January 13
Military: Iran’s army received one thousand new drones with “high stealth and anti-fortification abilities,” according to state media. The delivery comes after an uptick in war games and military exercises across the country as part of a two-month initiative to defend against possible attacks from adversaries.
January 14
International: Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said that Iran never plotted to kill President-elect Donald Trump and would not attempt to do so in the future. Pezeshkian said the allegations were “another one of those schemes that Israel and other countries are designing to promote Iranophobia,” in an interview with NBC News. In 2022, the supreme leader’s website promoted a video depicting a drone strike targeting Trump at a golf course. And in 2024, the Department of Justice announced charges against an Iranian and two others for plotting to murder Trump.
International: Azerbaijan’s secret service foiled an assassination attempt on a prominent Jewish community member. The suspects, Azerbaijani citizen Ceyhun Ismayilov and Georgian citizen Aqil Aslanov, may have coordinated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), according to local sources.
January 15
Nuclear: Vice President for Strategic Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif revealed that explosive material had been found in centrifuge platforms acquired by Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization. Zarif, who served as foreign minister from 2013 to 2021, did not specify when this occurred but said that sanctions had forced Iran to rely on intermediaries for purchases which exposed supply chains to Israeli interference, citing the pager attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon.
January 17
International: Iran and Russia signed a strategic partnership agreement, which detailed bilateral cooperation on trade and military as well as science, education, and culture. The pact aimed to facilitate projects to ship Russian natural gas to Iran and establish paths to Iranian ports in the Gulf. But the parties did not make any mutual defense commitments.
January 18
Domestic: Two of Iran’s senior supreme court judges were shot dead in Tehran after a gunman entered a court building. The judges Ali Razini and Mohammad Moghiseh had played a part in the repression of opposition voices in Iran since the 1980s, including delivering death sentences to opponents of the Islamic Republic. Moghiseh had been sanctioned by the United States, the European Union and Canada over human rights abuses. The gunman killed himself after fleeing the scene, and his motive was unclear.