Iranian Domestic Analyst

The Persian-language feed this window is doing something worth naming precisely: it is manufacturing ordinariness. The IRGC's Tehran and Isfahan provincial commands issued advance public notices that residents of Pakdasht and the Sofeh–Baharestan area might hear explosions until 1600 and 1300 respectively, from controlled destruction of unexploded enemy ordnance [TG-588604, TG-588741, TG-588797]. The register is municipal — a roadworks notice, not a war communiqué. That is a deliberate normalisation move, and it is more revealing about regime confidence than any commander's statement. Alongside it runs a synchronised law-and-order beat. Within roughly twenty minutes, *ISNA* [TG-588262], *Fars* [TG-588267], *Mehr* [TG-588279] and *IRNA* [TG-588298] all published the Judiciary's announcement of the execution of the Najafi brothers, framed identically as the destruction of a 'national armed-robbery mafia' with over 200 offences. Four outlets, one text, one hour. Meanwhile *BBC Persian* [TG-587732] reports the Supreme Court upholding the death sentence of political prisoner Arghavan Fallahi, detained during the Woman, Life, Freedom protests — a story with no presence whatsoever in the domestic feed. The domestic ecosystem is loudly executing criminals and silently executing dissidents. That asymmetry is the story. The economic anxiety is legible without being stated. *Fars* [TG-588704] reports fuel queues in Tehran and record consumption of 26.2 million litres; the government spokesman responds that there will be no petrol price change through the end of Shahrivar [TG-588763]; the refining chief promises twelve million additional litres per day [TG-588449]. *ISNA* [TG-588795] notes the dollar crossed 200,000 toman before retreating. Queues plus reassurance plus capacity promises is the classic pre-shortage sequence Iranians read fluently. On negotiations, the official register is carefully split. First Vice-President Aref, via *Al Jazeera* [TG-588352], says important matters remain under negotiation and that Tehran doubts the other side's sincerity — an acknowledgment that talks exist, wrapped in deniability. Deputy FM Gharibabadi tells *BBC Persian* the US demining claim is 'propaganda deception' [TG-587772] while simultaneously detailing an Oman corridor arrangement [TG-587910]. *Mehr* [TG-588452] carries a police ideological-political chief warning that the Leader's message on negotiations 'must not be interpreted selectively' — an unusual public admission that factions are reading the same guidance differently. And the grief work continues. *IRNA* [TG-588341] published a video titled 'Sara Shayesteh's empty bench,' on the Minab school killings, explicitly stating the wish that these children's oppression should 'sweep the whole world.' Nearly six months on, Minab remains Iran's chosen universal-audience artefact. *PressTV* [TG-588481] pairs it with a killed Iranian scientist who had considered leaving and stayed. Both are addressed outward, in English, to an audience that is not Iranian.

Two things happened in the Persian-language space today that have nothing to do with Hormuz and everything to do with how this war is being metabolized at home. The first is petrol. *BBC Persian* reported that surging demand had shut several Tehran stations, quoting the National Distribution Company's Tehran manager [TG-586311]. *Radio Farda* aggregated citizen videos of queues and closures, noting domestic outlets including Khabar Online had picked them up [TG-586967]. Then came the official whipsaw: parliament's deputy speaker told *ISNA* that the sixty-litre quota at 1,500 tomans stays but that the seventy-litre tier would be cut [TG-586370]; hours later the government spokesman said no quota changes and no price decision at all, any structural reform to be gradual and gentle [TG-587108, TG-587128]; then the first vice president's information deputy said quotas are unchanged at least through the end of Shahrivar and that decisions about people's lives are neither secret nor sudden [TG-587165]. Three official voices, three positions, one afternoon. That sentence — neither secret nor sudden — is a tell. It is a denial of an accusation nobody made on the record, which means it is answering the street. And *Fars* is now openly in counter-rumor mode: a piece headlined that fuel stations are caught in a wave of rumors [TG-587179], and a separate debunk of an opposition video about a wooden bridge in Chalous [TG-587516]. When a hardline agency spends its evening cycle on rumor management rather than on the adversary, the perceived threat has moved inside. The second is the register of leadership communication. Multiple outlets published a readout of a seven-hour meeting between Pezeshkian and the Leader [TG-586841, TG-586819, TG-586853], with *ISNA* isolating the headline instruction: preserve unity and internal cohesion, avoid sowing division [TG-586901]. In parallel, Pezeshkian himself told audiences the enemy realized it could not subdue Iran militarily and so pivoted to manufacturing social problems and economic discontent [TG-586607, TG-586613], and insisted the memorandum was signed from logic and awareness, not fear or capitulation [TG-586610]. Defending a signature two months on means the signature is still contested internally. Meanwhile the pressure valves are being tightened: Sharif University confirmed six expulsions and disciplinary files for 115 students over the Dey protests [TG-586568, TG-586923]; *Radio Farda* reports raids on Baha'i homes in Isfahan [TG-587169]; and parliament is advancing the foreign-infiltration bill [TG-585748, TG-585842], with Salehi publicly warning it will obstruct scientific ties [TG-586340]. Khatami met Hadi Khamenei urging active diplomacy and an honorable peace [TG-585991] — which *Al Hadath* headlined as Khatami meeting the Leader's brother after criticizing the leadership [TG-586128]. Same meeting, two entirely different political objects.

Read the Persian-language output side by side and the seam shows immediately. Iranian state media in this window is not primarily covering the sanctions — it is covering Government Week. *IRNA* and *Mehr* ran hour after hour of solar plant openings [TG-585181] [TG-585349], housing units in Ardabil [TG-585332] and Hamedan [TG-585616], a school pool in Zanjan [TG-585125], a waste facility in Qaemshahr [TG-585334]. Pezeshkian's own line at the solar opening was about renewables and domestic panel manufacturers [TG-585383]. This is a government insisting on normal governance as the register in which it will be judged, in the same news cycle Washington announced it would sever the country's economic breathing. Where the war does enter, it enters through economics and legitimacy rather than through the military. The economy minister's remarks are unusually candid for state television: that the Iran-US understanding "was not properly explained" to the nation, that "a great injustice was done" by failing to explain it, and that the government understands the people's hardship [TG-584611] [TG-584612] [TG-584625]. That is a minister pre-emptively defending an agreement against a domestic constituency that considers it a capitulation. Rezaei, as SNSC secretary, sets the hardliner boundary: the US must change its behaviour and take practical steps on the terms of the understanding [TG-584617] [TG-584796]. There is a live factional argument inside the system about the value of what was negotiated, and both wings are speaking in the same 24 hours. The domestic-security register hardened too. *IRNA* carries police chief Radan warning the enemy seeks a pretext for unrest [TG-585171]; the army ground forces commander warns takfiri and hostile elements across the borders of a "crushing" response [TG-585653] [TG-585759]; the Majlis returned to the floor with the bill on countering foreign infiltration [TG-585000] [TG-585748], with *ISNA* reporting the speaker has given no commitment to remove it from the agenda [TG-585630]. And *BBC Persian* reports plainclothes agents raiding Baha'i homes in Isfahan, with four family members summoned [TG-584953] [TG-584954] — a story no domestic outlet in our corpus touches. Economic siege from outside is being converted into a licence for tightening inside, and the diaspora outlets are the only ones documenting the cost. One nuance the others will miss. The presidential communications aide, Tabatabai, went out of his way to say that "contrary to some incorrect media speculation" the Munir visit was fruitful and yielded valuable diplomatic gains [TG-585538] [TG-585539] [TG-585551] [TG-585561]. That phrasing is a tell. Something in the Persian-language space — most likely hardline channels we do not collect — was framing the Pakistani mediation as an unwelcome intrusion or a sign of weakness. The rebuttal is our only trace of the argument.

