymaniyah were affected. Even Najaf, a major destination for Iranian pilgrims, was not exempt. This is one indication that U.S. pressure on Iraq may be working. The threat of sanctions has changed what airport operators are willing to do, while cooperation over oil gives Iraq a way to protect its exports. But compliance on flights is easier to secure than a lasting change in Iraq’s relationship with the Islamic Republic. The shift is taking place at sea, too. Most Iraqi seaborne crude normally leaves through the Persian Gulf and Hormuz. Disruption there threatens the revenue Iraq needs to run its state. Iraq has begun moving oil by truck through Syria and discussing a pipeline route to the Mediterranean. Those routes are limited today, but the reason for pursuing them is clear: Iraq cannot afford to leave its main source of income exposed to one contested strait. Iranian energy remains another source of dependence. Iraqi power stations have relied on Iranian gas, while sanctions complicate payment for it. Iraq and the United States have discussed settling unpaid gas bills through food and medicine rather than cash transfers. That is a practical arrangement, but it also shows how much of the Iraq–Iran relationship now has to pass through U.S. financial restrictions. None of this means the Islamic Republic has lost Iraq. Iran aligned militias still hold weapons and influence inside Iraqi institutions. Iraq’s government set September 30 as the deadline for armed groups to surrender their weapons to the state, alongside the planned end of the U.S. led coalition mission. Some powerful factions have rejected that demand. The approaching deadline is a test of whether Iraq can enforce the authority it is asserting. That distinction matters. Iraqi authorities and airport operators can halt flights within days. Disarming groups with independent weapons, political allies, and outside backing requires far more than an order. Those groups can threaten U.S. interests and make Iraqi decisions costly to enforce. That is the Islamic Republic’s narrowing position. It can still disrupt Iraq’s oil exports, electricity supply, and security. But the more Iraq pays for that leverage, the stronger its incentive to find other routes, other suppliers, and other partners. The real test is whether Iraq can turn these individual decisions into lasting control over its borders, finances, and armed forces. Until then, the Islamic Republic retains a foothold. U.S. pressure appears to be changing some Iraqi decisions. September 30 will show whether that pressure can reach the Islamic Republic’s most durable source of influence: armed groups outside the state’s control.

Masoud Pezeshkian, falsely portrayed as a moderate by Western liberal media, is a murderous regime thug whitewashing the largest massacre of protesters in modern Iranian history. He branded the January 2026 protesters “armed,” blamed them for their own slaughter and portrayed them as tools of the United States and Israel after the Islamic Republic killed more than 45,000 people. The United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission determined that the massacre constituted crimes against humanity. Pezeshkian responded by repeating the IRGC’s propaganda and justifying the bloodshed. There is no difference between the Islamic Republic’s so-called reformists and hardliners. Both defend the same regime, whitewash its atrocities and protect its killers.

روزی نه چندان دور ساحل زیبای دریا کوچک چابهار شاهد چنین شکوه مدرنیته و همبستگی ملی خواهد بود. آینده‌ای روشن مدرن و پر از آرامش در انتظار ایران ماست بزودی شاهد زیبایی و شکوه دوباره‌ی ایران می‌شویم #جاويدشاه‌ #انقلاب_شیروخورشید

Colombia has severed diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic over narco-terrorism, transnational crime and international terrorism. Colombia also designated the IRGC a terrorist organization for repressing Iranians at home and directing covert operations abroad. For more than two decades, Hezbollah networks have worked alongside Latin American cocaine cartels, laundering drug money and moving weapons, forged documents and operatives across the region. Operation Titan resulted in more than 100 arrests and exposed connections between Hezbollah operatives, Colombian criminal organizations and international cocaine trafficking. The Hezbollah-linked Ayman Joumaa network laundered approximately $200 million every month for Mexican and Colombian cartels. Other investigations uncovered cocaine disguised as charcoal, gold-based laundering operations and cocaine-for-weapons dealings involving armed groups. Much of this criminal architecture operated through Venezuela, where IRGC and Hezbollah networks received political protection, passports, air routes and access to gold. After Nicolás Maduro’s government collapsed, these networks began shifting into Colombia, Ecuador and other regional corridors. The Islamic Republic has turned terrorism, drug trafficking and organized crime into instruments of foreign policy. Colombia has now declared that criminal enterprise incompatible with diplomatic relations.

