Air defenses are firing across ALL of Tehran, west, east, and northeast, per Iran's own state broadcaster.

-IRIB reports "air defense activity was heard in the west, east, and northeast of Tehran," expanding the earlier Fars reports from one district to the whole capital

-No strikes on Tehran itself are confirmed, and CENTCOM's official night-eleven statement named no capital-area targets

-The guns firing city-wide without confirmed impacts fits a specific playbook: U.S. drones flown over the capital to force the air defenses to switch on and REVEAL their positions

-That tactic, flushing out radars for targeting in a later strike, is exactly how air campaigns prepare to enter defended airspace, and Washington has said the Tehran-area restraint "could change if full-scale operations resume"

If the drone-flush read is right, tonight's tracer fire over the capital is reconnaissance, not the attack itself: every battery that lights up gets mapped, and every mapped battery dies first when the real package comes.

Tehran's gunners face the trap built into the tactic, stay dark and leave the sky open, or fire and hand over their coordinates.

Source: CIG on TG, Al Jazeera / Writer: Daniel

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday that the U.S. is "entering the endgame" against Iran, as his department prepared a set of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran that he compared to Allied preparations for D-Day during World War II.

"As Roosevelt and Churchill weighed a campaign that would culminate in the Normandy landings, they asked themselves what could be done ‘to bring the greatest pressure to bear on the enemy,'" Bessent said, claiming that "History has returned that question to Tehran."

"The U.S. Treasury is preparing to expand secondary sanctions on countries and companies doing business with Iran, forcing trading partners to choose between Tehran and access to the dollar-based financial system," Unusual Whales posted Monday, summarizing a paywalled Financial Times report.

Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, warned other nations in the region not to join in the administration's "economic war" against Iran, saying the country would "retaliate in a seismic manner."

Unrelated to today's new sanctions package but still noteworthy, the United Arab Emirates announced on Sunday that on Wednesday of last week it had halted all trade with Iran “until further notice,” due to the Islamic Republic's ballistic missile attacks on that country. The U.A.E. announcement is kind of a big deal, because the Emirates has long served as the Islamic Republic's export and financial hub.

Bessent also noted that Iran's currency, the rial, "has never been weaker and inflation has rarely been higher."

While it's impossible to say for sure whether sanctions can collapse the 47-year-old terrorist theocracy, that last part is true enough. The Hudson Institute's Michael Doran reminded X users Sunday: "On the day Trump was elected to his second term, the rial was a little over 700,000. Trump has sent it into a free fall. It's lost about sixty-five percent of its value" in less than two years.

"A little history," Doran also said, "In 1978, the rial was a little over 70 rials to the dollar, meaning that over the years it has lost 99.996% of its value."

President Donald Trump added Monday morning that he believes Iran is already "collapsing" under existing sanctions and the U.S. naval blockade of Iran's ports.

Open Source Intel prepared a list of the countries "most exposed" to the new sanctions, and number one on the list was — of course — China: "China buys discounted Iranian oil through intermediary networks. The key question is whether Treasury moves beyond small refiners and targets major Chinese banks."

Targeting those banks might be more of an economic Hiroshima than an economic D-Day, but we'll see.

"At 2 PM EST, we’ll see how far Bessent is willing to go," OSI added. "Whether he targets banks that help move Iranian money, or maybe imposes the 25% tariff on countries that trade with Iran."

I can't put it much better than X user Toni Johnson did: "Remember when Scott worked for the evil Soros and crashed the British pound? Don't underestimate Bessent."

Stay tuned.

The Justice Department is preparing to activate a long-dormant maritime war court to streamline military capture of Iranian oil tankers as US prizes, according to three people familiar with the plans.

Reviving prize courts, which is expected to face legal challenges, is intended to strengthen the blockade of Iran and offset the cost of the conflict.

Aaron Reitz, the Houston-based US attorney whose office is partnering with department headquarters on the initiative, confirmed DOJ is “now reviving” prize courts, which he described as an “ancient body of maritime law.”

The unfinalized plans, if adopted, would offer a faster path for federal prosecutors to claim oil and other cargo taken from enemy or neutral vessels as US property. The seized goods would then be sold with proceeds transferred to the treasury.

The anticipated revival is the second time this year the administration has turned to an obscure court system to carry out its agenda, after bringing the first-ever case before the Alien Terrorist Removal Court in July.

