A younger generation of analysts close to Iran’s ruling establishment is publicly arguing that Tehran can only secure meaningful trade and investment agreements with Arab Gulf states by maintaining military pressure on them, according to a review of Iranian media published by Middle East Eye on July 2. The discussion has grown louder since the US-Israeli war on Iran began on February 28, during which many senior Iranian political and military figures were killed, creating space for newer voices within the establishment to advance positions that would previously have been marginalised.
Speaking on a television roundtable, Majid Shakeri, an analyst described as close to Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said there was no path to a practical trade agreement with the United Arab Emirates without continued military pressure. “Having a trade agreement with the Persian Gulf countries is not incompatible with continuing military pressure on them because previous experiences have shown that pursuing a neighbourhood policy with them leads nowhere,” Shakeri said, according to Middle East Eye’s review of the broadcast.
Shakeri extended the same argument to Qatar and Saudi Arabia. “If we want to reach economic deals, we must keep up the pressure because we have seen many times that the Emiratis, Qataris and Saudis promise investment in official meetings, but later it becomes clear that those promises were only meant to influence Iran’s behaviour,” he said. He further argued that Iran should continue attacking US military bases in the region as part of this approach. “The only way to make such agreements happen is to continue targeting American bases in the UAE to force them to leave the region and, at the same time, maintain pressure on the UAE,” Shakeri said.
Parliament suspended four months
While analysts debate foreign strategy in public, a separate confrontation has emerged inside Iran’s own legislative system. Parliament has not held a public session since February 28, the day the US and Israel launched their strikes on Iran, and several lawmakers have now accused Speaker Ghalibaf of keeping the legislature closed without legal justification.
Kamran Ghazanfari, a conservative lawmaker, said directly in remarks cited by the Iranian news site Khabaronline: “We have repeatedly said that Mr Ghalibaf has been illegally keeping the parliament’s public sessions closed for the past four months.” Ghazanfari also rejected Ghalibaf’s stated reason for the closure. “He claimed that the Supreme National Security Council had issued a decision to close parliament. That is a complete lie,” he said.
A second lawmaker, Ali Akbar Alizadeh, reinforced that challenge. “According to our follow-ups, neither the Supreme National Security Council nor its secretariat issued a decision to close parliament,” Alizadeh told the official Iranian news agency IRNA. Both lawmakers argued that Ghalibaf had effectively concentrated legislative power in his own hands during wartime, sidelining elected representatives at a moment when major strategic decisions are being made.
Ashura mourning becomes protest
Iran’s Ashura commemorations this week — the annual Shia Muslim period of mourning for the killing of Imam Hussein at the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE — have taken on a second dimension, as mothers of protesters killed in a government crackdown earlier this year used the occasion to publicly grieve their children and denounce the authorities.
According to video footage circulated by Persian-language media and cited by Middle East Eye, one video shows the mother of 18-year-old Mani Safarpour, killed in southern Tehran during the unrest, holding her son’s photograph as mourners beat drums around her. In a second video, the mother of 22-year-old university student Matin Parvizi, shot dead in the city of Zanjan, spoke at her son’s graveside. “The Yazids of our time shot my son in the back while his hands were in his pockets,” she said. “He had nothing with which to defend himself.” The invocation of Yazid — the historical figure blamed for the killing of Imam Hussein — is a politically charged reference in the Iranian context, used by critics of the government to draw a parallel between state violence and the original injustice Ashura commemorates.
Iranian authorities said 3,117 people were killed during the January unrest. Human rights organisations dispute the official toll significantly. The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said it has identified 6,488 protesters who were killed.
Football dispute: praise abroad, criticism at home
Iran’s national football team, which was eliminated from the 2026 World Cup after drawing all three of its group-stage matches, has received sympathy from observers outside the country over the obstacles it faced during the tournament. The United States, as one of the World Cup’s three host nations, did not allow the Iranian team to hold its training camp on American soil, refused visas to some members of its technical and managerial staff, and required the squad to leave the United States and return to Tijuana, Mexico, after each match.
Inside Iran, those off-field complications have found less sympathy among domestic football analysts, who have directed blame instead at tactical failures and what they describe as the politically connected management of Iranian football. Mohammad Kalhor, a former player and football coach, told the Etemad newspaper, “There is a mafia in our football,” and said it influenced both the selection of the national team’s ageing squad and the appointment of its head coach. “In terms of tactics and style of play, our team did not perform well,” Kalhor said. “Our national team had no plan to build attacks from the beginning to the end of the matches, except when we received a goal and had to attack.”
Background
The US-Israeli war on Iran began on February 28, 2026, following an Israeli strike on Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and has since involved missile exchanges, drone strikes on energy infrastructure across the region, and an Israeli ground operation in Lebanon. Iran has responded with attacks on US military bases in the Gulf and strikes on Israeli infrastructure, including the Bazan refinery complex in Haifa. Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf, a former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander and former mayor of Tehran, has been one of the most powerful figures navigating Iran’s wartime political landscape following the deaths of senior officials. The Ashura period, which runs for ten days, has historically served as a focus for public dissent in Iran, most recently during the 2009 Green Movement protests.
What happens next
Lawmakers have not announced formal proceedings to challenge Ghalibaf’s authority, and no date for the resumption of public parliamentary sessions has been set. The debate over whether to maintain military pressure on Gulf states is taking place in Iranian media rather than in any official policy forum, and MEE has noted that the reports underlying this press review have not been independently verified. No response from the UAE, Qatar or Saudi Arabia to the televised remarks by Shakeri had been reported at the time of publication.
