US President Donald Trump's denial of his willingness to ease sanctions on Iran in exchange for nuclear concessions has brought uncertainty back to mediations searching for common ground between Washington and Tehran. Between American signals of negotiating flexibility, and Iranian adherence to lifting the blockade and restoring oil revenues, the dispute goes beyond the content of the settlement to the order of its implementation: Who will make the concession first? With what guarantees?
This stumble coincides with the improvement of oil flows from the region and the restoration of routes beyond the Strait of Hormuz, which gives Washington a margin to continue pressure.
But the Iranian threat to target infrastructure sets limits to this bet, and raises a parallel question: Will weakening the navigation card facilitate the agreement, or push the confrontation towards production and export facilities?
Denial doubles the ambiguity
After the Axios website quoted American officials as saying that Trump was willing to ease sanctions and release frozen Iranian funds in exchange for concrete steps in the nuclear file, the president denied these reports and considered them incorrect.
The contradiction came while Qatari and Pakistani mediators were trying to bring positions closer together through contacts with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and US administration officials.
An American official described the indirect talks as positive and constructive, noting Iranian flexibility regarding nuclear issues, but stressed the impossibility of an agreement without addressing them.
In the same context, Politico magazine quoted an Iranian official as saying that the instability of Trump’s position makes it difficult to determine what Washington can accept and turn the discussions into a practical arrangement.
Denial alone does not prove the collapse of communications or the closing of the door to easing sanctions in the future, but it leaves the mediators with a gap between what officials convey and what Trump announces, and it is difficult to confirm the economic compensation that Tehran is demanding.
Brian Katulis, a researcher at the Middle East Institute, describes Trump's statements as "almost meaningless," considering that trying to analyze every current situation is not very helpful, because little of what he has said since the outbreak of the war is related to reality, according to his assessment.
In an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, he believes that the two countries are still confronting and testing their wills, and this appears in the statements, while they are embodied in the field action and efforts to reach an agreement.
Understanding and implementation complex
The proposals intersect when there is a need to reduce escalation, restore order in navigation, and keep the negotiating path open, but they differ in the starting point. Tehran wants priority to lift the blockade, ease sanctions, and release assets, while Washington clings to concrete nuclear steps and refuses to offer significant economic gains in exchange for a promise to resume negotiations.
Diplomatic sources say that the mediators are working to revive the “Islamabad Understanding” framework, which dealt with stopping military operations, navigation, the nuclear file, and sanctions. It was followed by talks in Switzerland that led to a political committee, working groups, monitoring and conflict resolution mechanisms, and a line of communication to avoid misunderstandings.
The importance of returning to this framework is based on the existence of a previous negotiating structure, but the renewed confrontation revealed that establishing committees does not guarantee respect for commitments. An American official quoted by Axios accuses Iran of violating the previous understanding by firing on commercial ships in July, an accusation that increases Washington’s tightening of guarantees.
The latest Iranian proposal links the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to a cessation of fighting for 7 days and meeting economic and security demands, including ending the blockade. The US administration fears that it will make advance concessions while Tehran practically maintains the ability to control the corridor.
So, the dilemma seems to be as much about synchronization and verification as it is about goals: How do you link every economic move to a testable security or nuclear measure? This is an analytical need imposed by differences, and not an agreed-upon mechanism.
Researcher Katulis concludes at this point by saying that the lack of trust makes imagining an imminent agreement difficult.
Oil changes the calculations
In parallel with the negotiation, improved oil exports via alternative routes may change urgency calculations. Preliminary data from Kpler indicated that exports from major Middle Eastern producers in September were estimated at about 16.328 million barrels per day, including 9.719 million via Hormuz. It is necessary to separate the two numbers: the recovery of total exports does not mean the return of the Strait to its normal state, nor the disappearance of supply risks.
Farzin Nadimi, senior researcher on Iranian affairs at the Washington Institute, believes that these paths greatly reduce Hormuz’s card, but do not resolve it. He indicated in an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat that the Saudi and Emirati pipelines already transport a large share of the two countries’ oil away from the strait, and that expansions scheduled during 2027-2029 may allow Hormuz to exceed quantities equivalent to about 60 percent of its usual oil flows, according to his estimate.
He adds that the markets have adapted, and the closure no longer creates the global shock that Tehran seeks. However, Kuwaiti exports, Qatari liquefied natural gas, and most Iraqi exports remain at risk, as well as the possibility of targeting alternative infrastructure. Therefore, the Iranian card declined and did not disappear.
Ndimi stresses that sanctions and a naval blockade are not yet sufficient to impose real and permanent nuclear concessions. The financial pressure is real, but the regime has tolerated it so far, although its intensification may change that. The remaining ability to obstruct, escalate, and bear economic pain limits the effectiveness of the strategy, narrowing Tehran's options in the short and medium term without forcing it alone to concede.
