One US dollar now costs 2 million rials in Iran, and here’s what it can buy

September 1, 2026
Alia Chughtai, Fatemah Karimkhan and Maziar Motamedi

Sanctions and the US-Israel war on Iran have left the country’s people unable to keep pace with rising prices as the rial hits a new all-time low.

The US military just got handed an odd job: Denying an 'attack' on Iran that its own president had just posted online

September 1, 2026
Jack Buckby

 
Airstrikes have resumed in the Middle East after the US fired on Iranian launchers accused of trying to lay more mines in the Strait of Hormuz. Anadolu via Getty Images

‘The President of the United States Is Mentally Unwell’: Deranged Trump Posts AI Slop of Iran Bombing

August 31, 2026
Jake Johnson
The chief executive of Iran’s government-run oil company dismissed the US president’s social media posts “laughable.” 

US President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated video depicting American forces attacking Kharg Island on August 30, 2026. (Photo: Donald Trump/Screengrab via Truth Social)

Iran Retaliates against UAE

August 31, 2026

Iran Downs US MQ-9 as Hormuz Ship Traffic Falls to Five Vessels a Day

Palestinian Christians are disappearing. Warnings are not enough.

August 30, 2026
Sami Mshasha 
Church leaders, activists, and Palestinian media keep sounding the alarm: Palestinian Christians are leaving the Holy Land. But what is needed now is an institutional and economic strategy that makes staying a viable choice, not just a moral one.

 

Orthodox Christians take part in the Easter "Holy Fire" celebrations on the eve of Easter Sunday on April 23, 2011, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built over the sites where Christians believe Christ was crucified and buried. (Photo: Sliman Khader/APA Images)

After giving up on military force, Trump’s new plan to defeat Iran is…more economic sanctions?

August 29, 2026
Mitchell Plitnick 
Trump's "Operation Economic Outcast" to impose secondary sanctions on countries trading with Iran is a tacit admission of U.S. military defeat. But sanctions haven't worked for 47 years, and Iran won't let the U.S. decide when the shooting war ends.

President Donald J. Trump speaks with members of the press before boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, Friday, August 21, 2026. (Photo: White House/Flickr, by Molly Riley)

US War on Iran: What Accountability for War Crimes?

August 29, 2026
Melanie O’Brien
The Trump administration has consistently viewed itself as being above international law. Not only does it claim international law doesn’t apply to the United States, it has imposed sanctions on officials of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Bombing Iran Is Not a Strategy

August 28, 2026
Sarah Neumann

Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. (DDG 121) fires a Tomahawk Land Attack Missile during operations in support of Operation Epic Fury, Feb. 28, 2026. (U.S. Navy Photo)

The US Seeing Itself & Others as They Are

August 27, 2026
Patrick Lawrence
Imagine the consequences for the empire’s managers were Americans to understand others and have some grasp of how they look upon the world.

 
The arrival in the Tehran cemetery Behesht-e Zahra on March 15, 2026, of the bodies from the U.S. sinking of the Iranian ship the Dena in the Indian Ocean. (Tasnim News Agency/Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY 4.0)

US Not Planning New Strikes on Iran, Will Focus on Economic War

August 26, 2026
Kyle Anzalone

Secretary of State Marco Rubio informed allies that the new strategy is “for the time being”

دیکتاتوری

تصویر بالا که از فیسبوک کُپی شده است، جدولی‌ از یک سنجش آماری از پاره‌ای از مشخصات زنان ایران در مقایسه با زنان آمریکا می‌باشد. عنوان این جدول نقل قولی‌ از ترامپ است که می‌گوید: "رژیم حاکم بر ایران از پیشرفت زنان جلوگیری به عمل می‌آورد." در اینکه رژیم حاکم بر ایران یک رژیم ارتجاعی و دیکتاتوری است و اسلام مانند سایر ادیان، یک دین مردانه است، شکّی نیست. همچنین، در اینکه رژیم اسلامی از آغاز زنها را به زیر چادر و روسری بُرد نیز شبهه‌ای نمی‌توان داشت. مهم این است که زنان شجاع ایران با دادن خون خود حقوق حقهٔ خود را تا حدودی دریافت کردند، و هنوز هم در حال مبارزه‌ا‌ند. بنابراین، به دولت ایران در این مورد نمی‌توان اعتبار داد، بلکه زنان ایران برای احراز حقوقشان جنگیدند، و بدین دلیل آنچه که آنها دارند در مقایسه با زنان آمریکا ارجح است. ترجمهٔ مطالب این تصویر در جدول زیر می‌آید:ا