Read the Persian-language output today and you see a state doing two things at once: rehearsing defiance for the outside and managing anxiety at home. The defiance is scripted and consistent. *ISNA* carries the army commander saying Iranians will fight for twenty generations [TG-582624], *Fars* has him saying the enemy must be made to taste bitterness [TG-582841], and the IRGC statement pledging synergy with the government against multi-layered sanctions runs identically across *IRNA* [TG-583322] and *ISNA* [TG-583332]. Mokhber's line that Iran's response will be firmer than before appears on *Mehr* [TG-583700], *Fars* [TG-583715] and *ISNA* [TG-583840] within an hour. The anxiety management is more revealing. The central bank governor's message — the currency gap is temporary, the surge is caused by American propaganda "hype" — is pushed through *Fars* [TG-583753], *ISNA* [TG-583164] and *BBC Persian* [TG-584450], and he claims foreign exchange was pre-positioned since Bahman where Washington cannot reach it [TG-583611]. Simultaneously, *Radio Farda* reports the president's chief of staff saying petrol quotas will fall and free-market petrol prices will rise [TG-583339, TG-583881], and a parliamentary committee member arguing an increase is unwise [TG-582976]. Fuel pricing is the single most politically dangerous file in Iranian domestic politics, and it is being discussed openly on the day of the sanctions announcement. Two domestic items deserve attention. First, the killing of a Sunni Basij member in Zahedan is amplified with unusual intensity — *Mehr* [TG-582623], *Fars* [TG-582718], *IRNA* [TG-582857], *ISNA* [TG-583068], *Press TV* in English [TG-582831]. The insistence on "Sunni" in every headline, days before Unity Week events across 31 provinces [TG-583272], is a sectarian-cohesion message aimed inward. Second, the judiciary's currency-obligation cases — 358 files, over €7 billion in released commitments, per *Fars* quoting Ejei [TG-582680, TG-582681] — and Ejei's claim that corrupt actors whose interests were harmed are behind attacks on the judiciary [TG-582788]. *Mehr* goes further, alleging doctored documents circulated against an official via a rented account [TG-582905]. Elite conflict is being narrated publicly as foreign-linked media manipulation.

Read the Persian-language output in this window and you find a state media apparatus running two incompatible economic narratives at once, without apparent discomfort. On one side, the reassurance track. The Central Bank governor tells the entrepreneurs' assembly there is no problem supplying foreign currency, that $20 billion will be provided for industry through year-end, and that America has already done everything it could on sanctions so the recent claims contain no new pressure [TG-582322]; *Al Mayadeen* carries him saying reserves were being accumulated since January in anticipation [TG-582333]. *Farsna* reports the Tehran bourse closing at a record 6.1 million points [TG-582608]. The deputy foreign minister taunts the US Treasury Secretary directly: if Iran's military capability is "dismantled" and its nuclear programme "buried," why the financial offensive — "is this victory, or a confession of American failure?" [TG-582270]. On the other side, the same outlets publish the damage. *Ajanews* reports the rial past two million to the dollar, a record low [TG-582570]. *Mehr* reports spring producer inflation at 109 percent, past the hundred-percent threshold [TG-581997]. *IRNA* reports the bourse index down 27,000 points earlier in the same session [TG-582038], and 7,000 billion tomans in employment-preservation loans for enterprises indirectly hit by the war [TG-581686]. *ISNA* carries a parliamentary economics committee member saying the president's promises went unfulfilled because two wars were imposed on the country [TG-581983] — war as the explanation for economic failure is now the standard domestic frame. The hardline pushback is subtle but real. *Farsna* carries former minister Bazrpash writing that Hormuz is "the symbol of Iran's weight in regional equations" and warning against restarting "the defective war/peace binary" [TG-582200] — a pre-emptive strike against any negotiation framing, published on the day the Pakistani army chief lands in Tehran. Against that, *Baqaei* offers a careful register: Iran did not start this war and did not welcome it [TG-582401], decision-makers are weighing economic realities and societal resilience [TG-582430]. That is a foreign ministry laying groundwork. One cultural note the security analysts will miss: *BBC Persian* devotes a piece to the singer Dariush's new song about "conspiracy delusion" and collective responsibility for Iran's present, and the fury it has generated in the diaspora music world [TG-581987]. Six months into this, the argument inside Iranian society has moved from who did this to us to what we did to ourselves.

Read the Persian-language output of this window in order and you can watch a government deciding what its citizens will and will not be told. What is absent: the exchange rate. *Radio Farda* reports the free-market dollar touching 198,200 toman, a new record [TG-579804]; *AbuAliExpress* reports the rial at an all-time low [TG-579881]. Neither *IRNA*, *Fars*, *Mehr* nor *ISNA* reports the rate in this window. What they report instead is the Tehran Stock Exchange index entering the 6.1 million channel [TG-579507], later closing up 8,000 points [TG-579948] — a nominal-rial number that rises when the currency falls. This is not censorship so much as substitution: an unfalsifiable good number offered in place of a bad one. What is present, insistently, is Pezeshkian. *Al Mayadeen* carries his line in Arabic — they wanted to turn Iran into a copy of Venezuela, and it became a power that astonished the world [TG-579375][TG-579376]; *Farsna* has the Persian [TG-579357]. He defends the memorandum with Washington, saying not one clause shows capitulation [TG-578903], that what was reached was the expert consensus of everyone with a hand in the fire, and that critics deny it because they do not know the file [TG-579386]. This is a president defending a negotiated document against domestic attack in the register of loyalty rather than of policy — and *ISNA* publishing Vaezi telling opponents of negotiation to make their case to the people instead of insulting negotiators [TG-579519] shows the argument is live inside the establishment. Then the execution. The judiciary's framing, carried verbatim by *IRNA* [TG-579345] and *Fars* [TG-579307][TG-579308], calls Majid Adineh a terrorist who killed with a chainsaw during the American-Zionist coup of Dey. *BBC Persian* reports him as one of the detainees of the Dey protests [TG-579353]; *Radio Farda* the same [TG-579381]; *Al Jazeera Arabic* neutrally as a citizen convicted of weapons possession and participating in January protests [TG-579322]; *Punch* in Nigeria as a man accused of aiding the US and Israel [TG-579728]. Four incompatible descriptions of one man, and the word doing the work in the domestic version is kudeta — coup, not protest. Naming last winter's unrest a foreign coup is what licenses the sentence. On Qaani's Quds Force statement — Palestine from the river to the sea more alive and attainable than ever [TG-579849][TG-579911] — note the register. He speaks of Palestine, not of Iran's own front. Attention is being directed outward at the moment the currency is directing it inward.

