Middle East Insider · Issue 072 · Sunday, November 1, 2026

Tehran’s Own Numbers

Good morning. The Treasury Department has written down the state of Iran’s economy under the blockade, and officials in Tehran describe the same from their side; then the sermon that answered them, Israel’s fraud question, Michigan two days before the vote, and Beirut and the Security Council.

Washington’s economic campaign against Tehran now has figures of its own, Tehran’s own officials describe the same shortages, and the answer from the capital’s pulpit was a call for nuclear weapons.

Treasury’s report on Operation Economic Outcast, the sanctions program Secretary Scott Bessent opened on August 24, says the rial has lost about a quarter of its value since and hit a record 2.687 million to the dollar in October. Annual inflation reached 90 percent in September against roughly 35 percent in early 2025, and no Iranian oil has been loaded onto a tanker since August 25, Axios reported on Friday afternoon; at Sunday’s open in Tehran the dollar was quoted at about 2.72 million rials, past the figure in Treasury’s report. The report does not say the regime is near collapse. Bessent is urging President Trump to let the campaign run; on CNBC he said “they’re not able to pay their troops,” and on Saturday night he wrote on X, “Iran cannot live without oil exports.”

Officials in Tehran say the same from the other side. Peyman Sanandaji, the transport chairman of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, said a container from China now costs $13,600, up from about $2,700, and that more than 4,000 trucks are stuck at the Bazargan, Sero and Razi crossings into Turkey.

The answer came from the pulpit. Mohammad-Javad Haj-Ali-Akbari, Tehran’s interim Friday prayer leader, used his sermon to call for revising the nuclear doctrine and said “70 percent of the public supports changing” it, naming no poll. He asked experts to send proposals to Mojtaba Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, who appoints the capital’s Friday preachers, for a decision. The night before, Mahmoud Nabavian, a Tehran member of the Majlis, Iran’s parliament, wrote that in Qom he had “called for authorization from the Supreme Leader to build an atomic bomb.” Ahmad Bakhshayesh-Ardestani of the parliament’s national security committee told the Iranian news site KhabarOnline, “There is nothing in Kuh-e Kolang,” the underground complex near Natanz that the President calls Pickaxe Mountain and has named as a target. Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, told state television on Saturday that Iran is debating whether to keep its ban on the bomb if the fighting resumes and that “there has been no new decision regarding a change in the nuclear doctrine.” Hours later at Mar-a-Lago the President named the site again, saying one or two remaining sites could be dealt with “in 10 minutes”: “You probably could look at Pickaxe Mountain, and you have to take care of that.” By Sunday the demand to quit the nonproliferation treaty had reached the Majlis floor, where a bill to withdraw, filed by 59 lawmakers last year, is still not on the agenda.

Qatar’s mediators spent more than 12 hours in Tehran on Friday and left with “positive progress” and no agreement; Iran’s negotiators were in Doha on Saturday for a further round, Reuters reported. Of Vice President Vance’s message, Rezaei said, “I read the letter. I haven’t yet responded. Their tone has completely changed,” and Tehran was “waiting for the Americans’ response”; the President’s word on the talks was that they are “going fine, but you know they’re not very reliable.” On Saturday Mojtaba Khamenei ordered the armed forces to respond immediately and without “geographic limits to any enemy threat,” in a statement on his Telegram account that said nothing about the doctrine.

I draw two conclusions. First, the economic track now has figures and a calendar of its own, so the choice the President faces after Tuesday is between a campaign his Treasury says is working and the strikes his allies have been told to expect as soon as November 4, by MS NOW’s account; the Wall Street Journal says he telephoned Netanyahu on Saturday morning as the planning went on, and Haaretz reports that the Israeli army’s fear is of a short American air war that ends before Israel’s goals are met. Second, the Friday sermon put the bomb question to Mojtaba Khamenei in public; Rezaei’s “no new decision” is the regime’s first answer, and a lawmaker’s “nothing in Kuh-e Kolang” is its reply to the one target the President named again on Saturday night.

MEF Observer, Five Takeaways of Qatar’s Alleged Election Interference Inside Israel (Oct 30): Richard Pollock on the Shin Bet inquiry: a report due in a week, and a finding that could void part of the vote without canceling the result.

Real America’s Voice, Michigan’s Islamist Pulpits and the El-Sayed Campaign (Oct 29): John Solomon and Amanda Head asked me about the Forum’s new site and the El-Sayed campaign’s events at Michigan mosques.

MEF Observer, No Turk Should Lead the U.N. or Any International Organization Until Cyprus Occupation Ends (Oct 31): Michael Rubin on Erdoğan’s candidate for secretary-general.

