Uncategorized
Iran Risks Severe Economic Downturn, Unrest as Renewed UN Sanctions Bite
People walk near a mural of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, amid the Iran-Israel conflict, in Tehran, Iran, June 23, 2025. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Iran‘s economy is at risk of simultaneous hyperinflation and severe recession, officials and analysts say, as clerical rulers scramble to preserve stability with limited room to maneuver after a snapback of UN sanctions.
They followed a breakdown in talks to curb Iran‘s disputed nuclear activity and its ballistic missile program. Diplomacy to resolve the deadlock remains possible, both sides say, though Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has rebuffed US President Donald Trump’s offer to forge a new deal.
Three senior Iranian officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tehran believes the US, its Western allies, and Israel are intensifying sanctions to fuel unrest in Iran and jeopardize the very existence of the Islamic Republic.
Since the reimposition of UN sanctions on Sept. 28, multiple high-level meetings have been held in Tehran on how to avert economic collapse, circumvent sanctions, and manage simmering public anger, the officials told Reuters.
Deepening economic disparities between ordinary Iranians and a privileged clerical and security elite, economic mismanagement, galloping inflation, and state corruption – reported even by state media – have fanned discontent.
“The establishment knows protests are inevitable, it is only a matter of time … The problem is growing, while our options are shrinking,” said one of the officials.
Iran‘s leadership is leaning heavily on its “resistance economy” — a strategy of self-sufficiency and closer trade with China, Russia, and some regional states. Moscow and Beijing back Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear energy and condemned US and Israeli strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites in June.
But analysts warn that such workarounds may not be enough to shield the sprawling country of 92 million people from the renewed economic blow.
“The impact of the UN sanctions will be severe and multifaceted, deepening the country’s longstanding structural and financial vulnerabilities,” said Umud Shokri, an energy strategist and senior visiting fellow at George Mason University near Washington.
“The government is struggling to maintain economic stability as sanctions disrupt banking networks, restrict trade and constrain oil exports – the country’s main revenue source, resulting in escalating social and economic pressure.”
OIL LIFELINE UNDER THREAT AS UN SANCTIONS RETURN
Iran has avoided wholesale economic meltdown since 2018 when, during his first term, Trump withdrew the US from Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with six world powers and reimposed US sanctions.
But the revival of wider UN sanctions is inflicting shocks that will stymie economic growth, accelerate inflation, and the collapse of the rial currency, pushing the economy toward a recessionary spiral, one of the Iranian officials said.
Iran’s economy contracted sharply after 2018 due to renewed US sanctions. It rebounded in 2020 to grow modestly at times, largely due to oil trade with China.
But the World Bank this month forecast a shrinkage of 1.7 percent in 2025 and 2.8 percent in 2026 – sharply down from the 0.7 percent growth it had projected in April for next year.
While Tehran still relies heavily on oil exports to China – its biggest customer and one of the few countries still doing business with it despite Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy, doubts reign over the sustainability of that trade.
Although sold at a discount, crude remains a vital source of income for Tehran, with oil and petrochemicals making up about a quarter of GDP in 2024.
Despite public assurances that oil sales to China will continue, one Iranian official said the reimposed global sanctions could stifle that flow.
Shokri said that if China seeks to ease tensions with the Trump administration, it may tighten its stance on Iranian oil — demanding steeper discounts or cutting imports altogether.
For Tehran, the costs could be devastating. Every dollar shaved off the price of oil translates into roughly half a billion dollars in lost annual revenue, he said.
The rial has shriveled to 1,115,000 per dollar from 920,000 in August, stoking inflation to at least 40 percent and gutting purchasing power. Persistent currency depreciation and trade sanctions are driving up prices and sapping investor confidence.
HARDSHIP SPREADS, PUBLIC ANGER SIMMERS
Few Iranians can escape the attendant hardships. A sense of desperation is rippling through society, affecting urban professionals, bazaar traders and rural farmers alike.
“How much more pressure are we supposed to endure? Until when? I’m a government employee, and I earn just 34 million tomans (around $300) a month,” said Alireza, 43, speaking by phone from the capital Tehran. Like others, he asked not to be further identified for fear of retribution from authorities.
“My wife is jobless. The import-export company she worked for shut down last month. With just my salary and two kids, we’re struggling to even pay rent and school expenses. What are we supposed to do?” ”
Iran’s official inflation rate is around 40 percent though some estimates exceed 50 percent. Official data in September showed prices for 10 staple goods – including meat, rice and chicken – rose 51 percent in one year. Housing and utility costs have also surged. Beef now costs $12 a kilo – too expensive for many families.
The clerical elite increasingly worry that mounting public distress could reignite mass protests that have erupted periodically since 2017 among lower- and middle-income Iranians, the second Iranian official said.
Many Iranians like Sima, 32, a factory worker in the central city of Shiraz worn down by years of economic strain, worry that the expanded sanctions will push them past the breaking point.
“Now they say we’re facing new sanctions again, but we’re already struggling to provide for our three children. Prices go up every single day and we can’t even afford to buy meat for them once a month,” said Sima.