Read Baqaei in the original and what jumps out is the vocabulary. This is not the register of the resistance axis. It is the register of a foreign ministry legal adviser: sovereign equality under the Charter [TG-576587], the customary prohibition on intervention as the ICJ affirmed it in Nicaragua [TG-576588], the erosion of the inter-state order as such [TG-576589]. Almayadeen published it as six sequential posts; Fars, Mehr, ISNA and IRNA all reproduced it [TG-576573, TG-576595, TG-576682, TG-576578]. Tehran is arguing to third states, not to its base. The domestic picture in Persian-language sources is genuinely split. Fars and ISNA led all morning on the Tehran bourse crossing six million points for the first time in history [TG-576893, TG-576896, TG-576985], with the index up over 120,000 units — and in the same feeds, Fars printed the exchange-office rate at 156,737 toman to the dollar [TG-576892]. Meanwhile First Vice President Aref spent the day preparing the ground for fuel-price reform, repeating that the tenth income decile consumes twenty-three to twenty-four times the gasoline subsidy of the first [TG-576974, TG-577087], and IRNA laid out three scenarios for managing the fuel imbalance [TG-576860]. Fars ran a corporate forward from the Tapico holding rebutting rumours that methanol blending damages engines [TG-577130], and ISNA quoted the energy commission spokesman putting methanol at half a percent [TG-577040]. Rising index, rising rate, rationing anxiety — all in one news cycle. One small item is worth more than most of the day's output. IRNA published an explanation that loud noises in central Tehran were celebratory firecrackers marking the beginning of the Imamate of the Mahdi, and that some residents had been frightened, believing military conflict had resumed [TG-576342]. A state agency issuing a reassurance that explosions are not explosions tells you what the ambient nervous system of the capital is like. On succession: BBC Persian ran Hossein Bastani on 'the riddle of the house of Mojtaba Khamenei,' noting his pattern of presence at the fortieth-day commemorations [TG-576771]. Rybar's MENA desk, from Moscow, claims Mojtaba has ordered the merger of Khatam al-Anbia headquarters with the General Staff [TG-577067]. Persian-language sources say nothing of the kind. The gap between what is described in Farsi and what is asserted about Iran from outside remains the most reliable feature of this crisis. And Pezeshkian — reaching us only through an Israeli OSINT translation [TG-577096] — reportedly told the Islamic Medical Association it would be better to end the war today, from a position of strength and honour. That is a negotiating signal, and we are seeing it in a mirror.

Read the Persian-language material in this window in its original register and a picture emerges that neither the American nor the Russian framing captures. Start with the fortieth-day mourning, which saturates *IRNA*, *Mehr*, *Fars* and *PressTV* — Mashhad [TG-573765], Karbala [TG-573888], Moscow [TG-573980], Berlin [TG-574599], Tbilisi [TG-574675]. Note the vocabulary. The dead leader is consistently "آقای شهید ایران" — the Martyr Gentleman of Iran — and the burial chamber is "دارالذکر," the House of Remembrance. This is deliberate sacralization of place, and it is doing something specific: converting a decapitation into a shrine. *Fars* [TG-574458] shows the red banner of vengeance in Kermanshah; *Mehr* [TG-574431] shows it raised in the Razavi shrine. Anyone reading Trump's "nobody knows who is running Iran" [TG-573867] against this material is missing that legitimacy is currently being routed through liturgy rather than through office. Against that, the domestic economic register is startlingly frank. *BBC Persian* [TG-574345] quotes Pezeshkian saying the problems have multiplied several times over. Speaker Qalibaf, in Baghdad, tells Iranian and Iraqi businessmen that the country must plan to overcome the sanctions — and here the framing divergence is the story. *BBC Persian* [TG-574689] renders it as the state must prepare or it will not endure. *Al Arabiya* and *Al Hadath* [TG-574620, TG-574618] render it as "Iran must plan to overcome unjust sanctions." *Almayadeen* [TG-574616] renders it as enemies coming to plunder Islamic countries' resources. Same speech, three political meanings. The Persian-language exile outlet extracts fragility; the Gulf outlet extracts admission; the resistance-axis outlet extracts defiance. The most revealing domestic item is one no foreign outlet touched. *isna94* [TG-574903] reports a panel titled "the information dead-end," with participants from three administrations, whose thesis is that Iranian media have been reduced to covering officials and then are blamed for lacking public authority. That is a state news agency publishing a diagnosis of state media's credibility collapse, during a war, in the same feed where it publishes officials' statements. Alongside it: the first vice president's office issuing a formal denial of a fabricated quote about 80,000-toman petrol circulating on unofficial channels [TG-574477, TG-574496, TG-574488]. Rumor management has become an official function. And normality is being performed with unusual insistence. The konkur went ahead — *Fars* [TG-574263], *Mehr* [TG-574280], *isna94* [TG-574283] all leading with 463,000 candidates sitting the second day, *IRNA* [TG-574818] already announcing the answer key date. After a war-induced postponement, holding the national university entrance exam on schedule is a sovereignty claim aimed inward. On Iraq, one detail matters more than the imagery. *Fars* [TG-573900] shows Qalibaf's send-off from the Imam Hussein shrine to chants of "death to America"; *Mehr* [TG-574573] shows Iraqi resistance figures greeting him at Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis's grave. But the Iraqi prime minister, the same day, told *Al Jazeera Arabic* [TG-574666, TG-574694, TG-574755] that all political forces agree on confining weapons to the state and that arms outside state control repel investment. Tehran's parliamentary delegation is being warmly received by one Iraqi constituency while the Iraqi state publicly narrows the space for exactly that constituency. Both are true, and the Persian-language coverage shows only the first half.

Two Persian-language stories this window sit uncomfortably beside each other, and the gap between how they are told is the story. The first is the national university entrance exam, the konkur. Iranian outlets covered it saturatively — 1.07 million candidates, 65 per cent women, the oldest candidate 85, the youngest 12 [TG-571447, TG-571525]. Inside that routine coverage, the science minister did something unusual: he named four candidates killed in the war whose exam entry cards had already been issued, from Tehran, Kerman and Isfahan [TG-571898, TG-571430], and announced that quotas will be allocated to those displaced or whose homes were destroyed [TG-571423]. *IRNA* ran the empty desk of a Minab schoolchild, Mohammad Sadra Zarei'pour [TG-571861]. This is a specific register — grief administered through bureaucracy, war absorbed into the machinery of ordinary national life. It is far more effective domestically than the martyrdom rhetoric at the fortieth-day ceremonies in Qom and Mashhad [TG-571594, TG-571335], where the chant remains "today is the day of vengeance" [TG-571123]. The second story is an execution. *ISNA* and the judiciary report that Qaem Hosseini, a "foreign national" involved in the Ali-Khani Square attack in Isfahan that killed four police officers, was hanged this morning [TG-571598, TG-571660]. *BBC Persian* reports the same execution as that of "another of the Dey 1404 protesters," noting the judiciary calls him a foreign national but declines to state his nationality [TG-571680]; *Radio Farda* notes he was tried under an alias [TG-571681]. Same body, two irreconcilable civic categories: criminal-plus-foreign-element, or protester. Note the precision of the state's formulation — "foreign national" does double duty, criminalising the man and externalising the unrest. The third thread is legislative. The "countering foreign influence" bill is contested inside the system, not only outside it: a co-drafter defends it as filling a strategic gap [TG-571480], the House of Cinema warns it will split the cultural community [TG-572154], and a parliamentary rules spokesman says the drafting standards were not met and the text will entangle society in restrictions [TG-572197]. Meanwhile Waezi, chief of staff under the previous president, says something remarkable in *ISNA*: during the forty-day war "the hardliners had gone on vacation," and solidarity was exemplary [TG-571977]. That is a factional claim disguised as a war memory — and it is being made now, as the post-war order is negotiated. *BBC Persian* is asking the adjacent question openly: why are the leadership changing the command structure [TG-571726]. Nobody inside is answering it.

