Iran expands security crackdown with 1,895 active espionage cases

Judiciary spokesman Ali Kazemi announced on Tuesday that Iranian courts are actively handling at least 1,895 cases involving accusations of cooperation with hostile states. The group includes 94 media workers. These figures mark a sharp increase in judicial activity since the start of the current conflict.

The escalation in prosecutions follows two military engagements involving the United States and Israel. Police reported at least 21,000 arrests after the war that began in June of last year. Separately, authorities detained at least 50,000 people during nationwide protests in January of this year. The US-based rights organization HRANA stated that thousands of civilians died during the crackdown on those antigovernment demonstrations.

David Barnea, the former director of Mossad, provided context for the heightened security posture. He told a conference on October 22 that Israeli intelligence approved the entry of dozens of agents into Iran before the June war. Barnea said the service deliberately released footage of agents with a Mossad logo shortly after the war began. He claimed this tactic led to the arrest of thousands of unconnected citizens, which helped shield genuine assets. He noted that almost all of their operational networks remained unidentified eight months into the second war.

Negar Mortazavi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, addressed the dual nature of the threat. She stated that the espionage risk is real due to vulnerabilities exposed by the recent wars. However, she argued that the government has increasingly blurred the line between foreign intelligence activity and domestic dissent. Mortazavi explained that criticizing the government or reporting on its failures does not inherently constitute espionage. She observed that authorities now treat political opposition as an extension of foreign intelligence work.

The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence described this strategy as a hybrid war. In May, the ministry stated that enemies were combining espionage, sabotage, and hostile media with economic pressure and ethnic tensions. Judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei has cited wartime conditions to justify urgent measures. He has accelerated punishments for alleged collaborators to protect the country. The authorities have labeled the January protests a coup orchestrated by Israeli and US intelligence agencies.

An independent United Nations fact-finding mission challenged the government's narrative. The mission concluded that the authorities committed crimes against humanity during the recent crackdown. This assessment marked the most violent suppression of dissent since the revolution. The UN also reported that at least 19 people were hanged in espionage-related cases between June and December of last year.

Execution rates have continued to rise this year. Iran Human Rights, an Oslo-based nonprofit, recorded 16 espionage defendants executed between January and September. The group also tracked 33 protesters and 13 prisoners from banned groups who were executed during the same period. By early October, the organization had documented at least 604 executions in total. Amnesty International reported at least 34 executions linked to the January protests by October 13, including five carried out between September 30 and October 5.

Saeid Golkar, an associate professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, analyzed the structural shift in governance. He stated that the Islamic Republic now treats regime security and national security as interchangeable concepts. According to Golkar, this approach allows the state to expand the influence of its security institutions. He concluded that the government has transformed into a security-dominated regime that treats peaceful civic activism as a threat to its survival.