“Our national security interests may require the United States military to seize vessels or cargo supporting the enemy during military conflict,” Reitz said in a statement. “If that happens, our federal courts must be ready to adjudicate the disposition of these captured vessels and cargo.”

Ship owners and Iranian terrorism victims are among the potential litigants expected to challenge the prize court’s use, maritime lawyers and former prosecutors said. DOJ, the US Navy, and the judiciary would also face operational hurdles carrying out a court process with which they have zero experience.

“This really is a historical area of law that is not tested in modern times,” said Allison Luzwick, a Holland & Knight attorney specializing in the maritime industry. “Great strides have been made in international law and the law of war since the late 1800s, and all of that is going to come into play when we’re actually looking at proceedings involving a vessel that is potentially seized under Prize Act authority.”

Once a regular feature of 18th and 19th century naval combat, prize courts have gone largely unused since the Spanish-American War of 1898 and lain entirely dormant since World War II. In recent decades, the US has shifted to relying on civil forfeiture law as the mechanism for seizing ships and obtaining their assets to enforce sanctions violations.

DOJ’s planning, which has been coordinated with the Pentagon, comes as US forces have intercepted and seized multiple Iranian-owned or linked ships since imposing a blockade in April.

Legal experts see civil forfeiture as an imperfect model for US interests in choking the economy of Iran and other adversaries.

In one ongoing case, the seizure of a Venezuelan supertanker that supported Iran led to DOJ filing a civil complaint seeking to liquidate the ship and cargo as US proceeds.

Multiple third parties, including the shipping company and families of Iranian terrorism victims holding judgments for payouts under a different statute, have intervened, bogging down that process.

Prize authority, while coming with its own legal risks, would entail a less complicated transfer of proceeds, allowing the US to mitigate the risk of outside claimants slowing down the sale, said Luzwick and other lawyers.

White House and Navy spokespeople didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Houston Port

DOJ has focused on the Southern District of Texas federal trial court as the venue, said two of the people, who like others spoke anonymously about sensitive deliberations.

The Houston-based district is home to the nation’s largest petrochemical complex, located off Houston’s 50-mile port, which can store large volumes of crude.

Prize courts can function out of any US district court that has jurisdiction over the port in which the captured ship is taken. Once the district court adopts a set of rules for the proceedings, it could then adjudicate a prize claim filed by the US attorney.

Outside parties, including ship owners, could still enter an appearance and object to the capture, but their arguments would be limited compared to forfeiture cases, said Luzwick and her firm’s maritime litigation partner Michael Frevola.

In Southern Texas, the responsibility for filing claims would fall on Reitz, who was appointed in July and maintains close ties to department officials in Washington from his brief stint last year as head of DOJ’s Office of Legal Policy.

Pros and Cons

Supporters describe prize law’s benefits of expediting the process of transferring the proceeds from oil tanker cargo into the US treasury. The move may also send a global signal of President Donald Trump’s intent to add a legal enforcement mechanism to bolster the US blockade.

“It helps offset the price of the war,” said Eugene Kontorovich, an international law professor at George Mason’s Antonin Scalia School of Law. “It also shows Iran that America is really treating this as a serious international blockade and is willing to use all the tools at its disposal.”

If established, however, the approach would invite legal challenges as to whether the US is engaged in hostilities that give rise to the Prize Act and whether the lack of congressional authorization of the conflict renders captures unlawful.

Jill Goldenziel, a law professor who trains US military leaders at the National Defense University, warned of potential blowback in an April Forbes column.

Although it would “send a strong message to non-sanctioned, neutral merchant ships bound for Iranian ports not to violate the U.S. blockade,” Goldenziel wrote, it “could also open the door for China to apply prize law against the United States — a dangerous proposition for U.S. and neutral merchants in any war with China.”

"If Iran mined the Strait of Hormuz, how come we haven't seen any ships sunk or damaged by mines?"

Good question. The answer seems to be less that ships veered away from mines and more that Tehran was largely bluffing with the mine threat, but the details — once again — veer straight into absurdity.

Before we talk about questionable deployments and the bit about the trash bags (really!), a few words on mine warfare. Actually, I can start with just two words: It sucks.

Mines are easy to deploy, and difficult and dangerous to get rid of. They're the ultimate waterway nuisance weapon, because just the threat of them can slow down or even halt shipping, and tie up valuable resources.