Pressure without decisiveness
The warning from Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf came on Tuesday to reveal this aspect of the confrontation. He linked the security of regional infrastructure to ensuring Iran's security, threatening that preventing it from selling oil would prevent others as well. The threat indicates that the decline in the effectiveness of disrupting navigation may be offset by an expansion of the range of potential targets.
In this context, Barak Barfi, a researcher at the New America Foundation, said in an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat that Trump seems to acknowledge the impossibility of reaching an agreement in the current circumstances, and is moving towards resuming the bombing after the midterm elections, when the internal pressures on him subside.
It is believed that the Iranians reached the same conclusion from the opposite position: disrupting Hormuz has lost its effectiveness, in his estimation, while the American blockade increases the pressure on Tehran. Therefore, it is likely that both sides have come to realize that resuming hostilities is the most likely possibility now, rather than ending the fighting.
But on the other hand, Iran's threat to raise the cost to neighboring countries does not mean that it will not expose them to a broader response, and it may expand the circle of countries opposed and ready to confront this escalation. Instead of intimidating the countries of the region, this may prompt them to respond and escalate the confrontation. However, increased economic pressure does not automatically mean that the Iranian regime is ready for nuclear concessions or is close to collapse.
Matthew Gould, a former British diplomat, believes in an opinion article in the Washington Post that regime change requires, in addition to ongoing protests, the cracking of the security services and the ruling elite, and that American bombing and encouragement alone are not enough.
The task of the mediators remains to transform pressure into mutual, implementable commitments, before the improvement in oil flow becomes a reason to prolong the confrontation, and the threats turn into a new round of escalation.
The crisis of manipulation of investment funds in Türkiye has become the focus of intense debate between the government and the opposition. The leader of the opposition, head of the New Party, Ozgur Ozil, directed sharp criticism at President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, against the backdrop of his statements regarding the crisis that he made on Monday-Tuesday night after chairing his government meeting, adding that he had one of two options: either to resign or to call for elections, after it was revealed that leaders of the ruling Justice and Development Party were involved in a financial scandal related to the crisis.
Commenting on the statements, Ozil called on President Erdogan “not to evade,” pointing out the involvement of the Vice-President of the Justice and Development Party, Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya, who previously held the position of Minister of Family and Social Policies, and her husband, Ilyas Kaya, in collecting huge gains, amounting to more than two billion Turkish liras, from the shares of a company through manipulation of investment funds.
Resignation or election
Ozil said through his account in “X”: “Oh Erdogan, do not evade... Your matter has been exposed. I checked the accounts of my colleagues whom I defended (referring to the detained mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, in investigations related to accusations of corruption and bribery, and a number of other opposition mayors) and did not find any evidence against them, but your minister and the deputy head of your party embezzled two billion liras from the state.”
He asked: “Were you aware of these frauds?... If you were, then this means that you were behind this conspiracy, and you must resign. If you were not, then this means that you have lost your eligibility to rule the state and you must hold elections and hand over the reins to the person who deserves it.”
The Justice and Development Party's vice president for social policies, Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya, resigned from all her positions in the party headed by Erdogan, on Saturday night - Sunday, after the "new party" revealed that she and her husband, Ilyas Kaya, had achieved huge profits from trading shares in the "Ozata Denizcelik" shipbuilding company, where they invested about 163 million liras ($3.3 million) on April 8, most of them in shares of that company. The company, and they achieved about 2.17 billion liras ($44 million) from its sale and withdrawal of funds, days before the facts of stock manipulation were revealed in a complaint filed by the Capital Markets Authority on September 16 of this year. The Authority decided to liquidate 131 investment funds, with a capital of $18 billion, whose manipulation caused harm to more than 455,000 investors.
Erdogan and holding those involved accountable
In his statements after his government meeting, Erdogan stressed that the capital markets in his country are solid and have strong foundations, noting that the current problem in the investment funds market is “limited” and does not pose a threat to the financial system, and that the liquidation of the funds is proceeding meticulously, and anyone proven to be involved in practices that destabilize the market will be held accountable before the law.
Erdogan held a meeting with the government's economic team to discuss the repercussions of the crisis, regulate capital markets, and prevent the recurrence of such problems. Ozil, who formed a “crisis cell” in his party and held a meeting under his chairmanship on Tuesday, described the ongoing investment funds crisis as “the scam of the century,” pointing out that his party had prepared a draft law of 15 articles to be submitted to Parliament immediately after the start of its new session on the first of October.
He likened the current crisis in Turkey to the “Madoff crisis,” which is the largest financial fraud that took place in America through a “Ponzi scheme” worth more than $50 billion, orchestrated by the investor and head of the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, Bernard Madoff, and which continued for decades before it collapsed in 2008.