When Erdoğan spoke about Palestinians at the United Nations yesterday, the Palestinian delegation applauded enthusiastically, visibly energized by his speech. When the barely coherent, rambling imbecile Masoud Pezeshkian spoke, they sat stone-faced and unmoved, offering no applause, no enthusiasm, only humiliating, deafening silence. The Islamic Republic sold out a nation of more than 90 million Iranians for the Palestinian cause, yet the Islamic Republic means nothing to the very people they claim to defend. This is what happens when you sell out your nation for a distant foreign cause.

As Masoud Pezeshkian takes the podium at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, diplomats walk out en masse, leaving him to address a largely empty hall. For 47 disastrous years, the Islamic Republic has isolated Iran and turned our country into a pariah state. Iranians have been forced to endure such humiliating scenes despite being a globally minded people with an open culture and one of the world’s great histories.

Masoud Pezeshkian is such an incoherent and inarticulate speaker that the translator is literally improvising to make his rambling sound coherent.

Iranian Balochi forces in southeastern Iran release a statement against the terrorist IRGC following heavy clashes in Saravan. The resistance identifies its fighters as “the brave children of Iran” and describes the Balochi people as “the oppressed people of Iran.” The statement says Islamic Republic forces stormed and surrounded a resistance position before reinforcements arrived, triggering hours of fighting. It claims dozens of regime personnel were killed or wounded, including two senior commanders. Four Iranian Balochi fighters were also killed. Conflict activity has intensified significantly across this region of Iran, with increasingly frequent clashes between Iranian Balochi forces and the regime’s forces.

The Islamic Republic has turned Iran’s children and students into human shields and soldiers. Security forces have repeatedly turned school campuses into staging grounds — parking armored vehicles, storing weapons, briefing riot units before they deploy against protesters. During the January 2026 crackdown, Imam Ali High School in Arak was used exactly this way: motorbikes and armored vehicles lined up in the schoolyard before units moved out to suppress demonstrators. Under international law, once a school hosts military hardware, it can lose its status as a protected civilian space — meaning the regime is putting children's safety on the line for its own operations. At the same time, the state is arming the children directly. Iran's "Janfada" (self-sacrifice) program is training boys as young as 12 for checkpoint duty, surveillance, drone operation, and weapons handling. Officials have confirmed that even younger kids will be brought in next because demand is high. This is not a fringe accusation — Amnesty International has called the recruitment of 12-year-old child soldiers a war crime, after an 11-year-old was killed at a checkpoint alongside his father, a Basij member. Militarized schools and militarized children are not two separate stories. It is one policy: a regime that treats its own kids as human shields when it needs cover, and as manpower when it needs bodies. That is the story that should be spreading — not buried under war headlines.

❌ Iranian Baloch fighters have carried out a series of successful attacks against IRGC targets over the past couple of weeks, including several notable assassinations. Senior IRGC commander Hossein Zaraifi, head of the IRGC’s Sajad base in Saravan, Sistan and Baluchestan province, was killed by Baloch armed fighters. His death comes just days after Baloch armed men killed police captain Alireza Mehrabi on the Bazman–Iranshahr road in southeastern Iran.

The Islamic Republic’s nefarious regional ambitions and decades of exporting instability were put front and center at the United Nations. Timor-Leste President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate José Ramos-Horta delivered a devastating assessment of the Islamic Republic’s regional policy: “We are aware of the mad approach of Iran’s leaders to achieve regional dominance.” He accused the Islamic Republic of fueling religious extremism to destabilize neighboring states and condemned its attacks against neighboring countries and civilian infrastructure. The significance goes beyond one speech. For decades, the Islamic Republic built its regional strategy around extending its influence beyond Iran through the IRGC, armed groups and political networks across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the Palestinian territories. Then this year came direct Iranian missile and drone attacks across the region, including against Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman. Countries far beyond the immediate conflict are increasingly confronting the consequences of a regional strategy built around armed proxies, missiles, drones and the pursuit of influence across other states. The Islamic Republic calls it “resistance.” Its neighbors have spent decades living with the instability it produces.

🚨 “Are we the sources of instability?” Pezeshkian says this with a straight face while the Islamic Republic is the world’s worst source of instability in the world’s most unstable region. The Islamic Republic spent decades building an entire foreign-policy doctrine around projecting its power through armed groups across the Middle East. Iranian officials once openly boasted of influence over four Arab capitals: Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Sanaa. The IRGC built, armed, financed or supported a network stretching across the region: Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Houthis in Yemen. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Kataib Hezbollah, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and other armed groups in Iraq. The Islamic Republic backed Assad in Syria, armed Hezbollah, supported militias attacking U.S. forces and supplied the Houthis as they attacked Saudi Arabia and international shipping. Then Pezeshkian stands before the world and asks: “Are we the sources of instability? We only seek to live independently.” You cannot spend decades exporting military power across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the Palestinian territories and then portray the Islamic Republic as a government simply trying to mind its own business. Pezeshkian can ask the question. The Islamic Republic’s own record provides the answer.

