Gunmen kill Guards' intelligence commander in southeast Iran
Gunmen shot dead a local Revolutionary Guards intelligence commander in the town of Pishin, Rask county, in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan province on Saturday night, a rights group reported.
Gunmen shot dead a local Revolutionary Guards intelligence commander in the town of Pishin, Rask county, in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan province on Saturday night, a rights group reported.
The commander, identified as Iraj Shams, was gunned down inside a barbershop in the city market and died at the scene after multiple shots, Halvash -- a website covering Sistan-Baluchestan -- quoted local sources as saying.
“Around 9 p.m. in the city bazaar, when Iraj Shams was inside a barbershop, he was targeted in a shooting. Armed assailants fired repeatedly at the commander, and he died at the scene,” Halvash wrote.
The motive and identity of the attackers remain unknown and no group has claimed responsibility so far.
Shams had taken part in security missions in the Pishin area, including detentions and crowd control, local sources said.
Halvash reported that residents had accused him of involvement in arrests and repression in the district. Authorities have not provided details.
Recent clashes in Sistan-Baluchestan
In late August, separate armed clashes in the province left one Revolutionary Guards member dead and another wounded.
“Eight armed men were killed and one hostage was freed” in operations across Iranshahr, Khash and Saravan, said Brigadier General Hassan Mortazavi, commander of the Guards’ Quds base, who also reported several arrests without details.
Police spokesman Saeed Montazerolmahdi said special police units acted alongside the Guards and confirmed that one officer was killed and another wounded.
The Sunni militant group Jaish al-Adl — designated a terrorist organization by both Iran and the United States — later acknowledged it had suffered casualties in those confrontations, saying details were still being verified.
Sistan-Baluchestan, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan, has long been a center of insurgency by Sunni militant groups and is considered one of Iran’s most restive regions. Jaish al-Adl says it fights for greater rights for Iran’s Baluch minority; Tehran accuses it of links to cross-border militant networks.
Haghshenas said restoring the wetland requires $300 million and called for measures to stop industrial, agricultural and household wastewater from flowing into it.
He warned that decades of untreated sewage, sediment and pollution, compounded by falling Caspian water levels, have left the wetland on the brink of ecological collapse.
The wetland, registered under the international Ramsar Convention in 1975, is a critical habitat for fish, birds and local livelihoods.
Environmental officials said invasive plants, shrinking water flow and mismanagement have deepened the crisis, but stressed that “Anzali is not dead and can recover” if pollution is curbed and water retained.
In August, a senior Iranian environment official warned that Lake Urmia in northwestern Iran, once the Middle East’s largest, will completely dry up by the end of summer if current conditions persist.
“The lake's water level on August 1, 2025, was 1,269.74 meters, its area had shrunk to 581 square kilometers, and its volume was down to about half a billion cubic meters,” said Ahmadreza Lahijanzadeh, deputy for marine and wetland affairs at Iran’s Department of Environment.
Two children were killed on August 5 in a village in northern Golestan province when a gas leak ignited as power was restored, the paper said.
Ten days later, two youths aged 16 and 18 in Fars suffocated after sheltering from the heat in a running car inside a garage; and a Tabriz resident died in an elevator-related accident as power disruptions multiplied,” according to Etemad.
“I wish we had never had electricity. It took the lives of my two children. They had just begun to live, had just stepped into society full of hopes and dreams. Suddenly, when the power came back, my house exploded. I came and saw the wall had collapsed on my daughter. Blood was coming from everywhere,” the bereaved mother said in a video shared after the Golestan blast.
Fatal incidents and urban hazards
Fire officials in Isfahan reported a 284% jump in elevator entrapments over a one-month period tied to outages. In the southwestern city of Yasuj, up to 20 people were trapped at once during blackouts, while reports from Khorramabad in west put such incidents at three to four times last year’s level, Etemad wrote.
Etemad interviewed 11 people across Yazd, Tehran, Ahvaz, Shiraz, Ardebil and Urmia, including patients with butterfly disease and people with spinal cord injuries.
A young woman in Shiraz said a routine 10-minute eye procedure stretched to over an hour because a surgical microscope repeatedly failed.
“Power fluctuations burned the microscope lamp in the middle of my eye surgery,” she said, adding that repeated replacements failed until the device was swapped out, leaving lasting damage to her right eye.
Patients with chronic conditions described blackouts as dangerous and costly. Frequent cuts forced daily dressing changes and purchases of pricier creams, A butterfly disease patient in Yazd said.
A man with a spinal injury in rural Urmia feared his anti-bedsore mattress would fail in surges: without it, he said, pressure ulcers were likely. Others said that when electricity goes, well pumps stop and mobile networks and home internet also drop, compounding risks for those needing help.
Strain on daily life and business
Shopkeepers and small businesses reported spoiled food and lost inventory; one confectioner filmed trays of discarded cakes, blaming a single outage for rent, labor and waste. Poultry farmers in Dezful, Khuzestan province, cited higher mortality and reduced chick placement amid daily cuts.
Etemad’s reporting underscores how prolonged outages—often four to five hours a day—are cascading through homes, clinics and city infrastructure. The accounts point to a growing public safety challenge where routine power cuts are now measured not just in inconvenience, but in injuries and deaths.
The café’s Instagram page had advertised a Friday gathering with a DJ and cash prizes for participants. But it later posted an image of a police closure notice and urged followers not to attend.
Despite extensive legal restrictions, more women have taken up motorcycles in Iranian cities in recent years, particularly since the protests over Mahsa Amini’s death in morality police custody. The trend has spread beyond Tehran to places such as Yazd and other provinces, according to officials.
Under current law, women are barred from obtaining motorcycle licenses. The traffic code amendment passed in 2010 specifies men only, leaving women who ride in a legal vacuum. Driving without a license is an offense, yet enforcement against women riders has been uneven, with police issuing warnings or seizing bikes at their discretion.
Kazem Delkhosh, deputy in the parliamentary affairs office of President Masoud Pezeshkian, said in August the government is considering changes. “We are preparing legislation for women who want to ride and the women’s affairs office is also working on a bill,” Delkhosh told the state-run Iran newspaper.
Lack of licensing carries wider consequences, he added. “If a female rider is injured or causes damage, there is no license to hold her accountable or for insurance to cover losses,” Delkhosh said.
Senior police officials maintain the current ban is binding. “According to existing law, licenses for female motorcyclists cannot be issued,” the deputy head of the traffic police said last month.
Religious ban
Clerics often argue that women riding motorcycles (or bicycles) in public settings may attract male attention, threaten societal morality, and undermine women’s chastity—even if they're fully covered.
Others, however, argue the restrictions are inconsistent. “If a woman can drive a bus or truck and earn people’s trust, why not a motorcycle?” sociologist Maryam Yousefi asked in an interview with Iran newspaper.
Rights groups have repeatedly called for change. On International Women’s Day this year, 30 organizations demanded an end to gender-based discrimination.
The sealing of the café has once more underscored the clash between social realities and restrictions, leaving women riders caught between growing public visibility and an unresolved legal void.