Read the Persian this window and you find a state doing two things at once: performing continuity of grief and quietly building the institutional architecture of a succession. The fortieth-day ceremony at Tehran's Mosalla saturated every state outlet — *IRNA*, *Mehr*, *ISNA*, *Farsna* all running live [TG-566539, TG-566541, TG-566620]. But listen to the chants rather than the coverage. The crowd shouted 'our covenant with the Imam is revenge, revenge' [TG-566665, TG-566682] and, critically, 'Labbaik Sayyed Mojtaba' [TG-566893]. Labbaik is the pilgrim's declaration of obedient response to a call. That is not a mourning slogan. It is a bay'ah formula, and it was chanted at the fortieth of the father. Meanwhile *Radio Farda* reports Hossein Taeb — removed from IRGC Intelligence four years ago — restored to command the Basij by order of Mojtaba Khamenei [TG-566016]. State media did not carry the appointment; the external Persian broadcaster did. That asymmetry is the story. And Taeb's first quoted framing, carried by *Farsna* and *Mehr*, is striking for what it says about how the security establishment now understands its own mission: media is no longer an appendix to war, it is the battlefield itself [TG-567358, TG-567369]. Set that beside Qalibaf telling parliament that cognitive warfare plays the key role in the enemy's new plot [TG-565689], and beside the domestic enforcement items *Radio Farda* and *BBC Persian* surfaced the same day — a parliamentary bill restricting citizens' foreign contacts and interviews [TG-565806], a new special prosecutor's office for moral security and expanded cyberspace monitoring [TG-567097], charges against the makers of an unlicensed online program [TG-567228]. The information environment is not merely where this regime argues its case. It is where it has decided the next phase of internal consolidation will be fought. On tone: the register of official Iranian speech shifted this window from warning to derision. Gharibabadi mocking Trump's 'delusion' over Hormuz [TG-566182, TG-566448]; Rezaei's line that Trump's suit still smells of airplane food [TG-567735]; Qalibaf's English-language 'clowns' post [TG-567174]. Derision is a confidence display aimed inward as much as outward — you do not mock an adversary you fear in front of a population you need mobilized. Note what it displaces: Araghchi's long interview [TG-567109, TG-567201] is the only place where the actual negotiating history gets narrated, and even there the frame is that mediators were told a ceasefire was insufficient, the war had to end.

This was the fortieth day. Iranian state output in Persian was overwhelmingly commemorative: the arbaeen of the martyred Leader's burial in Mashhad [TG-564435][TG-563968], *Farsna* and *Mehrnews* on senior clerics at the shrine [TG-562884][TG-563661], and a first-time-published photograph of him reading the Quran in his personal library [TG-564197][TG-564326]. Register matters here — "مقیم دارالذکر," resident of the House of Remembrance, with a commissioned quatrain [TG-564199]. This is hagiographic consolidation, not news. Underneath it, two things are being normalised without ceremony. First, succession: *Press TV* captioned images "Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei, Leader of the Islamic Revolution" [TG-563715], and *Mehrnews* published the same set in Persian [TG-564180]. The title is simply used. Second, the shift of the revenge frame into a mobilisation frame — *Farsna* asked its audience directly how the martyred Leader should be avenged [TG-562896], and ran video after video of provincial crowds on their 170th night [TG-564317][TG-564403][TG-564295]. But the friction is audible. A state broadcaster's line that "the south of Iran is sacrificed for the south of Lebanon" went viral within twenty-four hours to hostile reception, per *Radio Farda* [TG-563217]. A Malayer MP publicly apologised after Mahsa Amini's parents reacted to his remark about her death, reported by *BBC Persian* [TG-563060] and *Radio Farda* [TG-563208]. The enforcement response is visible in state media itself: Tehran's prosecutor filed against the unlicensed internet programme "Azad" [TG-564206][TG-564128], the press jury convicted *Serat News* of publishing falsehoods [TG-563907], and *ISNA* and *IRNA* both flagged sharp online backlash to the parliamentary "countering infiltration" bill [TG-563822][TG-564053]. Elite discourse is unusually candid about the next phase. MP Mottaki says the coming ninety days will determine the regional order and that talk of a ground war is a bluff [TG-563606][TG-563819]. Vice President Aref frames the enemy's post-military strategy as economic pressure aimed at social disintegration [TG-562903][TG-562905]. Meanwhile frozen portioned chicken has been added to the electronic ration-coupon list [TG-563613], a third of South Pars gas capacity is reported lost [TG-563226], and *Radio Farda* documents household appliances becoming unrepairable [TG-563218]. One note on Araghchi's Erbil statement [TG-564181]: he addresses "our Kurdish friends" and invokes Iran's protection of them against Saddam and ISIS [TG-564259]. That is a solidarity register aimed at Kurdish audiences, not a legal denial.

Persian-language sources this window are performing a delicate two-step: projecting martial readiness while foregrounding an economy in visible distress. On the martial register, the Army spokesman Akrami-Nia declares full readiness and modernization of 'damaged systems' [TG-560131, WEB-90685]; deputy air force commander Jafari offers the striking retrospective claim that Iranian pilots hit Al-Udeid 'without GPS or INS, using only maps' [TG-559947, TG-560031 via *Al Mayadeen*] — a narrative of improvised competence engineered for domestic morale, and notably the status of three pilots from that operation remains 'unknown' [TG-560179], a rare admission of loss folded into a valor frame. The more honest signal is economic and political. *BBC Persian* [TG-559754] carries journalist Ali Ramezanian's line that poverty in Iran 'is no longer only the problem of the unemployed' — millions with two or three jobs cannot meet basic costs. *IRNA*'s own reporting on Tehran shopkeepers 'between war and a deal' [TG-559869] and the currency market driven by 'psychology and expectations' [TG-559842] shows state media conceding hardship it usually buries. Pezeshkian's televised address — that enemies sought to replicate 'the Syria fate' and that popular support kept the country standing [TG-559220, WEB-90545] — is legitimacy-through-siege messaging. But his admission via *IRNA*, relayed by *Solovievlive* [TG-559414] and *Xinhua* [TG-559520], that communication with Supreme Leader Mojtaba is 'very difficult at the moment' is the crack in the frame: a president signaling the new leadership is neither fully consolidated nor fully reachable. That, not the pilot valor stories, is the succession-anxiety datum. The reported death sentences for two young men amid a surge in executions [TG-560217] belong to the same repertoire of a state tightening internally while performing confidence outward.