MEF Observer, Turkey’s Political Games in Somalia Risk Breathing New Life into Al-Shabaab (Oct 31): Siyad Madey on Ankara’s bets in Mogadishu.

Monday at 1 p.m. Eastern: Bernard Haykel of Princeton joins the Forum on Saudi Arabia at War.

The Negev case went back to court, the Mossad is handing the Shin Bet its assessment, and Channel 12 says the opposition bloc’s candidate for Knesset speaker is Eisenkot himself.

Haaretz reported Friday that police had found no evidence the money seized from three activists of Ra’am, the Islamist Arab party, arrested in the Negev on election day was for bribes, and that they planned to release the three; a senior law-enforcement official told the paper the case was exploited by Netanyahu’s office. On Sunday morning the Lahav 433 fraud unit instead asked a Beersheba court to keep some of them in custody, Ynet says. The Mossad will give the Shin Bet, the domestic security agency, its assessment of whether Qatar and possibly other countries paid for turnout work among Arab voters, an authorized source confirmed to the Jerusalem Post. Ynet named Turkey, both governments deny it, and a source told Haaretz the affair “appears limited in scope and its impact, if any, was likely minimal.” Dean Livne, the Central Elections Committee’s acting director general, said Thursday’s reports were “entirely unfounded” and that it “does not affect the final results.”

President Herzog receives the official results on Wednesday and plans to begin consultations the same day; Ynet projects about 60 recommendations for Eisenkot, including the two Arab lists, against 46 for Netanyahu, with United Torah Judaism and Liberman’s party undecided. The anti-Netanyahu bloc still plans to replace Amir Ohana as speaker on the day the new parliament is sworn in, November 10, and Channel 12 reported its candidate would be Eisenkot himself; Liberman has not said how he will vote. Eisenkot’s four conditions for partners include recognizing Hamas as a terror organization, and Ahmad Tibi of the Joint List told Channel 12, “We won’t be part of the government. I don’t want a ministerial post,” but “without the Arab parties there won’t be change,” he said. Likud’s answer, through Maariv, was that Eisenkot is “under pressure from those who are disrupting their plans to cooperate with parties that support terrorism.”

El-Sayed asked a Detroit congregation for ballot signatures on a livestream that ended with a prayer for revenge on Zionists, the New York Post took up the Forum’s videos, and four more were indicted in the conspiracy that marked victims’ homes with Hamas symbols.

Just the News reported that Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate, asked the Islamic Center of Detroit’s congregation during a livestreamed Ramadan prayer in March to sign his ballot petition, and that the broadcast ended with a supplication asking God to “take the worst revenge upon” the Zionists, with El-Sayed’s presence at that point unclear. The New York Post reported Saturday that he courted voters at “at least five” Islamic centers with records of violent preaching, citing the Forum’s translations; neither the campaign nor the center answered it, the Daily Wire or Just the News, whose second story put $47.4 million in public money at 12 of the 36 institutions on testimony.meforum.org and quoted me: “So one day they’re hosting the mayor of Dearborn; the next, the speaker’s calling for killing Jews.”

Federal prosecutors unsealed charges against four more people, 12 in all, in a conspiracy to intimidate the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit, University of Michigan regents and businesses with perceived ties to Israel; its methods included marking homes with red inverted triangles. “From Pharaoh to Hitler to Hamas, those who terrorize Jews have been the bad guys,” said Jerome Gorgon Jr., the U.S. attorney in Detroit.

Lebanon’s military prosecutor charged 13 over Hezbollah’s explosives truck, and the Western Sahara mission’s mandate ran out after Russia and Washington blocked each other’s texts.

Judge Claude Ghanem, the state’s prosecutor at the military court, indicted 13 people, among them two men Lebanese television identifies as Hezbollah security officials, over the truck of explosives stopped at Dahr al-Baidar on October 5, 780 kilograms by the account Naharnet carried. Eleven of the 13 are at large and were charged in absentia, and al-Akhbar reports the party has decided “to give political contacts a chance” rather than escalate. At the United Nations, Russia vetoed the American resolution that would have renamed the Western Sahara mission and called Moroccan autonomy “the only basis for negotiation,” Washington blocked Russia’s one-year rollover, and the mandate ran out at midnight Saturday in New York with nothing adopted. On Sunday the Secretary-General’s spokesman announced the end of the mission’s operations after 35 years, with a small team left to send home the troop contributors’ equipment and dispose of UN property; Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita said Morocco would help the mission leave, not expel it: “The train is moving at full speed toward the definitive closure of this issue.”

Corrections Desk. Nothing to correct from Thursday’s two editions; errors in this one go to [email protected].

If Treasury’s figures were news to you, forward this to one person who watches the oil price.

Reply with the one figure from Tehran you want followed next week.