Many business owners fear deeper international isolation and further Israeli airstrikes if diplomacy fails to resolve the nuclear standoff.
“With the constant fear of a possible attack and not knowing whether I’ll even be able to export this month or next, how am I supposed to keep my business running?” said Mehdi, who ships fruit to neighboring countries.
Uncategorized
Minnesota man charged with ISIS-inspired plot on Jewish-owned Mall of America
(JTA) — The FBI accused an 18-year-old man of buying an AK-47 assault rifle with plans to commit a mass shooting in support of ISIS at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, the largest indoor shopping mall in North America.
Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud, of Richfield, Minnesota, was charged on Wednesday with one count of knowingly receiving a firearm and ammunition in order to commit a federal crime of terrorism, according to a federal complaint filed on Wednesday.
Mohamud’s attorney did not respond to JTA’s request for comment.
Mohamud wanted to attack the Mall of America because he believed its owners to be Jewish, the FBI said in a statement. He planned to kill between 30 and 60 people, according to messages he exchanged with a confidential source, according to the complaint.
Mall of America is owned and operated by Triple Five Group, controlled by the Ghermezian family, a Canadian family of Iranian Jewish origin.
Messages sent in September 2026 included a video in which Mohamud pledged allegiance to ISIS, the complaint said. He planned his attack for Oct. 24 because he expected a crowd at the Hmong Arts Celebration scheduled for that day.
The complaint said an undercover FBI agent sold an AK-47 rendered inoperable, four 30-round magazines and 200 rounds of ammunition to Mohamud for $600 on Oct. 6. During the sale, Mohamud confirmed his plans to commit a mass shooting. Mohamud was arrested shortly after the sale.
The complaint said Mohamud wanted to commit an attack similar to the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in which 49 victims were killed; the Bondi Beach mass-shooting in Sydney last December, during which 15 victims were killed during a Hanukkah celebration; and a New Orleans truck-ramming attack that killed 14 victims in New Orleans on Jan. 1, 2025.
The investigation into Mohamud began around December 2024, when he messaged the confidential source on multiple social media platforms, according to the complaint, detailing his desire to travel to Somalia to join a group that the U.S. has designated a foreign terrorist organization. If travel was not possible due to financial constraints, he said would move forward with an attack in Minnesota.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Minnesota man charged with ISIS-inspired plot on Jewish-owned Mall of America appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Is Israel or Iran a bigger threat to the U.S.? Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed won’t say
(JTA) — Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed was asked multiple times by a debate moderator on Thursday which country he considers a bigger threat to the U.S.: Iran or Israel.
Each time, he parried.
“That’s a ridiculous hypothetical because here’s what’s happening right now: Our ostensible ally in Israel has lobbied us to go to war with Iran,” said El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate.
“I don’t consider an ally a country that takes us to wars we don’t need to fight, and I don’t want to be fighting wars we don’t need to fight,” he added, describing both as “kind of dangerous.” Another attempt yielded a similar response, with El-Sayed denouncing “one at risk of attacking us, one getting us into wars we have no business fighting.”
El-Sayed, a former county health official, was responding to a question repeatedly posed by WOOD TV8 political reporter Rick Albin, in a debate against his Republican opponent, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers. The two candidates hurled insults at each other during the hourlong discussion, often returning to issues related to Israel and the Middle East.
After making criticism of Israel a top issue in his primary campaign, El-Sayed eked out a victory against U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens in that early August race. Although he has earned the support of many democratic socialists, including Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, El-Sayed has stated that he is not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Rogers, on the other hand, has the official endorsement of President Donald Trump. However, the candidate has been distancing himself from the president, including by criticizing the trade war with Canada.
Results of a CBS News poll published earlier this week showed El-Sayed leading Rogers, by 45.6% to 41.4%, with a 3.8% margin of error. A Quantus Insights poll released on Wednesday, meanwhile, gave El-Sayed a slightly narrower lead, with 47.6% to Rogers’s 46.5%, and a 7.8% margin of error.
While El-Sayed has been meeting with Jewish voters and leaders, he has not budged on certain issues of concern to many Jewish voters. For example, he has indicated only a willingness to recognize Israel’s identity as a Jewish nation-state if Israelis and Palestinians jointly agree to it..
Liberal Michigan rabbis last month signed a petition from the Zioness Action Fund, a progressive Zionist group, calling upon the Democratic Party to agree to “nonnegotiable” principles related to Jewish safety and Israel. A separate cohort of Michigan Jewish leaders urged community members to reject El-Sayed entirely.
Rogers and his representatives in August indicated that they would like AIPAC to refrain from spending directly on him in the general election, according to media reports. Asked about this at the Thursday debate, he said he’d welcome “anybody that wants to help my campaign stop a guy who can’t condemn terrorism in our own country.”
El-Sayed condemned the March attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, but added that “hurt people hurt people,” which critics interpreted as justifying the attacker’s actions. He later apologized for those remarks.
Rogers has repeatedly slammed his opponent for taking funds from donors affiliated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Unity & Justice Fund super PAC and other groups and individuals.