The overwhelming domestic story this window is the Arbaeen 'jamandegan' (those who missed the pilgrimage) marches — and the register in which Iranian state media chose to run them. This is not ordinary mourning coverage. *Mehr* and *Fars* saturate the feed with 'red flags of vengeance' — the یا لثارات (ya latharat) banners — explicitly tied to the martyred Leader: participant after participant framed as marching 'to avenge the blood of our martyred leader' [TG-553627, TG-553886, TG-553985]. The Minab school martyrs are deliberately woven in [TG-553918, TG-554511], as are war martyrs. This is a state apparatus converting religious grief into a cohesion-and-vengeance narrative around Khamenei's death — reading the theological vocabulary, the choice of 'ya latharat' over standard Ashura elegy is a mobilization signal, not a devotional one. Critically, the succession subtext surfaces from an unexpected quarter: Hezbollah's Qassem publicly names 'the leadership of Ayatollah Sayyed Mojtaba' as 'a cause for further victories' [TG-554173], echoed by *Almasirah* [TG-554238]. When the vindication of Mojtaba Khamenei's leadership is being asserted from Beirut, the regional resistance network is doing legitimacy work that Tehran cannot do as credibly for itself. The counter-signal is the resignation rumor. *Times of Oman* runs 'Khamenei issues final ultimatum to Pezeshkian, backs IRGC commander' [WEB-89769]; Iranian officials call it 'utterly false' [TG-553924], *Guancha* carrying Tehran's strong denial [WEB-89745], and Pezeshkian himself declaring 'I will not resign and I will stand' [TG-554346], insisting Iran 'defends its limits but does not seek to widen the war' [TG-553184]. The pattern — a Gulf outlet floats hardliner-vs-pragmatist friction, Tehran forcefully denies — is the recurring fault line. That the denial had to be this emphatic tells you the rumor found purchase.

The Persian-language register this window is doing something specific: it is converting a battlefield stalemate into a theology of steadfastness, and Arbaeen is the vehicle. The *Assembly of Experts* [TG-551447, TG-551451, TG-551455] frames the war as an 'essential confrontation with the arrogant front' and — critically — makes loyalty to Mojtaba Khamenei's guidance the condition of national unity [TG-551704, TG-89403]. Read in the original, the statement is less about America than about consolidating the succession under wartime cover. The 'unprecedented popular turnout' at the funeral is cited as legitimacy [TG-551448]. The *Minab school* martyrdom continues to be the emotional engine. State outlets run the mothers of the killed schoolchildren *at Arbaeen in Karbala* [TG-551418, TG-552914, TG-552065], and Mehr's framing is explicit: 'the crime at Minab strengthened our unity' [TG-552435]. Alongside this, Iran *executes two men, Pouria Safout and Amid Behzad*, for allegedly passing the Minab school coordinates to Israel [TG-551797, WEB-89480, TG-551912]. The information architecture here is tight: victimhood (dead children) + treachery (Mossad spies) + resolution (execution) = a closed narrative that leaves no room for questioning the war itself. But the register is not monolithic. *BBC Persian* and *Radio Farda* surface the counter-frame: Zarif writing that 'the era of hit-and-run is over' urging a pivot to opportunity [TG-551507], Tajzadeh from Evin warning that executing young protesters is 'playing with fire' [TG-552964], and the *Etemad/Tehran municipality* report that 50,000 homes were damaged in the 40-day war [TG-552673]. That last number is doing quiet work — it is the material cost the martyrdom liturgy is designed to sublimate.

Read the Farsi register and you see a regime performing sovereignty for a domestic audience that just buried its Supreme Leader. The dominant Iranian-language move is refusal-of-supplication: Baqaei's line, carried identically across *Farsna*, *IRNA* and *ISNA*, is that Iran "acts according to national interests and will not change its position under threats or media intimidation" [TG-549752, TG-549859]. The near-verbatim repetition across state outlets [TG-549791, TG-549794] is coordinated messaging — this is the sentence the establishment wants every Iranian to hear. The theological-political fusion is running through Arbaeen. *PressTV* frames the pilgrimage as "a statement of unity and resilience amid the US-Israeli war" [TG-549367]; *IRNA* explicitly calls it "cultural para-diplomacy" [TG-549385]. But watch the darker current: *Mehr* reports Iranian students and Iraqis raising a giant "revenge for the martyred leader" banner and chanting "we'll kill Trump" [TG-550068, TG-550190]. And *abbasdjuma*, a Russia-based Iran channel, stages the Minab bereaved mothers arriving in Karbala [TG-549559] and an American journalist tearfully apologizing [TG-549627] — grief converted into mobilization iconography. Domestically, the seams show. *ISNA* carries the House of Cinema's protest letter to Pezeshkian over summons of artists [TG-549265]; *Farsna* reports asset seizures of footballer Sardar Azmoun and singer Mohsen Yeganeh as "collaborators" [TG-549358], with the judiciary insisting nothing was released [TG-549430]. This is the hardline apparatus policing celebrity dissent even as it performs national unity. Pezeshkian's "Islamabad MoU as center of gravity of future foreign relations" [WEB-89218] is a pragmatist trying to bank a diplomatic win from the same war the IRGC is monetizing for vengeance. Two Irans, one masthead.

The most revealing Iranian-language dynamic this window is the gap between the state's triumphal register and its careful operational silence. On the celebratory track, *Farsna* and *Mehr* [TG-548289, TG-548315] cast Trump's retreat as proof of Iranian deterrence — 'for the world's interest and Iran's survival, he canceled the attack' rendered as mockery. *Al-Ahd* via *IRNA* [TG-548819] frames it as 'America's fear of Iran's power.' Yet on the substantive question — did Iran request the pause, did Araghchi concede Hormuz — the state apparatus went to unusual lengths to DENY, with military sources calling it 'a new lie' [TG-548316] and Fars killing the Hormuz-deal story [TG-548915]. Tehran will accept the image of a deterred America but refuses the image of a supplicating Iran. That distinction is the regime's red line for domestic legitimacy. Underneath the Arbaeen saturation — genuinely enormous, 3.3 million pilgrims crossing [TG-548990], the 'red flags of vengeance' motif [TG-547900] fusing Karbala mourning with anti-US mobilization — sits a quieter contest. *Khane Cinema*'s letter to Pezeshkian [TG-548928] and the regime's sharp rebuke of celebrities who 'gave a platform to the coup-supporters' [TG-548946], plus *Fars*'s circulation of 'monarchists confessing: we are Yazid's army' [TG-548611, TG-548649], show the hardliners weaponizing Ashura's binary to brand domestic dissent as treason. Note too *Hamshahri*'s admission [TG-548788, TG-548879] that Mojtaba Khamenei's voice is being withheld over 'espionage voice-tracing' fears — a rare public acknowledgment of succession-era insecurity at the top. The street is being mobilized outward; the anxiety points inward.