And we never, ever have enough minesweepers. Back during the Cold War, we let our NATO allies deal with much of the Soviet mining threat, while our Navy focused more on ship and submarine threats to the sea lanes to Europe across the Atlantic. But then we won the Cold War, and our NATO allies let their minesweeping capabilities atrophy. If you're wondering whether we stepped up our minesweeping game in response…

…yeah, no.

But I digress, if only slightly.

And Another Thing: During World War II against Japan in the Pacific, we launched a naval and mine warfare campaign to cut off Japan's maritime trade in an effort to starve the Empire into submission. It was called Operation Starvation, and it was frighteningly effective. It's the kind of thing our military can do when our idiot politicians remember to let them off the leash.

Tehran well knows that we don't have enough minesweepers — and so does the rest of the world. The guys who own and captain multibillion-dollar tankers are perhaps painfully aware, which is one yuge reason why shipping through Hormuz slowed to a trickle after Tehran announced it was mining the strait back in March.

“They’re firing on commercial ships, and they’ve mined large segments of Hormuz — international waters,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on June 2.

“What they’re doing is unlawful and illegal,” Rubio said.

I'm a Rubio guy, but I don't put much stock in statements like that last one. What's "lawful and legal" is usually determined by the winner after the fact.

What's maybe the more pertinent question is what, exactly, did Tehran actually do to the Strait of Hormuz?

Iran Watcher reported Friday that the "Hormuz minefield was largely a bluff built on decoys, while even the real mines were reportedly poorly deployed."

"According to reporting cited by CNBC's Brian Sullivan, shipowners said many suspected mines were decoys, including inflated trash bags," the IW post continued. "Separate reporting citing U.S. officials said more than 200 mine-like objects were cleared from the main shipping lane, but only around 11 were actual mines."

What was I just saying about how tricky — or is that tricksy? — mine warfare is?

"A small number of real mines mixed with decoys frightened shipowners, drove up war-risk insurance, and helped choke commercial traffic."

But that's changing.

Traffic through Hormuz reportedly was up something like 400% over just two weeks — and that data is a week old. I wonder how much of that is due to the heroic efforts of our armed forces, and how much is due to shippers realizing that the mine threat turned out to be all bark and no boom.

It also makes you wonder about Tehran's recent boast of having doubled or even tripled drone production.

The State Department quietly waived mandatory sanctions on Iran's radical state broadcaster at two pivotal junctures this year, enabling the broadcaster to air the forced confessions of anti-regime protesters in January and, just this month, encourage and support assassination plots against President Donald Trump, his cabinet members, and his 20-year-old son Barron, according to nonpublic notifications transmitted to Congress and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) is the hardline regime's chief propaganda organ, responsible for blasting Tehran's virulent brand of radicalism to a domestic audience and supporters across the globe, including inside the United States. The IRIB has become instrumental to the regime's survival in the past year, since nationwide protests inside Iran threatened the mullahs' hold on power in the lead-up to the U.S.-led war. In recent weeks, the IRIB—which oversees a wide network of media including newspapers, websites, and social media channels—has been responsible for publishing a series of disturbing death threats against Trump, his wife Melania, and their son Barron. This includes an Aug. 23 video, since taken down, purporting to document both Melania and Barron's movements as part of an assassination scheme that the Secret Service says it is actively monitoring.

But during this time, the State Department waived longstanding sanctions on the IRIB, permitting it to freely operate and access satellite services that are pivotal to its existence, the Free Beacon has learned. Crippling financial sanctions and taking steps to block the IRIB's technical operations would make it hard for the regime mouthpiece to broadcast outside Iran, and would undermine its internal broadcasting and publishing operations as well.

In 1999 and 2003, the United States and its allies bombed state television in Belgrade and Baghdad, effectively shutting down state media for a time. The United States is not believed to have targeted Iranian state broadcasting in its current campaign.

The White House and State Department would not comment on the reasons for the waivers. Sources familiar with the situation suggested the waivers may be a naive effort—dating back to the Obama administration—to coax Iran towards a lasting agreement. The U.S. intelligence services, which rely heavily on the Israelis for intelligence about Iran, may also appreciate the ability to gauge the regime's thinking by following state media.

