Iran carries out wave of arrests and executions in wake of Israel conflict

Iran­ian author­i­ties have car­ried out a wave of arrests and mul­ti­ple exe­cu­tions of peo­ple sus­pect­ed of links to Israeli intel­li­gence agen­cies, in the wake of the recent war between the two coun­tries.

It comes after what offi­cials describe as an unprece­dent­ed infil­tra­tion of Iran­ian secu­ri­ty ser­vices by Israeli agents.

Author­i­ties sus­pect infor­ma­tion fed to Israel played a part in a series of high-pro­file assas­si­na­tions dur­ing the con­flict. This includ­ed the tar­get­ed killings of senior com­man­ders from the elite Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps (IRGC) and nuclear sci­en­tists, which Iran attrib­ut­es to oper­a­tives of Israel’s Mossad intel­li­gence agency work­ing inside the coun­try.

Shak­en by the scale and pre­ci­sion of these killings, author­i­ties have been tar­get­ing any­one sus­pect­ed of work­ing with for­eign intel­li­gence, say­ing it is for the sake of nation­al secu­ri­ty.

But many fear this is also a way to silence dis­sent and tight­en con­trol over the pop­u­la­tion.

Dur­ing the 12-day con­flict, Iran­ian author­i­ties exe­cut­ed three peo­ple accused of spy­ing for Israel. On Wednes­day — just one day after the cease­fire — three more indi­vid­u­als were exe­cut­ed on sim­i­lar charges.

Offi­cials have since announced the arrest of hun­dreds of sus­pects across the coun­try on accu­sa­tions of espi­onage. State tele­vi­sion has aired alleged con­fes­sions from sev­er­al detainees, pur­port­ed­ly admit­ting to col­lab­o­ra­tion with Israeli intel­li­gence.

Human rights groups and activists have expressed fears over the lat­est devel­op­ments, cit­ing Iran’s long­stand­ing prac­tice of extract­ing forced con­fes­sions and con­duct­ing unfair tri­als. There are con­cerns that more exe­cu­tions may fol­low.

Iran’s Min­istry of Intel­li­gence claims it is engaged in a “relent­less bat­tle” against what it calls West­ern and Israeli intel­li­gence net­works — includ­ing the CIA, Mossad, and MI6.

Accord­ing to Fars News Agency, which is affil­i­at­ed with the IRGC, since the begin­ning of Israel’s attack on Iran on 13 June, “the Israeli spy net­work has become high­ly active inside the coun­try”. Fars report­ed that over the course of 12 days, Iran­ian intel­li­gence and secu­ri­ty forces arrest­ed “more than 700 indi­vid­u­als linked to this net­work”

Ira­ni­ans have told they received warn­ing text mes­sages from Iran’s intel­li­gence min­istry inform­ing them their phone num­bers had appeared on social media pages relat­ed to Israel. They were instruct­ed to leave these pages or face pros­e­cu­tion.

The Iran­ian gov­ern­ment has also stepped up pres­sure on jour­nal­ists work­ing for Per­sian-lan­guage media out­lets abroad, includ­ing and the Lon­don-based Iran Inter­na­tion­al and Man­oto TV.

Accord­ing to Iran Inter­na­tion­al, the IRGC detained the moth­er, father, and broth­er of one of its TV pre­sen­ters in Tehran to pres­sure her into resign­ing over the chan­nel’s cov­er­age of the Iran-Israel con­flict. The pre­sen­ter received a phone call from her father — prompt­ed by secu­ri­ty agents — urg­ing her to quit and warn­ing of fur­ther con­se­quences.