El-Sayed, on the other hand, accused Rogers on Thursday of accepting corporate PAC money and labeled him the “guy who’s going to rubber stamp everything Donald Trump tells him to rubber stamp.”
The two candidates criticized each other’s policies and interrupted each other so often that Albin, the moderator, needed to step in.
“We’ve got dozens of questions we want to get to,” Albin said. “You can’t litigate all of these with 14 different rebuttals.”
Even prior to a pause for ads, Albin announced that the station is going “to take a break from this pleasant conversation.” When they returned, he declared that “in 30 years of doing debates, I’ve never seen it continue during the commercial, but it did.”
The candidates continued to clash over Iran, with El-Sayed accusing the U.S. government of teaching “the Iranian regime that they had a choke [hold] on the Strait of Hormuz.”
“That’s the kind of policy you’re going to get from a guy who wants to be a sock puppet for the Trump administration,” El-Sayed added.
Rogers, meanwhile, claimed that the U.S. had set back Iran’s nuclear program by at least 20 years, adding that “this would be the time to wrap it up.”
As for Israel, Rogers said he supports “the right to exist for the Jewish state, and the right to defend itself in a very difficult neighborhood.” The only way Israel could lose his support, Rogers stated, would be if the country talked about using nuclear weapons.
Israel is widely assessed to possess an arsenal of approximately 90 nuclear warheads, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The country is not a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel has never acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons.
Albin then turned to El-Sayed, noting the politician’s opposition to direct U.S. military funding for Israel. He asked, however, whether that position could change “if Israel were attacked tomorrow by Iran or another state actor.”
“I want our tax dollars spent here,” El-Sayed responded. “Israel has pushed us to go to war in Iran, and of course, my colleague, who thinks there’s a war for everything, went right along with it.”
When Albin pushed again for a yes or no answer, El-Sayed replied that he doesn’t want the U.S. “buying weapons for other countries.”
Toward the end of the discussion related to the Middle East, Rogers recognized the third anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. He blasted his opponent for failing “to even acknowledge the pain, the terrorism, the rape, the murders.”
To this accusation, El-Sayed responded, “I’ve condemned that. I didn’t turn it into theater like you did.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Is Israel or Iran a bigger threat to the U.S.? Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed won’t say appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Ossoff says IDF violated law of armed conflict in Gaza, but genocide is an issue for international courts
(JTA) — Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff and Republican challenger Rep. Mike Collins clashed over Israel’s conduct in Gaza, U.S. weapons sales to Israel and the war in Iran during Thursday’s debate in Georgia’s closely watched Senate race.
The race could help determine control of the Senate, with implications for U.S. policy toward Israel.
The incumbent Ossoff, who is Jewish, has long supported Israel’s security, but over the last two years he has criticized its conduct in the Gaza war and voted to block some U.S. arms sales to the country.
A day after the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack, Ossoff was asked whether Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, whether he was concerned about growing anti-Israel sentiment within the Democratic Party and whether he would support a proposed $2.8 billion U.S. weapons package for Israel.
“The question of genocide is a question of whether a government has the specific intent to destroy a national or ethnic group, and that is a question for the International Criminal Court,” Ossoff responded. “There is no doubt in my mind that Israeli forces prosecuting the war in Gaza violated the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law, and I care deeply about the security of the Israeli people, among whom are members of my family.
“I also care about innocent Palestinian life,” Ossoff continued, “and make no apology for my votes.”
Collins accused Ossoff of having aligned himself with anti-Israel figures including Twitch streamer Hasan Piker and Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
“Imagine being a U.S. senator, and out there recruiting, endorsing, and supporting these people that want to see Israel wiped off the map,” Collins said. “They would rather be for Iran than for Israel — now that’s who Jon Ossoff is supporting.”
Piker had previously called Ossoff a possible contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. He subsequently disavowed Ossoff after the senator condemned antisemitic comments, Jewish Insider reported in August.
During the hourlong debate, Ossoff repeatedly condemned the U.S. war in Iran while highlighting Collins’ support for it. At least three times Ossoff called the war in Iran a “disaster” or “disastrous,” and he blamed the war for rising gas prices in the state of Georgia.
Collins, on the other hand, said he supported the war as necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. “The president had every right to go in there and make sure that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon,” Collins said. “The IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], they had already sounded the bells, the alarms that Iran was close to getting a nuclear weapon. And the thing is, Iran doesn’t only want to decimate and kill Israel, they want us as well.”
The evening was not without its personal attacks. Collins described Ossoff as “a radical” and a “trust-fund kid who has never had a job in his life,” while Ossoff repeatedly spotlighted the alleged ties between Collins and white nationalists. A recent report alleged that Collins’ former aides were involved with antisemitic and white nationalist rhetoric.
Ossoff leads Collins by about nine percentage points in FiftyPlusOne’s polling average as of Oct. 9.
The candidates are scheduled for a second debate hosted by the Atlanta Press Club on Oct. 13.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Ossoff says IDF violated law of armed conflict in Gaza, but genocide is an issue for international courts appeared first on The Forward.