The most recent iteration of the IRIB waiver was signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio on July 2 and transmitted privately to Congress a week later, according to a copy of the notification reviewed by the Free Beacon. An almost identical version was approved by Rubio on January 6 and transmitted to Congress shortly thereafter. Both documents maintain that it is "vital to the national security of the United States" to waive sanctions on the IRIB and allow it to conduct financial transactions for the provision of "ground connectivity" and telecommunications services. Without these waivers, the IRIB's capabilities would be crippled by sanctions.

The July waiver was approved just over two months before the Trump administration unveiled Operation Economic Outcast, a vast and multi-pronged campaign to crush Iran's financial networks through sanctions on the regime and its international enablers. That effort, however, could be undermined by an active IRIB waiver that continues to relieve pressure on one of the regime’s most powerful state organs.

While versions of the IRIB waivers issued throughout this year have been approved multiple times since 2013 across successive U.S. administrations, both Republican and Democrat, the timing of the two most recent iterations is fuelling calls for the Trump administration to carefully reassess whether the policy actually remains "vital to U.S. national security interests"—particularly at a time when the IRIB is airing credible death threats against the president and his family.

"This is basically an autopilot waiver unless someone intervenes," a former U.S. official with knowledge of IRIB sanctions told the Free Beacon, speaking only on background about the sensitive matter. "Once upon a time, someone told someone this was important to keep going. Has anyone asked whether that's still true today?"

The IRIB controls radio, television, and news outlets across Iran and is the chief distributor of the regime's radical anti-America, antisemitic, and pro-terror agitprop. The waiver essentially allows the IRIB to engage in financial transactions that, by and large, would otherwise be prohibited by America's heavy sanctions regime, which specifically include the state broadcaster.

The waivers excuse the broadcaster from an array of American sanctions it's been subjected to since 2013. These include mandatory congressional sanctions and executive orders linked to the IRIB's role as a regime propaganda outlet. Congress determined that the IRIB had contributed to human-rights abuses by broadcasting forced confessions and sham trials, and in 2013, the Treasury Department sanctioned the IRIB under an executive order, finding that it restricted the free flow of information, censored media, and jammed foreign broadcasts.

Sanctions waivers for the IRIB have long been controversial. They stem from a secret 2013 deal between the Obama administration and the Iranian regime, which the Free Beacon['/i] reported on when it became public. The first Trump administration also came under scrutiny from its GOP allies, as well as Iranian dissidents, for approving the IRIB waiver in 2018, when Iranian protesters were again being violently suppressed by the regime. The Biden administration, too, landed in hot water for bypassing sanctions on the IRIB in 2024, at a time when Tehran's press was celebrating Hamas's Oct. 7 terror spree.

Still, the most recent approval of this policy by the State Department remains somewhat of a mystery amid the military conflict with Iran. The IRIB and its radical networks have helped sustain the hardline regime's morale throughout the war, and they continue to foment terror across the globe. Earlier this year, at the height of Iran's anti-regime protest movement, the IRIB televised nearly 100 coerced confessions from dissidents who were often tortured beforehand.

Both the White House and State Department have repeatedly expressed concerns over the IRIB's death threats against Trump's family and his senior officials, and vowed harsh reprisals for any assassination attempts. In March, the Justice Department successfully convicted an Iranian operative who traveled to the United States as part of a murder-for-hire plot against Trump.

The State Department would not provide a response to multiple [i]Free Beacon inquiries about the IRIB waiver, the reason for granting it, or what will happen next time it comes up for renewal in the coming months. The White House also did not respond to similar questions, with both declining to provide a policy rationale for approving the waiver in both January and July. It is possible, however, that the July version was issued as a potential olive branch to Tehran as the Trump administration was working to enact a ceasefire that is now in tatters.

The IRIB's now-viral Aug. 23 video publicized locations associated with Barron Trump and offered a $10 million bounty on his head. The Secret Service confirmed earlier in the week that it is aware of the threat. Barron is no longer physically attending classes on New York University's Greenwich Village campus and is believed to be pursuing his undergraduate studies in Washington, under greater security.

"The U.S. Secret Service is aware of the video and investigates anything that can be perceived as a threat toward our protectees," Secret Service spokesman Nate Herring said in a statement. "Out of concern for operational security, we do not discuss matters of protective intelligence."

Other recent IRIB videos, including several published in the wake of the late Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei's death, purported to document Trump's own movements and urged jihadist sympathizers outside Iran to exact retribution for Khamenei's killing.