Reading the Farsi register this window, the striking thing is how completely the domestic frame has fused Arbaeen with revenge for Khamenei. *Mehr* and *Fars* saturate the feed with 'red flags of revenge' — یالثارات الحسین — carried by pilgrims on the Najaf-Karbala route, explicitly tied to 'khoonkhahi' (blood-vengeance) for the martyred leader [TG-546542, TG-546572, TG-547323]. This is theologically precise messaging: it grafts a state grievance onto the most emotionally saturated ritual in Shia life. When *Mehr* pushes a '$100 million bounty to kill Trump' banner carried by students and pilgrims [TG-547711, TG-547714], that is not policy — it is the regime testing how far popular fury can be channeled as deterrent theater. The Ghalibaf revelation is the domestic-politics story others will miss. The Speaker's account of the first hours after Khamenei's killing — learning of the death an hour after the bombing, scrambling to convene the heads of branches [TG-546619, TG-547298] — is being run hard by *BBC Persian* and Arab outlets [TG-546587, WEB-88844]. Circulating this now, months later, is a legitimacy move: it normalizes the succession, showing the system held. Pezeshkian's 'the future of Iran will be shaped by the people of Iran' [TG-547025, WEB-88787] is the pragmatist counterpoint to the hardliner vengeance chorus — and the coexistence of both in the same feed is the real factional map. On the Gulf, watch Baghaei's rebuke to Bahrain's ruler: no leader may claim 'the Muhammadan mission' merely by speaking Arabic, and standing with aggressors against a Muslim state violates the Quran [TG-547275, TG-547223]. This is Iran fighting the Sunni-Gulf legitimacy war on theological ground — reframing Gulf alignment with Washington as religious betrayal, not geopolitics.

Read the Farsi register and a deliberate strategy of grievance construction emerges. Iranian state media this window is not leading with military triumph — it is leading with *civilian martyrdom*. The Qeshm strike on a residential home in the Chah-Tango neighborhood [TG-544027, TG-544024] is framed by Speaker *Qalibaf* as terrorism 'against civilians' [TG-543665] and by FM spokesman *Baghaei* as 'a crime reminiscent of Daesh atrocities' [TG-543689]. The Hormozgan chief justice explicitly argues the strikes were 'deliberately designed to take civilian victims' [TG-545147]. This is calibrated: Tehran is answering American strength-signaling not with capability claims it cannot verify but with a victimhood frame it can document. Simultaneously, the domestic legitimacy machinery runs at full tilt around the martyred Su-24 pilot Majid Kazemi [TG-543688, TG-544470] and the Arbaeen pilgrimage — 1.7 million Iranians in Iraq [TG-543752], the 'blood-vengeance' (*khunkhahi*) flags of the martyred Leader carried Najaf-to-Karbala [TG-545045, TG-545015]. The Tehran Friday preacher *Aboutorabi-Fard* reframes 'victory' theologically: Iran's 'preemptive operations prove the initiative is in our hands' [TG-543825], while the Qom Friday preacher insists 'victory is not only military triumph' [TG-544025] — an ecosystem hedging against the absence of a battlefield win by redefining the scoreboard. Two underread signals: *BBC Persian* [TG-544718] notes Iranian media are unusually foregrounding reports of 'direct Mossad contact' with Iranian officials — a striking thing for the regime's own outlets to amplify, suggesting internal factional messaging. And *radiofarda* [TG-545160] carries the CENTCOM rebuttal that others suppress. The Persian-language space is not monolithic: state outlets build the grievance case while diaspora outlets quietly host the counter-evidence.

The Farsi register this window is saturated with two things: Arbaeen and martyrdom-as-legitimacy. State outlets flood the zone with pilgrimage logistics — 2.7 million crossings, field hospitals at Mehran (*IRNA* TG-542609, TG-542677) — which functions as a demonstration of normalcy and mobilization capacity under strikes. Braided into it is a deliberate fusion: the 'red flag of revenge for the martyred Leader' carried by pilgrims (*Mehr* TG-543371, TG-543372), Minab's slain schoolchildren memorialized on the road to Karbala (*Press TV* TG-543171), and clerics like Ayatollah Safai Boushehri declaring *qisas* (retaliation) against 'the great criminals' a duty of every Muslim (*Farsna* TG-543233). Note the striking Mottahari intervention (*ISNA* TG-543192, TG-543525): 'an American may take revenge for the martyred Leader's blood' — and, crucially, 'negotiation during war works better,' attributed to the late Larijani. That is a pragmatist voice keeping a diplomatic door ajar amid maximalist theology — the hardliner/pragmatist seam is still live. On Iraq, Baghdad's spokesman flatly denies foreknowledge of the US-Saudi strikes on Hashd al-Shaabi (*IRNA* TG-542576, *Times of Oman* WEB-88223), and the five IRGC bodies returned via Mehran to 'Death to America' chants (*Mehr* TG-543377, TG-543378) become a legitimacy ritual. Read the Erbil/Sulaymaniyah drone strikes on Kurdish 'separatists' (TG-542893, TG-543052) as Tehran signaling it can still project into Iraq while absorbing blows.

Reading the Persian-language sources in their own register, this window is dominated by a martyrdom-and-vengeance frame that has fully absorbed the Arbaeen pilgrimage. The Qeshm strike killed a two-year-old, Sina Jafari, with his parents Qeysar and Zahra [TG-541011, TG-542348]; state media names the child repeatedly and FM spokesman Baghaei writes that Sina 'joined the ranks of the martyred children of the path of Iran's honor' [TG-542348, TG-542355]. This is not incidental—Iranian state media is fusing the war dead with the Arbaeen 'red flag of the martyred Leader's vengeance' (*parcham-e sorkh-e khunkhahi*) carried by pilgrims at Mehran [TG-541846, TG-541882]. Two million-plus crossing the border [TG-541678] become a mobilized, grieving public. Note the domestic-politics tell: the Tehran prosecutor announced charges against 'the few' who supported the 'ruthless' convicted of the Dey 1404 coup and 'Ramadan War' [TG-542425, TG-542315]—regime-internal score-settling against monarchist/reformist sympathizers, dressed as wartime unity enforcement. And crucially, *Fars* runs a video mocking 'the delight of monarchists at America's attacks on the people of the south' [TG-541235], while *Middle East Spectator* reports exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi privately considering suspending his political ambitions, feeling 'betrayed' by Trump and Netanyahu [TG-541484, TG-541513]—Reuters via BBC Persian carries a 26-minute interview [TG-542383]. The opposition-in-exile narrative is collapsing in real time, and Tehran is amplifying that collapse. On the pragmatist-hardliner axis: the IRGC's direct addresses to 'the honorable people of Jordan' and Kuwait [TG-541119, TG-541395] show the hardliner instinct to speak past governments to Shia and sympathetic publics. But watch Araghchi's careful diplomacy—phone calls to Bulgaria (protesting US basing), Cyprus, and a pointed statement that 'Egypt is a friend and important partner' warning of Israeli false-flags [TG-542434, TG-542441]. The regime is running vengeance at home and reassurance abroad simultaneously.

