A senior Iranian lawmaker said on Monday that Israeli drones entered Iran’s airspace from neighboring Azerbaijan during the recent 12-day conflict with Israel, reviving tensions between Tehran and Baku over alleged cooperation with Israel.
Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree made the announcement in a prerecorded message aired on al-Masirah, a Houthi-controlled satellite news channel.
Maritime security firm Ambrey said the Liberian-flagged Scarlet Ray, owned by Singapore-based Eastern Pacific Shipping, controlled by Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer, fits the Houthis’ targeting profile “as the vessel is publicly Israeli owned”.
The Houthis started attacking vessels in the Red Sea region in November 2023. The group has since launched scores of drones and missiles towards Israel in addition to targeting around 100 international ships, resulting in the sinking of four vessels and the deaths of at least eight mariners, according to the Associated Press figures.
The attack in the crucial shipping route comes just hours after the Yemeni militia raided offices of the UN’s food, health and children’s agencies in Yemen’s capital, detaining at least 11 employees, as the rebels tightened security across Sana’a after the Israeli killing of their prime minister and several cabinet members.
Hans Grundberg, the UN envoy for Yemen, said on Sunday: “I strongly condemn the new wave of arbitrary detentions of UN personnel today in Sana’a and Hodeidah … as well as the forced entry into UN premises and seizure of UN property.”
He demanded that they be “immediately and unconditionally” released.
The Houthis have previously detained dozens of UN workers in Yemen and others linked to aid groups, leading the UN to suspend its operations in the Houthi stronghold of Saada in northern Yemen after the rebels detained eight UN staff members in January.
The raids on Sunday followed the killing of the Houthi prime minister, Ahmed al-Rahawi, and several of his cabinet members in an Israeli strike on Thursday, which the group said will be met with retaliatory action.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards warned that the response will be wider than simply its allies in Yemen, branding the killings a "war crime against humanity ... with full US support".
“It will ignite greater anger and expand the geography of resistance," the statement said.
Addressing the gathering on Monday, Pezeshkian outlined a three-part proposal called the “Special Accounts and Settlements of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.”
The plan proposes to expand the use of national currencies in trade, develop shared digital systems including central bank digital currencies, and create a multilateral swap fund to support members facing sanctions or liquidity crises.
“This initiative will enhance economic resilience and turn the SCO into a model of a fair multipolar financial order,” he said.
He also urged the formation of a committee of foreign ministers to manage crises and respond quickly to violations of sovereignty.
This was not the first time Pezeshkian stressed de-dollarization. At a BRICS meeting in Russia in 2024, he said the bloc was recognized for “challenging the dominance of the dollar” and promoting national currencies.
At that time, an image of a banknote bearing the BRICS emblem in the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin at the organization’s summit in Tatarstan drew media attention and sparked discussion about the possibility of its members adopting a common currency.
In December 2024, before officially taking office as US President Donald Trump warned BRICS members that if they used any currency other than the US dollar, they would face a 100% tariff.
Absent from leaders’ photo
A video released Sunday showed Pezeshkian missing from the customary group photo.
Iranian media said he arrived late, while his deputy for communications said the official summit was to begin the following day and the photo was taken during an informal banquet. Unofficial Iranian accounts said his absence was due to alcohol being served at the reception, an issue sensitive for Iranian officials.
Tehran is seen as banking on bilateral meetings during the summit, particularly with Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, as it seeks to manage fallout from its nuclear dispute with the West.
Founded in 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) initially focused on regional security and counterterrorism.
Over time, China and Russia have framed it as a counterweight to US and NATO influence. The SCO now has 10 full members—including India, Pakistan, Iran (since 2023), and Belarus (since 2024)—and its agenda has expanded to economic, political, and military cooperation.
Malley served as US special envoy for Iran under President Joe Biden and was a key architect of the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran. He was placed on leave and had his security clearance suspended in 2023 over alleged mishandling of classified information.
His Yale course for Fall 2025, titled Adversaries by Design: Deconstructing the Iran-US Relationship, will examine ties between Washington and Tehran from the 1979 Islamic Revolution to the present.
The syllabus, seen by Iran International, says students are expected to “internalize” both American and Iranian perspectives, and assignments include role-playing exercises simulating negotiations between the two governments.