Given the expanding—and credible—threats posed by the IRIB's radical networks, regional observers are recommending the Trump administration finally penalize the state broadcaster for attempting to recruit and reward would-be assassins.

"The U.S. should rescind the sanctions waiver that allows satellite broadcast service for IRIB. IRIB is not just a state news network. It is an arm of Iran's security and intelligence services, which weaponize IRIB against the Iranian people and the U.S. and its allies," said Jason Brodsky, policy director at the advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran. "The broadcasting of bounty videos calling for the killings of President Trump and his family counts as incitement."

Tehran, Brodsky added, "may be trying to recruit radicalized individuals who have access to the United States to carry out these kinds of terror plots. The Iranian regime followed this playbook in 2022 when the author Salman Rushdie was almost stabbed to death in New York by an individual motivated by Islamic Republic fatwas and bounties."

The twins were 19 and still in high school when they were taken from their beds in the dead of night by masked men later identified as being sent by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

After four months of desperately seeking news from hospitals and state institutions, their mother, Marzieh Nourmohammadi, finally learned their fate. Taraneh and Romina Rahimi had been seized over their decision to join millions on the streets of Iranian cities during the January protests against the regime. The twins were unrecognisable by the time of their mother’s prison visit in May.

The women’s scalps were patchy from being dragged around by their hair, and their faces were bruised, according to their US-based cousin. It is claimed that Taraneh, who dreams of running her own horse stable one day, had been told the prison guards would rape Romina in front of her unless a confession was signed.

The visit by their mother to Dowlatabad prison, in Isfahan, the main city in central Iran, was five months ago. It has now emerged from the Iranian courts that Taraneh has been sentenced to death for her participation in the January protests, and that Romina has been given a 25-year prison sentence. Neither of the women have been seen by their family since the sentencing.

The difference in the sentences remains a mystery, but the twins’ cousin, Masoud Nourmohammadi, who lives in the US state of Utah, said he struggled to understand anything done by the regime.

“They do not follow their own law,” said Nourmohammadi. “There is an 18-day period that lawyers can go and appeal but in a lot of [execution] cases recently that has not happened. They just sentence and take the kids and execute them and hang them. So I mean, nothing, nothing really makes sense.”

Nourmohammadi, 43, said he believed Taraneh was sentenced to death by hanging because of her obvious innocence. “You can see her eyes and you know right away that she is a kind person,” he said. “My sense is like they’re looking to put fear within the people, to say: ‘Look, no matter how fine you are, no matter how innocent you are, we can get you, and don’t come to the streets any more.’”

Despite the logistical difficulties presented by the war with the US and Israel that began in February, Iran has executed more than 500 people this year, including at least 29 people in connection with the anti-government protests in January.

At least 16 women have been among those executed. Hundreds more protesters have either been sentenced to death or are facing charges which could carry the death penalty, including more than 70 in Isfahan.

Last month, the UK and 30 other countries signed a joint statement condemning the executions of the January protesters and describing them as an attempt to silence dissent.

Nourmohammadi, a healthcare IT specialist who arrived in the US from Iran 22 years ago, is speaking out despite receiving death threats via text messages and social media from people who say they know his home address. His cousins’ case, he said, should instil a determination to end the Islamic regime.

The two women joined the protests on 8 and 9 January in Istafan, along with 18 million others. The men who came for them a month later dragged them out with bags over their heads and offered no explanation. “The family didn’t know where they were,” Nourmohammadi said. “They had no idea. They were searching for them everywhere, different courts, hospitals. Then my aunt received a call saying: ‘We have your girls, come to see them at the prison.’”

Seeing her daughters was heartbreaking for his aunt, Nourmohammadi said. “She did not recognise her own children: they were beaten up, badly swollen faces, bruises all over their body, broken elbows, knuckles, feet, and they basically had no hair because they would pull their hair and drag them from one cell to another cell. She found out that they had been in solitary confinement.”

Marzieh Nourmohammadi, who raised her daughters, now 20, on her own, was not allowed to attend their trial. Their lawyers said Taraneh told the court that any admissions had been secured through torture. No evidence of the sisters’ involvement in violence was provided, it is claimed. They had never been involved in protests before.

“My mum lives with me,” he said. “There’s not a single second that I pass her and she’s not crying.”