U.S. Threatens New Economic War on Iran by Targeting China & Tehran’s Other Top Trading Partners

August 25, 2026
The Trump administration has announced unspecified plans to further tighten sanctions on Iran, threatening other countries, including China, in the process. We speak to sanctions expert Nicholas Mulder about what he calls the “rhetorical” and “psychological warfare” of the announcement. For Iran, says Mulder, the announcement was not “really materially all that meaningful. And to the extent that they are, they hurt ordinary Iranians and not the government.” The impact on the U.S. relationship with China, however, could be much greater. If the U.S. does place secondary sanctions on Iran’s trading partners, the “U.S.-China trade truce might be unraveling,” warns Mulder. “The space for maneuver that the U.S. has in using these tools of very coercive economic statecraft has narrowed.”

 

Sanctions didn't break Iran. They hardened it

August24, 2026
Mahyar Ramezankhani

Tehran was denied a decade of growth, and given in exchange a tolerance for punishment that few open economies possess

A woman walks past an anti-US billboard in Tehran on August 24, 2026.

Iran vows ‘not a single drop’ of oil will leave Gulf if region complies with US plan

August 23, 2026

Tehran has warned neighboring states it will close the Strait of Hormuz if they take part in Washington’s economic pressure campaign

Oil importer China won’t aid Trump economic warfare against Iran

August 22, 2026
Stephen Prager

Factor in the US midterms when calculaitng Trump’s willingness to retaliate via economic war with the third-largest US trading partner

 

Hengli Petrochemical Co operates a 20-million-tons-per-year refining and petrochemical complex on Dalian’s Changxing Island. On Friday, the US Treasury Department added the refinery to its sanctions list. This marks Washington’s most significant action yet against China’s refining industry and highlights its determination to increase pressure on Iran, even just weeks ahead of a much-anticipated meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to a Bloomberg report. But how much farther will he be willing to go in view of upcoming US midterm elections? Photo: Baidu.com, Hengli Group

Iran breaks ground on ‘world's largest’ solar plant to tackle energy deficit

August 21, 2026

The 6,000-hectare complex is expected to supply close to a tenth of the electricity Iran consumes each month

Iran war live: China rejects US sanctions on Tehran; Israel hits Lebanon

August 21, 2026
Daniel Khalili-Tari & Christine Maguire

• China says it doesn’t support additional US sanctions on Iran as it calls for dialogue between Tehran and Washington. “Military force and pressure tactics will only lead to escalation that serves no one’s interests,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said.
• Iran’s Foreign Ministry has condemned the threat of new US economic sanctions, describing the proposed measures as “illegal and inhumane”. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the new sanctions threaten the global economy.
• This comes after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC that Washington will impose the “toughest sanctions in history” to “collapse” the Iranian government, calling on other nations, including China, to join the effort.
• Several areas in southern Lebanon, including Bint Jbeil district in Nabatieh province and al-Mansouri town in Tyre, have been hit by Israeli strikes today despite a ceasefire.
• Meanwhile, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian says that the war must end at some point, and it is better to end it today while Tehran is in “a position of strength”. He added that Iran will not “bow to bullying”.

 

Exclusive: How Trump tried to bribe the head of the IRGC

August 21, 2026
Empire of Chaos, Lies, Plunder, Piracy. And bribes.
Mike Pompeo, former aspiring Tony Soprano, admitted: “We lie, we cheat, we steal.” And we bribe.

No, Trump, this isn’t regime change — Iran just doubled down on the iron fist

August 20, 2026
There are moments when personnel decisions reveal more about a political system than its speeches, slogans, or diplomatic statements. The military hierarchy now taking shape in Tehran is one of those moments. Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei may represent a new leadership at the apex of the Islamic Republic, but the men being elevated around him belong overwhelmingly to an older political world: the revolution, the Iran-Iraq War, intelligence and counterintelligence operations, ideological enforcement, confrontation with Israel and the United States, and the suppression of dissent at home.

The End of the American Middle East

August 18, 2026
Marc Lynch

Iran and the Last Gasp of a Failed Order