Russia will meet Iran's military needs despite UN sanctions, Lavrov says

The shortage of pediatricians has reached alarming levels, said Ahmad Reza Rezaeizadeh and questioned why “general practitioners in Iran are not interested in specializing in pediatrics.” Many doctors now turn to the lucrative cosmetic field instead of entering essential specialties such as child medicine, he added.

Iran International reported on October 5 that with the rise of extreme beauty trends on social media, cosmetic surgery clinics across the country have seen a surge in demand.

Health officials have repeatedly sounded the alarm over unfilled positions in key medical disciplines. More than 80 percent of emergency medicine residencies and one-third of anesthesiology positions remain vacant, Ali Jafarian, deputy health minister said recently.

Nearly 29 percent of registered general practitioners in Iran are not practicing medicine, the state-affiliated Nour News website reported in September. Falling interest in six core specialties poses “a structural challenge to Iran’s healthcare system,” said Abbasali Rais Karami, head of Tehran University of Medical Sciences.

Budget crisis and policy failure

The shortage, Rezaeizadeh said, reflects years of policy neglect and underinvestment. “We have patients in various cities but no specialist doctors. In the past four years, the infrastructure for medical education has not been developed. We need 600 trillion rials to expand medical training capacity,” he said.

Policymakers, he warned, remain focused on the number of general physicians rather than ensuring pathways for them to enter specialist programs. “No one is thinking about the prerequisites for admitting general practitioners to specialty training,” he said.

Eghtesad24 reported last year that the lack of pediatricians had already become a major challenge across several provinces, forcing families to travel to Tehran for their children’s medical care.

Pediatric graduates have dropped to less than one percent of total medical specialists since 2017, according to the Research Center of Iran’s parliament. The trend has been worsened by an accelerating wave of emigration among Iranian doctors.

Merit-based policies were vital to retaining talent, said Health Ministry official Shahin Akhondzadeh in September, noting that “most of the top 100 university entrance exam scorers in medical fields emigrate because proper conditions are not provided for them.”

Likening the bombing of Fordow to the 2020 killing of Quds Force chief, Qassem Soleimani, killed in an airstrike in Iraq, Netanyahu said to Trump: “You have changed the balance of power.”

Trump’s address came as Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza released all the remaining 20 living hostages held since October 7, 2023, when the militant group, designated a terrorist organization by countries such as the US, captured over 250 and killed over 1,200 mostly civilians.

The living hostages were back in Israel by lunchtime on Monday, while 28 other dead one were still due for release and the first of 1,950 Palestinian prisoners on terror charges were released from Israeli jails.

Since October 7, Netanyahu said, Iran and its allies around the region have all been weakened. The deaths of leaders including Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had shown the damage done to Iran’s ‘axis of resistance’ - a group of allies united under the Palestinian cause and aiming for the destruction of Israel - which attacked the Jewish state from seven fronts in the wake of October 7.

“Our enemies now know the strength of Israel,” he said. Israel achieved “amazing victories over Hamas and the entire Iranian terror axis,” he added, saying that after the bloody 12-day war in June which saw death and destruction to both Iran and Israel, Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile program has been “rolled back.”

Speaker of the Knesset, Amir Ohana spoke of the 'bravery' of Trump, saying the bombing of Iran’s three nuclear facilities, Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz, in Operation Midnight Hammer, was a huge act of bravery after Israel launched Operation Rising Lion on June 13 when it launched air attacks which killed swathes of Iran's military leadership and top nuclear experts.

Ohana called Trump a “colossus who will be enshrined in the pantheon of history,” declaring that the Jewish people will remember him “thousands of years from now.”

"Iran, we are ready when you are and it will be the best decision Iran has ever made, and it’s gonna happen," he said in an address welcoming the first phase of a US-mediated Gaza peace plan.

"Because of us, the enemies of all civilization are in retreat, thanks to the bravery and skill of the Israeli defense forces and Operation Rising Lion," he said, referring to Israel's surprise air strikes on Iran on June 13 which triggered the 12-day war.

Praising Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his first foreign address to a parliament during his second term, he said: "Great job and my people loved working with you. Many of Iran’s top terrorists including nuclear scientists and commanders have been extinguished from this earth."

During Operation Midnight Hammer, he said, which saw the US join the war and strike Iran's three main nuclear facilities, Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan, "the US military flew seven of those beautiful B2 bombers, (we just ordered 28 more of them, a little updated version) and almost 100 other planes went with them, including fighter jets".

As 20 living hostages were released from Gaza after two years in Iran-backed Hamas captivity, Trump said that since he came to office, the US had finished eight wars in eight months, including the Iran war.

"We dropped 14 bombs on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which has been confirmed to have obliterated those facilities and together we helped stop the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism from making nuclear weapons. If we didn’t do that, there would be a dark cloud over this [Gaza] deal. This was our last shot,” he said.

"If there were large scale nuclear weapons in the hands of iran we wouldn’t be here today. We took a big cloud off the Middle East and off Israel,” he said, referring to the other nations in the region who have for decades feared Iran’s nuclear capabilities. "They took a big hit."