However, the list of people whose works students are required to read mainly consists of former Islamic Republic officials or analysts aligned with their thinking.
The syllabus’s reading list includes “How Iran Sees the Path to Peace,” a December 2024 Foreign Affairs essay by former foreign minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif, who has been under US sanctions since 2019. The article, assigned for the Week 11, outlines his diplomatic perspective on Iran’s relations with the West.
While Yale’s website says the course will feature guest speakers, it does not identify them. However, an op-ed by a Yale student published Friday in the Jewish News Syndicate names Zarif as one of the invited speakers.
The syllabus also assigns a 2019 Foreign Affairs article by Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian nuclear negotiator and diplomat. The piece, “How Iran Sees its Standoff with the United States,” appears in the Week 8 readings on the collapse of the 2015 nuclear deal.
Mousavian recently ended his 15-year tenure at Princeton University, which the university described as a retirement. Activists, however, said it followed pressure over his alleged ties to state-linked assassinations and propaganda efforts especially when he served as Iran's ambassador to Berlin.
Other authors featured on the reading list include Narges Bajoghli, Vali Nasr, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, Ali Vaez, Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, and Trita Parsi who are mostly opposed to Iran sanctions and favor normalized relations.
Their works, assigned in weeks dedicated to sanctions and diplomacy, argue that US sanctions have been ineffective or harmful to ordinary Iranians and explore possible diplomatic paths forward.
One of the required reading texts is How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare by Bajoghli, Nasr, Salehi-Isfahani, and Vaez, alongside Batmanghelidj’s How Sanctions Hurt Iran’s Protesters and Parsi’s No, Sanctions Didn’t Force Iran to Make a Deal.
In 2023, Iran International and Semafor investigation uncovered the Iran Experts Initiative (IEI) - a network formed under Zarif to promote Iran's foreign policy and nuclear strategy through scholars based abroad. Ali Vaez was named as one of its key members.
Ebrahim Azizi, the head of Iran’s parliamentary National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said Iranian border guards reported seeing drones crossing from Azerbaijani territory.
“Border guards of the Islamic Republic of Iran explicitly said that the Zionist regime used Azerbaijan’s border to infiltrate drones into Iran,” Azizi during an interview with state media.
He added that the matter had been raised by Iran’s presidency and foreign ministry with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who had requested documentation.
“Now, whether we provide documents is one issue, but the reality itself is undeniable. Our border guards clearly said: ‘We were there and with our own eyes we saw that Israeli drones entered Iran from Azerbaijani soil,’” Azizi said.
The comments follow a phone call in late June in which Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian urged Aliyev to investigate reports that Israeli drones and micro-UAVs had entered Iran from Azerbaijan during the conflict.
According to Iran’s readout of the call, Aliyev denied that Azerbaijan had allowed its territory to be used in attacks against Iran, describing such actions as a “red line.”
Iran has long voiced unease about what it sees as Israel’s security and intelligence presence in Azerbaijan.
In February, Kamal Kharrazi, a senior foreign policy adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said countries “should take their neighbors’ sensitivities into consideration,” expressing concern over Israel’s activities in the South Caucasus state.
Azerbaijan, for its part, has consistently rejected allegations of hosting Israeli military bases or permitting its territory to be used against Iran. Its officials have occasionally accused Iranian clerics and state-linked media of spreading inflammatory rhetoric.
In January, Azerbaijan summoned Iran’s chargé d’affaires in Baku to protest alleged anti-Azerbaijan content in Iranian outlets.
Despite recurring flare-ups, Tehran and Baku have maintained cooperation in areas such as cross-border trade, energy swaps, and infrastructure projects, including the Rasht-Astara railway.
But mistrust persists, particularly over the Zangezur Corridor linking Azerbaijan to Nakhchivan through Armenian territory, a project Iran fears could undermine its regional influence.
A US-brokered peace deal last month between Armenia and Azerbaijan granted Washington leasing rights to develop the Zangezur transit corridor, now renamed the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP).
While Iranian officials continue to accuse Baku of tacit collaboration with Israel, Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Israel said in 2023 that his country “would not let Israel’s military use Azerbaijan as a base for a possible attack against Iran.”
