Iran turns to armed forces to help tackle economic woes

“The Houthis are currently facing a crisis of options and priorities, pressing internal challenges, and a complex regional landscape that does not allow them much, especially after indications of a shift in some of Tehran’s approaches towards the countries of the region,” the outlet wrote on Thursday.

Quds Force commander Abdolreza Shahlaei returned to Sanaa after previously being recalled to Iran, the report said.

“The Revolutionary Guards and experts who are present as jihadist assistants to the Houthis do not fill this strategic void. They are essentially an extension and reflection of the confusion that exists in Tehran… The Iranians were forced to return the prominent leader, Abdolreza Shahlaei, to Sana’a after October 7.”

Shahlaei is one of the Revolutionary Guard’s most enigmatic commanders, and Iran International reported in March that the Islamic Republic had neither confirmed nor denied his existence.

The United States has imposed sanctions on Shahlaei and set a $15 million reward for information on his network and activities. US officials say he survived a drone strike the same night former Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani was killed in Baghdad and remains central to Iran’s Yemen operations.

A separate report on Friday in the Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat quoted senior Yemeni political sources as saying that Iran is increasing military and security support to compensate for what they called its setbacks elsewhere.

Recent Israeli strikes exposed major security failures within the Houthis, damaging the group’s standing, according to source speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat.

Both paths remain open, Abbas Araghchi told a conference in Tehran on Sunday. “Those who want to engage with Iran must decide which experience they want to base their approach on. We are ready for both,” he said.

Araghchi described the June fighting with Israel as a success for the Islamic Republic, saying the other party failed to reach its objectives.

Tehran, he said, rebuilt its defenses rapidly. “On the first day of the war Iran prepared itself for defense within hours,” he added.

Israeli media in June reported that Israeli forces struck 1,480 military targets inside Iran over the 12 days and flew 1,500 sorties in Iranian airspace. Israel, the reports said, dropped about 3,500 munitions nationwide, with Tehran the main focus of the attacks. Thirty senior Revolutionary Guards commanders were killed, Iranian outlets said.

Iran’s military capability, Araghchi maintained, has since been restored and added that the country’s nuclear program survived the strikes.

US President Donald Trump has insisted repeatedly that American airstrikes wiped out Iran’s nuclear capacity.

Requests to reopen talks with Tehran, according to Araghchi, have resumed because military pressure failed to halt Iran’s nuclear work. “They did not achieve what they wanted through military action,” he said.

He also said last week that from Tehran’s perspective there is currently no possibility of talks with Washington, blaming what he called the absence of constructive intent from the United States.

‘Armed negotiations’

In separate remarks on the sidelines of the event on Sunday, Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh said that any direct engagement with Washington would be conducted under armed conditions because Iran does not trust the United States.

“It would certainly be an armed negotiation because we are ready to confront any deception,” Khatibzadeh added.

“The Islamic Republic has always been ready – and has expressed its readiness – to act under those circumstances within the framework set by the Supreme Leader’s directives.”

Washington has been sending mixed messages through third countries about reviving nuclear negotiations, Khatibzadeh said on Tuesday.

However, Ali Larijani, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, said Tehran has not sent any new message to the United States.

Before the June war, Tehran and Washington held five rounds of nuclear talks.

Trump said on Friday that Iran now wants to negotiate a deal after the US strikes on its nuclear sites in June, arguing that renewed US military strength had changed Tehran’s stance.

“Iran is a different place” after the June strikes, Trump said aboard his plane en route to Florida. “Iran wants to negotiate a deal, too. Everybody wants to negotiate with us now.” This shift, he said, would not have happened “if we didn’t have military strength, if we didn’t rebuild our military in my first term.”

The US president earlier told Central Asian leaders that Iran had asked the White House whether sanctions could be lifted.

Iran has rejected the US demand for a full halt to uranium enrichment.

Pollution levels in 14 cities across Khuzestan had reached the red category, meaning the air is unsafe for all groups, Iran’s national air-quality monitoring system reported on Saturday. Four other cities were listed as orange, posing risks to vulnerable populations.

Concentrations of airborne particles smaller than 2.5 microns, according to the report, had exceeded permissible limits at many monitoring stations, pushing much of the province into hazardous territory.

Rising hospital visits and wider spread

Khuzestan has faced repeated episodes of severe pollution in recent days. Farhad Soltani, acting deputy for treatment at Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, said hospital visits had risen sharply.

“The number of patients coming to hospitals increased 15 to 20 percent in October compared with the same period last year, and 20 to 25 percent in November,” he said, warning that pollution in Ahvaz and Khuzestan had reached a point where “the entire population is affected.”

Air quality has also deteriorated in other major cities. Iranian media reported that the air in the religious city of Mashhad was classified as unhealthy for sensitive groups for an eighth consecutive day on Saturday. The situation was driven by continued use of fossil fuels in industry, power plants and vehicles, combined with stagnant atmospheric conditions, Tasnim news agency wrote.