As Trump now looks to expand the 2020 Abraham Accords, which saw Arab nations such as the United Arab Emirates normalize relations with Israel, he spoke of peace with Iran.

"It would be great if we made a peace deal with them, wouldn’t it be nice, I think they want to, I think they’re tired," he said.

"When someone told me they had started their nuclear program again, I said, they’re not starting anything, they want to survive, the last thing they want is to start digging holes again in mountains that just got blown up. But first we have to get Russia done."

Speaking of Iran's military allies in the region, he said that "the enemies of all civilization are in retreat".

"In Lebanon, the dagger of Hezbollah long aimed at Israel’s throat has been totally shattered and my administration is supporting the new president of Lebanon and permanently disarm Iran’s Hezbollah brigades," he said.

Since October 7, when Iran-backed Hamas invaded Israel, killing 1,200 mostly civilians and taking more than 250 hostage, Iran and its allies across the region joined Hamas in attacking Israel from countries including Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.

"By force of arms you’ve won," Trump told Israel's parliament after the longest Gaza war since Hamas took control of the strip in 2007 came to an end.

The Islamic Republic has announced that it was invited by Egypt to participate in the summit, but the more important point is that Cairo does not act on such sensitive matters without coordination and a green light from Washington.

Therefore, this invitation should be analyzed within the broader framework of the US policy of “managing and consolidating the Middle East” — a policy that has entered a new phase following the de-escalation in Gaza and the Arab states’ move toward normalization with Israel.

On the surface, Washington suggests that Tehran, too, could be part of the peace process and even a potential signatory to the Abraham Accord. In reality, however, this message is not driven by a genuine desire to integrate the Islamic Republic into a new regional order, but rather to exert soft pressure on Tehran to move toward implicit recognition of Israel.

In other words, the invitation to Sharm el-Sheikh is a strategic test for the Islamic Republic: is Iran prepared, in exchange for an end to pressure and sanctions, to take a step — even indirectly — toward “recognizing Israel”?

Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic faces a situation where rejecting the invitation could also prove costly. Cornered and weakened, it finds its options reduced to a single question: to go or not to go to Sharm el-Sheikh.

Iran’s nuclear program has been indefinitely stalled — or, as Donald Trump put it, obliterated. Its missile program has also suffered heavy losses, with Israeli strikes inflicting serious damage on Iran’s arsenal and defense infrastructure.

In this context, the United States seeks to use Iran’s relative military weakness, mounting economic strain, the decline of its regional proxies, and Hamas’s defeat to make Tehran understand the kind of peace and stability Washington envisions for the region — a peace built on accepting the new Middle East security order, where Israel is no longer the enemy but a recognized, established power.

From Tehran’s perspective, however, attending such a summit would amount to implicitly accepting a fundamental shift in the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy.

Recognizing Israel — even indirectly, through participation in a joint conference — could create a deep rupture in the Islamic Republic’s ideological legitimacy. Yet refusing to attend would perpetuate the same policy of isolation and stagnation that has left the country politically and diplomatically paralyzed.

Since October 7, 2023, the Islamic Republic has repeatedly found itself in unviable positions.

Had Iran attended the Sharm el-Sheikh summit at the presidential level, it could have marked the beginning of a new chapter in its regional and even global relations.

A Pezeshkian flight to Cairo would have symbolized the collapse of the Islamic Republic’s ideological core and suggested a historic turn toward negotiation and compromise. But repeating the old pattern — avoiding such openings — once again leaves Tehran isolated, or perhaps worse, on the verge of collapse.

Thus, the real meaning of the invitation lies not in goodwill or mutual respect, but in the pressure and testing designed by the United States and its allies to define the Islamic Republic’s future course.

Today, the Islamic Republic faces a historic choice: to adapt its regional policy and join the emerging order, or to persist in its old path and bear the growing costs of isolation, economic decline, and security erosion. So far, its choice — and the fate it leads to — has become increasingly clear.

Mizan's report said the sale of such dolls has recently become common on social media platforms and in certain stores, adding that many sellers are unaware of their “anti-religious nature.”

The prosecutor’s office instructed judicial officers to identify those involved in the production, distribution, and marketing of the dolls as soon as possible and to hand over the suspects to the judiciary, the report added.

Mizan’s report comes a day after a petition was launched on Karzar.net, a government-monitored Iranian petition platform, calling on the judiciary to prosecute those behind the dolls and tighten oversight of online sales.

The campaign, which has gathered more than 3,300 signatures since Saturday, accuses the manufacturers of insulting Shiite sanctities.

The dolls, marketed under names such as Morteza and Marziyeh, are designed as stress-relief toys shaped like animals including gorillas, monkeys, or pigs.

The name Morteza is a title associated with Imam Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of Prophet Muhammad revered by Shiite Muslims as the first Imam. Marziyeh is also a title associated with Fatimah, the Prophet’s daughter and a central figure in Shiite Islam.

According to Iranian media reports, the dolls have been sold on Iran’s biggest online marketplace Digikala and other platforms, including Instagram.