After being badly battered in war and economically choked by an effective U.S. blockade, the once-bellicose IRGC is now openly making the case for negotiations. What a difference six months makes. In March, the IRGC boasted that it could sustain an intense war for at least six months, talked up enormous missile stockpiles and promised even more powerful weapons. Now IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebbi is explaining that negotiations should not be rejected and can instead be viewed as “another battlefield.” “Negotiation does not mean compromise,” he says. Negotiation is simply another form of war, fought with words and diplomacy instead of weapons. The rhetoric is revealing. The IRGC cannot suddenly present negotiations as desirable without explaining the reversal to the same supporters it spent months preparing for prolonged war. And the material reality has changed dramatically. The U.S. blockade has devastated Iran’s ability to export crude through its traditional routes. Iranian crude loadings collapsed from roughly 2 million barrels per day in March to only around 220,000–255,000 barrels per day in August. Trump’s strategy has shifted the negotiating leverage toward the United States. Military pressure badly damaged the Islamic Republic’s war machine, while the blockade has attacked one of the regime’s most important economic lifelines. Now the Islamic Republic is offering to reopen the Strait of Hormuz if the United States eases military pressure and lifts the blockade on Iranian ports. That tells you exactly where the pressure is hurting. The blockade is now one of the United States’ strongest pieces of leverage. Maintaining it keeps that economic pressure in place; lifting it would give the Islamic Republic badly needed breathing room while the fundamental disputes remain unresolved. This is not the language of an IRGC that suddenly discovered moderation. It is an institution trying to make negotiations ideologically acceptable after months of war and economic strangulation dramatically weakened its position. The same IRGC that promised a long war is now telling its supporters that sitting across the negotiating table is simply another way of fighting. They can call it “another battlefield” all they want. The change in posture speaks for itself.

🚨 Another round of diplomatic theater is underway while the real negotiation continues through blockades, missiles and attacks on shipping. Trump described the three-hour U.S.-Islamic Republic meeting in New York as “very good” and “productive,” with another meeting expected. But an American who was in the room told Al Arabiya that the United States rejected the Islamic Republic’s demand to lift the naval blockade, and that the chances of reaching an actual agreement remain very limited. That gets to the heart of the problem. The Islamic Republic wants the blockade of its ports lifted, frozen assets released and military pressure reduced in exchange for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The United States refuses to lift the blockade first. The Islamic Republic refuses to give up its leverage over Hormuz first. And while diplomats negotiate in New York, commercial ships continue to come under attack around Hormuz. Then there are the same unresolved issues that helped sink the previous agreement: the nuclear stockpile and inspections, missiles, Iran-backed armed groups and whether the Islamic Republic’s political leadership can actually deliver compliance from the IRGC. So behind all the optimistic language, the fundamental equation has barely changed. The United States is using the blockade to economically choke the Islamic Republic. The Islamic Republic is using instability in Hormuz to impose costs on global shipping and energy markets. Until one side is prepared to surrender meaningful leverage, the meetings may change the rhetoric, but the confrontation continues.

🚨 The Islamic Republic’s billionaire oligarchs are now threatening countries cooperating with U.S. sanctions as the financial networks that sustain them are increasingly choked off. Babak Zanjani is threatening Azerbaijan and Iraq, declaring “we will put them in their place” for blocking Iranian airline routes. This is a businessman the Islamic Republic itself sentenced to death over a multibillion-dollar oil embezzlement case before commuting his sentence and allowing him to return to major business activities. The U.S. Treasury says Zanjani subsequently re-emerged backing regime-linked projects and built financial networks used to evade sanctions and move money to the IRGC. Now he speaks about neighboring countries using “we” as though he represents the state. And what are Azerbaijan and Iraq actually doing? They are restricting Iranian airlines as U.S. sanctions tighten around the Islamic Republic’s aviation sector. Foreign companies servicing these airlines risk being cut off from the U.S. financial system. The Islamic Republic and IRGC are among the principal targets of this pressure. The U.S. Treasury says Iranian commercial aviation has been used to transport IRGC personnel, weapons and equipment, and the new sanctions are explicitly designed to cut the economic lifelines sustaining the regime and IRGC. Zanjani also has enormous personal business interests at stake. His re-emerged business empire spans transportation, infrastructure and finance, while U.S. authorities have tied his networks to sanctions evasion and IRGC financing. So this is hardly a disinterested businessman defending ordinary Iranians. The sanctions are squeezing the system he profits from, the IRGC networks U.S. authorities say he has helped finance, and the international access those networks depend on. His response is to threaten the neighboring countries complying with that pressure. From military commanders and officials to regime-connected businessmen, threats and intimidation have become routine rhetoric surrounding the Islamic Republic.