Ozil's party estimates that Türkiye is facing a robbery worth at least $20 billion, and demands disclosure of whether an investigation has been opened against Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya and her husband.
Attack on Ozil
Commenting on what Ozil wrote on his account in “X”, and his criticism of Erdogan, the Vice-President of the “Justice and Development Party” and its spokesman, Omar Celik, said: “Mr. Ozgur Ozil’s ignorance of the simplest principles of political responsibility is clear and evident. He and his colleagues do not show in their statements devoid of any principles or responsibility, except their political exhaustion, and it seems that they have made the lack of political principles a party program.”
Celik added, through his VX account, that “the words directed at our president and the head of our party (Erdogan) are nothing but ignorance and political slander. No one should doubt that we will confront them in the clearest way possible... The principle of our president and our party is clear from the beginning, which is that anyone who abuses his authority, violates the law, or violates the rights of the nation, regardless of his position or identity, will be held accountable.”
He continued, "The political understanding of Mr. Ozgur Ozil's administration is to blindly cover up scandals in public squares, and defend violations despite the presence of documents and confessions. This mentality based on a lack of principles, with which this party is managed, has no moral lessons to teach our nation, and they attack state institutions and officials to cover up corruption within their ranks."
A new documentary film reveals previously unknown details about the Israeli operation that led to the detonation of thousands of pager devices that were used by Hezbollah members in Lebanon, shedding light on the race that Israel entered to maintain the secrecy of the operation after doubts began to appear within the organization regarding the devices.
According to Hebrew websites, the film, directed by Justin Polk, is called “Paging Hezbollah,” and deals with the stages of preparation for the operation that took years, leading up to the detonation of the pagers in September 2024. It includes interviews with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Mossad chief David Barnea, and former commander of the northern region of the Israeli army, Uri Gordin, in addition to testimonies from former Israeli officials.
Among the most prominent details that appeared in conjunction with the film was former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s account of the days before the operation was carried out, when Israel began to fear that Hezbollah was close to discovering the truth about the devices that had been tampered with and explosives had been planted inside them.
Gallant said that Israel learned during the first week of August 2024 that a Hezbollah member began to suspect the pager devices and was trying to find out whether they had been tampered with.
In an interview he conducted after his dismissal from the government, parts of which were not allowed to be published by military censors at the time, he said that Israel was able to identify the person whose suspicions the services raised and “disposed of him,” in an attempt to prevent the spread of suspicions within the organization.
But suspicion was not the only danger facing the operation. Israel discovered that Hezbollah had begun examining some pager devices, and that specialized equipment was on its way to Lebanon to help determine whether the devices might contain explosives.
According to the Israeli story, Iran had sent an x-ray machine to examine the pager devices. Gallant said that Israel decided to destroy the screening equipment, along with other targets, so that Hezbollah would not realize that the strikes were directly linked to the secret operation.
Time became a crucial factor. As indications emerged that the devices might be subject to more careful examination, Israel had, according to Gallant's account, the choice of carrying out the operation before it was revealed or risking that continued waiting would lead to its full disclosure.
Netanyahu had previously revealed some of these details, saying that Israel learned in the third week of September that Hezbollah had sent three Pager devices to Iran for examination. He added that Israel had previously bombed a screening device that the organization was preparing to introduce, and also killed the person who was to operate it.
On September 17, 2024, the operation began with the explosion of thousands of pager devices in various parts of Lebanon, before it was followed the next day by explosions targeting wireless communication devices. According to figures reported by Israeli sources, the two operations led to the death of 39 people and the injury of more than 3,400.
Gallant described the operation as being prepared over a period of about a decade, and said that the detonation of the pager devices led to widespread injuries among Hezbollah members, especially in the fingers, eyes, and thighs.
As for the wireless communication devices that were detonated the next day, they were larger and contained larger quantities of explosives, according to Gallant. But most of them were located inside warehouses when they were bombed, which limited the impact of the operation compared to the first phase.
The documentary, along with testimonies from Israeli officials, presents a picture of the way Israel tried to keep the operation hidden until the last minute. The issue, according to the Israeli narrative, was not merely planting explosives inside communications devices and introducing them into the ranks of Hezbollah, but rather maintaining the secrecy of the plan after attempts began within the organization to verify the safety of the devices.
According to Gallant, the events were treated as a series of separate strikes, rather than revealing the existence of a single interconnected operation. The aim of this was to prevent Hezbollah from collecting clues and understanding the full picture before the time came to detonate the devices.
With the presentation of “Paging Hezbollah,” the “Pager” operation returns to the forefront from a different angle: not only as a widespread attack targeting Hezbollah’s means of communication, but also as a secret operation that, in its final days, entered into a race between preserving the plan and the possibility of discovering it from within the organization itself.
