Iran Update March 27, 2025
Ria Reddy, Siddhant Kishore, Kelly Campa, Annika Ganzeveld, Carolyn Moorman, Alexandra Braverman, Andie Parry, Katherine Wells, Ben Rezaei, Avery Borens, Alexis Thomas, and Brian Carter
Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm ET
The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) publish the Iran Update, which provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests. CTP-ISW publishes the Iran Update every weekday.
Click here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of the ongoing opposition offensive in Syria and here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of Israeli ground operations. The Syria map is updated daily alongside the static Syria maps in this report. CTP-ISW ended daily maps of Israeli ground operations in February 2025.
We do not report in detail on war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We utterly condemn violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
Iran responded on March 26 to US President Donald Trump's letter proposing nuclear negotiations.[1] Iran signaled it is open to indirect nuclear negotiations with the United States but rejects direct negotiations under the current conditions. Trump sent a letter to Khamenei on March 5 that proposed negotiations on Iran's nuclear program, and Iran responded to the letter via Oman on March 26.[2] Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Abbas Araghchi said that Iran is open to indirect talks with the United States, though it rejects direct negotiations under the current US “maximum pressure” campaign and US-Israeli threat of military action against Iran’s nuclear program. US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard stated on March 25 that Trump's letter to Iran proposed "direct talks" and emphasized that "there would be military consequences if there were no direct negotiations."[3] It is unclear if Iran's openness to indirect negotiations will fulfill US conditions to grant sanctions relief or avoid military action against Iran's nuclear program.
This likely suggests that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has approved indirect negotiations with the United States. Araghchi said that Iran conducted such indirect talks under former presidents Hassan Rouhani and Ebrahim Raisi. Senior Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Adviser Kamal Kharazi, have also recently expressed willingness to engage in indirect negotiations with the United States.[4] That Kharazi spoke to state media may suggest that Iranian officials are concerned about internal unrest over Iran’s economic situation and want to signal to the Iranian population that the regime is willing to take steps to secure economic relief.[5]
The Islamic Resistance Front in Syria, which is an anti-Israel militia, claimed that it is an independent Syrian militia. It is abnormal that an independent militia would use iconography widely associated with Iranian-backed actors (see graphic below). A media official from the Islamic Resistance Front in Syria told Lebanese media on March 27 that the group does not receive “internal or external” support from Iran or Iranian-backed actors in the region.[6] The official described the group as an “integrated organization” with political, social, military, and legal offices.[7] There is no evidence that the group has any affiliations with external actors, but it is unclear why an independent local actor would decide to use iconography that many Syrians and people in the region and the world widely associate with Iran and its proxies and partners.[8] The group initially established itself on January 8 as the "Southern Liberation Front” and used red, green, and black text over a grey map of Syria as its logo until January 12, when it changed to the current logo.[9]
The Islamic Resistance Front in Syria said it communicated with the Coastal Shield Brigades, a sectarian Alawite insurgent group in western Syria, but broke off communications after th...
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