The most revealing Persian-language signal this window is a deletion. *AbuAliExpress* [TG-538392, TG-538527] reports that Iranian media published and then removed an account naming four IRGC members killed in the US-Saudi strike near Karbala; simultaneously *middle_east_spectator* [TG-538488] and *Al Arabiya* via *ajanews* [TG-538725] carry 'five IRGC instructors killed.' Tehran loudly mourns Iraqi Hashd martyrs [TG-537911] but manages the optics of its own advisors dying on Iraqi soil — because acknowledging IRGC deaths confirms exactly the 'Iran runs the militias' frame Riyadh and Washington are selling. That deletion is the story. Domestically, state outlets are saturated with Arbaeen coverage [TG-537597, TG-538264] and the Minab schoolchildren martyrs — *Mehrnews* [TG-537743] posts a boys' choir 'all of whom were martyred,' families dispatched to Karbala [TG-537831]. This is grief mobilization, folding the war dead into Ashura-Arbaeen martyrdom-and-vengeance theology (khunkhahi blood-vengeance banners for the martyred Leader, [TG-538262]). Coherent and sincere at the popular level — and state-managed. Crucially, dissent is leaking: *Radio Farda* [TG-539022] reports three Evin political prisoners accusing the regime of using the war as cover for intensified repression; *Haaretz* [WEB-87418] and *Amnesty* via *Radio Farda* [TG-538971] document public executions. And *isna* [TG-539359] carries an extraordinary complaint: state TV 'censors even the president,' cutting Pezeshkian, the Speaker, and the FM. When the regime's own media is accused of censoring the regime's own officials, the information-control apparatus is straining against the war narrative it serves.

Read the Farsi register and you see a regime performing confidence it may not fully feel. The IRGC communiqués this window are theologically loaded — statement #52 opens 'Bismillah qasim al-jabbarin' [TG-536612], the Quranic 'crusher of tyrants,' and calls the US 'the child-killing army' [TG-536637]. This is Ashura-Arbaeen framing deliberately fused with military operations, timed to the Arbaeen pilgrimage that saturates state-media output [TG-536246, TG-537029]. The most analytically important Iranian move is the DENIAL: a 'knowledgeable military source' on state TV flatly rejects any link between Iran and the projectiles fired at Saudi Arabia [TG-536366, TG-536368, WEB-87392]. Tehran claims the Jordan strike proudly but disavows the Saudi attacks — a careful factional line that lets it project strength against the US while denying responsibility for the Gulf escalation that Riyadh is using to justify striking Iraq. Deputy FM Gharibabadi's remarks are the pragmatist counter-melody: no request to negotiate came from Iran, but the Americans sent messages [TG-537026]; on Hormuz, 'if we don't reach understanding with Oman, we continue our course' [TG-537035]. That's hardliner posture with a diplomatic seam left open. Domestically, *bbcpersian* carries the Reza Pahlavi Reuters interview [TG-536188] and a Pulitzer journalist's assessment that the exile opposition is 'deeply fractured' [TG-536696] — the ecosystem itself conceding the diaspora offers no coherent alternative. And *isna94* runs a reformist warning that 'both the capitulators and the anti-negotiation hardliners are equally dangerous' [TG-536759] — a rare published sign of the internal debate the regime usually suppresses.

Read Gharibabadi's press conference in its original register and you see a deliberate doctrinal shift being announced, not improvised. On *Farsna* and *ISNA* he calls Hormuz 'a newly discovered defensive capacity' [TG-535529] and 'a very important index for evaluating Iran's success in the war' [TG-535531] — the language of a regime converting a wartime chokepoint into a permanent sovereignty claim. His line that a return to pre-war Hormuz arrangements would mean 'our victory in the war is not complete' [TG-535544] is aimed inward: it defines success in terms the hardliners can bank. The NPT signaling is the genuinely new escalation, and it is being floated carefully. Gharibabadi tells Iranian TV, via *Farsna*, that Iran is now 'like a country that is not an NPT member' — no IAEA inspections, no declarations, all access cut [TG-535794] — and that 'the other side should not think Iran will remain in the NPT forever; all options are on the table' [TG-535795]. Pairing that with 'we have no objection to debating NPT withdrawal' [TG-535830] is a trial balloon released through a deputy, not the leader — deniable, reversible, but unmistakable. Domestically, the mobilization theater is relentless. *Al Mayadeen*'s Tehran correspondent describes crowds in Revolution Square chanting 'we are the people of the Revolution' [TG-535862], while *Farsna* runs Sayyed Jawad Nasrallah's testimony that Khamenei's martyrdom 'awakened Arab peoples' [TG-536007]. And note the execution of two Isfahan protesters this morning [TG-534633][TG-534641] against the Arbaeen backdrop — the state is fusing mourning, war and internal deterrence into a single register. *Aref*'s 'we are optimistic but prepared for the worst' [TG-535580] is the pragmatist counterweight, and it is losing airtime.

Read the executions in their original register and the framing war is total. Iranian state media — *Mehrnews* [TG-533541], *Farsna* [TG-533584], *IRNA* — describe Abolfazl Sepahi Badjani and Amirhossein Safari as men who 'burned police officers alive, dismembered them' in the Malek Shahr / Alikhani Square 'coup' of Dey 1404. *Middle East Spectator* [TG-533567] adopts this framing verbatim ('rioters who burnt police alive'). Against it, *BBC Persian* [TG-533644], *Radio Farda* [TG-533709], and Israeli OSINT *abualiexpress* [TG-533801] frame them as Dey-protest detainees executed amid crowds trying to stop it. *Jerusalem Post* leads with 'outrage' [WEB-86905]. *Radio Farda* notes UN experts had demanded a halt to 10 such executions [TG-533803]. This is one event, two mutually exclusive moral universes, and the OSINT middle layer choosing sides. Second, notice the domestic-legitimacy signaling around Mohajerani's press conference. State channels foreground the head of judiciary Ejei warning against 'unauthorized surveillance... even in wartime' [TG-534165, TG-534255] — a hardliner reassuring a nervous public that the security state won't use the war as cover. And Iran's own police rushing to deny a woman was killed at the Isfahan protest site [TG-534211, TG-534441] tells you the regime is managing the execution's optics in real time, worried about the very outrage BBC Persian is amplifying. Third, the Arbaeen mobilization (6 million pilgrims projected [TG-533338], 'Death to America' chants staged at the Khosravi crossing [TG-534098]) is being used as a legitimacy counter-narrative — grief converted to unity — precisely as the executions strain it.

Reading the Persian-language register this window, the striking pattern is how thoroughly the domestic ecosystem has fused the Arbaeen pilgrimage with martyrdom-vengeance framing for the slain Leader. *Farsna* [TG-531457] and *Mehrnews* [TG-532279] show pilgrims carrying "red flags of vengeance" (پرچم سرخ خونخواهی) for "the martyred leader of the revolution" toward Karbala; *Farsna* [TG-531848] frames Arbaeen as having "two wings — love for Hussein and hatred of enemies." This is not incidental — it is a deliberate channeling of religious mobilization into war legitimacy, and it tells us the succession question (Mojtaba Khamenei) is being managed through ritual continuity rather than open contest. Note *alarabiya* [TG-531472] reporting "Mojtaba Khamenei breaks his silence" with a message to Hezbollah, and *isna94* [TG-532533] quoting a leadership-office figure that Mojtaba, "like the martyred leader, does not consider negotiation forbidden." That last line is significant Farsi nuance — it is a pragmatist signal embedded in a hardline frame, keeping the diplomatic door ajar without appearing to beg. On the street-legitimacy front, the *IRIB poll* claiming 78% support for Hormuz tolls even at risk of war (*Middle East Spectator* [TG-531723], *Farsna* [TG-531649]) is state-produced and should be read as manufactured consent, not measured opinion. But the internal-repression signal is real and underreported: *BBCPersian* [TG-532043] and *Radio Farda* [TG-532584] warn of imminent executions in the Isfahan "Ali-Khani Square" protest case from Dey 1404. The regime is simultaneously performing unity through Arbaeen and pre-empting dissent through the gallows — the two faces of a leadership that lost its center of gravity and is improvising cohesion.