The Islamic Republic is once again playing its “reformist” card as pressure on the regime intensifies and diplomacy with the United States returns to the table. Mehdi Karroubi, whose 14-year house arrest was lifted last year, is now calling for President Masoud Pezeshkian to meet President Trump “in the national interest.” The timing is striking. Pezeshkian is at the UN General Assembly as the Islamic Republic searches for a diplomatic path amid war, sanctions and mounting economic pressure. This is a pattern Iran has seen before: when pressure on the Islamic Republic becomes severe, its reformist faction provides a more acceptable face for engagement with the West and argues that diplomacy can strengthen moderation over confrontation. But reformists are not an opposition to the Islamic Republic. They operate inside the same system, participate in elections controlled by institutions of the Islamic Republic, and presidential candidates must first survive Guardian Council vetting. Ultimate authority over Iran’s most consequential security and foreign-policy decisions remains with the Supreme Leader. The pattern has repeated for decades. Khatami offered “Dialogue of Civilizations.” Rouhani and Zarif offered engagement and delivered the JCPOA. Now Pezeshkian is being presented as another potential diplomatic channel during a moment of enormous pressure. There are genuine disputes between reformists and hardliners over tactics, governance and foreign policy. But neither represents an opposition seeking to replace the Islamic Republic. That distinction is critical. The choice presented to the outside world is repeatedly reformists versus hardliners. The much bigger question for Iranians is the future of the political system both factions operate within.

🚨 The Islamic Republic continues to use schools as military staging grounds and training sites, with new footage showing Iran-backed Fatemiyoun fighters training with weapons inside a newly built girls’ school. The footage was recorded at a girls’ middle school in Gasht, Saravan County, Sistan and Baluchestan, showing members of the Afghan Fatemiyoun militia conducting military drills on school grounds. Fatemiyoun is not an ordinary local security force. It is an Afghan militia organized and supported by the IRGC Quds Force, originally used extensively in Syria. And this is not an isolated case. An investigation earlier this year identified at least 70 civilian locations across 17 Iranian provinces where security or military forces had positioned personnel, weapons or equipment during the war. 34 of those locations were primary or secondary schools. Other locations included mosques, hospitals, universities, stadiums, parks and government buildings. Even Tehran’s governor recently called for schools still being used by other state institutions to be returned to the Education Ministry before the new school year. The pattern raises a serious concern: civilian spaces intended for children and communities are repeatedly being drawn into the Islamic Republic’s security and military infrastructure. Now an Iran-backed foreign militia is training inside a girls’ school in Sistan and Baluchestan. Schools should be schools, not military training grounds.

🔴 URGENT CALL TO ACTION: SAVE TARANEH AND ROMINA RAHIMI Taraneh and Romina Rahimi are Iranian twin sisters from Isfahan who were arrested after joining the January 2026 protests. They reportedly turned 20 in detention and remain in Dowlatabad Prison in Isfahan. TARANEH HAS BEEN SENTENCED TO DEATH. ROMINA HAS RECEIVED PRISON SENTENCES TOTALING 36 YEARS. Their initial sentences were issued by Branch 1 of the Isfahan Revolutionary Court in the Shohada Square case. Taraneh’s death sentence was imposed on the charge of moharebeh — “waging war against God.” Their family reports that both sisters were subjected to torture and coerced into confessing. Interrogators allegedly threatened to rape Romina in front of Taraneh unless Taraneh confessed. Taraneh has also reportedly been denied food by prison authorities, leaving her dependent on leftovers shared by other prisoners. Her health is an urgent concern. She has reportedly struggled to walk and been denied hospital treatment despite a doctor recommending urgent hospitalization and an MRI. Medication and medical equipment brought by her family have also reportedly been withheld. As of September 19, their lawyers were reportedly preparing an appeal after obtaining access to the case file following months of waiting. Taraneh must not be executed. Both sisters deserve safety, dignity, and a future. They must be protected from torture and provided with adequate food, necessary medical care, access to their family and lawyers, and a fair legal process. Speak their names. Share their story. Be the voice of Taraneh and Romina Rahimi.