Isfahan choked for eleventh straight day

In central Iran, air quality in Isfahan remained in the red category for the eleventh consecutive day on Saturday, according to local monitoring data.

Pollution levels in the metropolis and some of its neighboring cities have risen to the point that the air is now deemed unsafe for the general population. Experts warned that conditions could deteriorate further in the coming days, citing the persistence of stagnant weather patterns and rising pollutant concentrations.

58,975 people in Iran had died from causes attributed to air pollution in the past Iranian year, equivalent to 161 deaths a day and around seven every hour, said Deputy Health Minister Alireza Raisi last week. Pollution-linked mortality, he added, had imposed an estimated $17.2 billion in economic losses over the same period.

Aliabadi said the price of sending desalinated water from the south to the capital was far above what the state could justify in day-to-day planning. “This is not an economic option,” he said, adding that officials “will do whatever is needed” if people’s safety is at risk.

He said Tehran’s water stress meant all workable options had to be reviewed but said some crops consumed water in ways that “do not make economic sense” and should not be supported.

Aliabadi said large desalination sites were being built in Chabahar, Bandar Abbas and Khuzestan to strengthen water supplies in the south and draw in private investment. If those plants ease pressure in the south, he said, water now moved upstream could instead be kept for Tehran and northern areas, though he said this needed detailed study.

Former minister voices strong objection

Former transport minister Abbas Akhoundi criticized the approach, saying it overlooks environmental limits and the long-term cost for the public.

He wrote that the government could not “force nature to bend to machines” and said both capital relocation plans and major desalination transfers misunderstood why Iran faces deep water stress. He said such projects would burden the country without solving the core problem and would mainly benefit contractors.

Water specialists warn Iran is nearing what they describe as water bankruptcy, where use has exceeded supply for years and the reserves that once fed major cities have been depleted.

Kaveh Madani, director of the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, told Eye for Iran that Tehran’s reservoirs are near historic lows and that the capital is approaching “day zero,” when steady tap water can no longer be assumed.

He said if winter rains fall short, daily life in major cities could shift to storage tanks, tanker deliveries and bottled water.

Madani, director of the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health and former deputy head of Iran’s Department of Environment, told Eye for Iran that the country is not going through a normal drought but what he calls water bankruptcy.

This is a condition in which consumption exceeds supply and the reserves built over generations have already been drained.

“We have never seen such a thing,” Madani said. “The people of Tehran, the city that is the richest, most populous and strongest politically, is running out of water, is facing day zero.”

Satellite images and field data show alarming patterns nationwide. Tehran’s five main reservoirs are at some of their lowest recorded levels. Mashhad’s major dams have fallen below 3 percent capacity.

In many regions groundwater has sunk so deep that recovery is unlikely in this generation. The Ministry of Energy has already prepared rationing plans. Some neighborhoods have reported nighttime cuts. Officials have urged households to purchase storage tanks.

But experts stress that households are only a small part of the equation. More than 70 percent of Iran’s 90 million people live in large cities with no mid-size urban centers to absorb population shifts.

Ninety percent of all water use still goes to agriculture, a sector governments have protected for decades under a policy of food self-sufficiency. That choice has prevented water from being redirected toward cities even as the climate has grown hotter and drier.

For decades the state masked scarcity by expanding supply: building dams, drilling deeper wells and pumping water across basins from distant aquifers.

These measures created the illusion that dry regions, including the Tehran plain, could continue to grow. Over time that perception encouraged development and migration beyond what the land could sustain.

Aquifers drained, river exhaustion

With reserves depleted, Iran’s cities have very little left to fall back on.

Madani warns that if winter rains fail life in major cities could shift abruptly. “It means pumps and stores, delivery through tankers, more bottled water instead of tap water, a change of lifestyle.”

At the same time he cautions against mistaking brief rainfall or even seasonal floods for real recovery.

One storm could momentarily refill canals or ease pressure on local networks. But the underlying deficits, from drained aquifers to collapsing river systems, remain unchanged. “These days are real,” Madani said. “And even if in a few months there are floods, we shouldn’t conclude the problem has been resolved forever.”

Years of sanctions and a so-called resistance economy have pushed the state to extract whatever natural resources remain. Environmental reform is costly and slow with benefits that may not appear for a decade.

Asking citizens to cut consumption requires public trust, something the government lacks. Without transparent information about what reserves remain and clear communication about the severity of the crisis, cooperation will remain limited.

There is still a narrow window, Madani says. A few hours of concentrated rainfall could buy cities days. Collective reductions in consumption could buy weeks. But the structural imbalance, too many people and too little water, is now a national reality.

“This is a national security issue,” he said. “It affects every Iranian, no matter who is in charge.”

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