Two Persian-language signals deserve careful reading. First, the letter attributed to *Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei* answering Hezbollah's pledge of allegiance [TG-529715, TG-529739, WEB-86240], saturating *Mehrnews*, *Farsna*, *IRNA* and *PressTV* simultaneously. The register is significant: it is signed as Leader, presented as strategic doctrine — 'defending Hezbollah is Iran's strategic policy' — and inserts a striking condition, that preserving Lebanon's territorial integrity is the 'first condition' of any memorandum with the US [TG-529767, WEB-86240]. This is succession consolidation performed through foreign-policy voice; recall *Haddad-Adel's* awkward remark this window that the new leader 'communicates with no one but is, God willing, healthy' [TG-529066, WEB-86257] — the ecosystem is still managing legitimacy. Second, the domestic unity theater around Alamut's UNESCO listing [TG-528868, TG-529058]: Pezeshkian's 'Iran belongs to all Iranians' [TG-528980] and Hazrati's line that Alamut can become 'a shared narrative of national unity' [TG-528734] repurpose a heritage win as post-war cohesion messaging. Underneath both, the pragmatist-hardliner seam shows: Pezeshkian frames the US strikes as 'war crimes' for international courts [WEB-86252], the Majlis passes a bill criminalizing settlers and CENTCOM as legitimate targets [TG-529510], while Baghaei insists 'diplomacy remains open but our priority is defending the nation' [WEB-86301]. Note also *Reza Pahlavi* meeting LGBTQ+ and Israeli figures in Paris [TG-528721, WEB-86208] — the diaspora-opposition track that Iranian state media reflexively amplifies to brand dissent as foreign. The regime is narrating cohesion precisely because the seams are visible.

Reading the Persian-language register, the dominant domestic move is the conversion of a US pause into an Iranian triumph. Army spokesman *Akrami Nia* saturates *Mehr* and *ISNA* [TG-528443, TG-528119] — 'the situation is chaotic and undesirable for America; they failed to achieve their objectives in Hormuz and to weaken Iran' — while *Mehr*'s headline reads bluntly 'NYT: Trump backed down and retreated' [TG-527880]. This is careful framing: Tehran attributes the pause to its own deterrence (Kheibar Shekan missiles, per *WSJ* relayed by *PressTV* [TG-527662]) rather than to American logistics. The IRGC's threat that Britain and the Gulf states become 'legitimate targets' if they aid the US [TG-527776, WEB-85934] is hardliner signaling to a domestic audience, paired with Qaani's demand that Saudi Arabia end the 'eleven-year Yemen siege' [WEB-86022] — positioning Iran as regional patron. But note the pragmatist counter-current the others miss: FM Araghchi tells *TASS* that Iran's actions 'are directed only against the US, not its neighbors,' and Tehran intends to rebuild trust with the region [WEB-86054, TG-528502]. That is a deliberate de-escalatory signal to the Gulf, running underneath the martial rhetoric. And the human register bleeds through the state frame — children in Lamerd recounting the strikes on *PressTV* [TG-528442], the martyred park-ranger family in *IRNA* [TG-528216]. The regime is threading defiance, statesmanship, and grief simultaneously.

The most revealing Iranian-domestic story this window is not a strike — it is a censorship fight. *Al Jazeera Arabic* [WEB-85908] frames it directly: the struggle over the official narrative as state TV 'liberates' the authorities' words. *irna* [TG-526040] and *mehrnews* [TG-526155 context] carry government spokeswoman Mohajerani confirming a formal reprimand to state broadcaster IRIB for selectively editing out part of President Pezeshkian's remarks; *isna* [TG-526503, TG-526540] amplifies council members (Shamsolvaezin, Atrianfar) calling the censorship of senior officials 'among the most damaging' media behaviors. This is a rare public airing of the pragmatist-hardliner fault line running through the regime's own information apparatus — the presidency versus the IRGC-aligned broadcaster — and it is happening in the open. Register matters. The hardliner ecosystem is running two simultaneous mobilization frames. One is martyrdom-continuity: *irna* [TG-526107] carries Mojtaba Khamenei's [TG-526184] thanks for the 'tens of millions' at the martyred Leader's funeral and Arbaeen — grafting the new succession onto Hosseini mourning. The other is defiant deterrence: SNSC secretary Zolghadr's [TG-526038, *Press TV* WEB-85796] 'every column of smoke means a US facility struck… until total surrender,' echoed by Qaani [TG-527280] on lifting Yemen's blockade. Note the theological packaging — 'avenging the blood of the innocent children of Minab and Lamerd' [TG-526024] — which fuses the school-strike grievance to the retaliation narrative. And the counter-current the hardliners must manage: *bbcpersian* [TG-527480] reports Nournews (close to the security council) admitting a Shamkhani meeting was convened to organize a response to *protests* — a tacit acknowledgment that domestic dissent, not just the enemy, is on the agenda. *radiofarda* [TG-526131, TG-526092] keeps the espionage-and-smuggling counter-frame alive from London. The regime is fighting a two-front information war: outward defiance, inward control.

Read the Persian register carefully this window, because the domestic framing is doing heavy lifting. The Health Ministry's toll — 55 martyrs, 645 wounded [TG-522351], with the earlier breakdown noting 46 women and 24 children among the injured [TG-521350] — is being deployed by IRNA and Fars alongside the word 'terrorist' (تروریست) affixed to the US Army in nearly every dispatch [TG-521379, TG-521455]. This is not incidental; it is the regime constructing a victim-of-terrorism frame that inverts decades of American 'state sponsor' language. The factional tell is Araqchi's SCO speech. He declares any source of 'aggression against the Iranian people' a 'legitimate target' [TG-522020, WEB-85302] while simultaneously insisting Iran 'has shown it is not the initiator of any war' [TG-521942]. That is the pragmatist camp threading a needle — projecting resolve abroad while keeping the door to diplomacy nominally open [WEB-85267]. Contrast the hardliner register: Mohsen Rezaei, adviser to the Leader, promises an 'escalating and severe' response over the Shalamcheh pilgrim strike [TG-521893]. The pilgrim angle matters — this is Arbaeen season [TG-521272, TG-522300], and framing US strikes as attacks on Hosseini pilgrims fuses nationalism with Shia devotional sentiment in a way that constrains any leader who might want to de-escalate. One striking crack in the wall: Pezeshkian's remark, carried by ISNA, that 'if there is a wiser man with better judgment than the heads of state, let us hand the country to him' [TG-522337]. In the Persian original this reads as exhausted, almost bitter — a president signaling strain inside a system publicly projecting unity [TG-522239]. And Araqchi's candid complaint that state TV never aired his Fox/CNN interviews [TG-522742] reveals an internal media battle: the diplomat wants his international 'sword-fighting' shown at home, and the broadcaster won't. That is factional friction leaking into public view.