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Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in recognition of her fight for women’s rights. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said the award also recognised all those who had demonstrated over the past year against the Iranian regime's oppression of women.

The Palestinian issue has been steadily sidelined in the minds of most leaders in recent years, but that all changed with Hamas' brutal attack on Israel on 7 October and the devastating bombardment of Gaza that has followed. With the death toll quickly running into the thousands and claims of war crimes being levelled against both sides, Gulf governments are scrambling to deal with the fallout.

Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on 9 October that Tehran’s diplomatic relations with Sudan were to resume after a seven-year break, with the reopening of embassies in the near future.

The extent to which Iran knew about, or helped with, the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel remains a point of conjecture. Some were quick to point the finger of suspicion at the Tehran regime, which is undoubtedly a major supplier of military materiel to Hamas and the driving force behind the 'Axis of Resistance' that is now confronting Israel.

Islamic Republic of Iran Navy (Nedaja) commander Rear Admiral Shahram Irani has said Tehran is planning to establish a permanent presence in Antarctica which will have both military and scientific components.

Iran has released video imagery of a new jet-powered suicide drone, similar in configuration to the Shahed-136 drone which has been heavily used by Russia in Ukraine.

Global and regional powers have drawn up a series of plans to develop new trade corridors through Gulf countries over recent years, with the latest emerging at the G20 summit in India which will pass through the UAE, Saudi Arabia and on to Jordan and Israel. The ambitious plan could take decades to realise and will face competition from rival schemes backed by Iran, Iraq, Russia and Turkey. 

Amini death anniversary: Iran marked the first anniversary of the death in custody of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini on 16 September. Her death  had sparked widespread protests across the Islamic republic, which were eventually suppressed by the authorities. In the run-up, the authorities had launched a concerted effort to dissuade anyone from marking the anniversary, although some protests still went ahead.

Baghdad claims to have disarmed and moved Iranian Kurdish exiles from the border area with Iran, but the reality is that compliance has been more limited, meaning further Iranian military strikes on the area are a distinct possibility.

An Iranian ballistic missile test failed mid-September, with debris from the Khorramshar-4 projectile falling over the north-east city of Gorgan, close to the Caspian Sea.

Fresh fighting over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region in September has left Azerbaijan empowered and it could now try to realise long-held ambitions to create a land route through Armenia to its Nakhichevan exclave. For Iran, this could mean a de facto end to its own border with Armenia and a sometimes-hostile neighbour stretching across its northwest frontier.

Iran's Foreign Ministry have reportedly developed a network of academics and foreign policy advisers in the west who worked for high-profile thinktanks and as aides to senior United States officials.

Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said that Iran had developed an airfield in southern Lebanon, just 20km from the border with Israel. Iranian media claimed that electrical connectors used in Iranian missiles had been sabotaged by Israeli agents.

Some $6bn of Iranian funds that have been frozen in South Korea are expected to be sent to Qatari banks in the coming days, prompting the release of five US citizens held in Iran and the same number of Iranians in American prisons.

A senior Iranian security official has threatened to resume bombing of targets in northern Iraq if Baghdad fails to meet a 19 September deadline to halt cross-border attacks by exiled Iranian Kurdish opposition groups.