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 BBC Persian 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 BBC Persian 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.

The sound of airstrikes might have fallen silent in Iran and Israel amid a fragile ceasefire in place, but some activists in Iran fear that another “war” inside the country may have only just begun — against its own citizens.

“As usual, the Islamic Republic lost on the battlefield to another force and is taking revenge on us, the people,” an activist in Tehran, who requested anonymity, told SBS News.

“A large number of [people] were arrested without reason … some of those arrested were released after a few hours or days, but many are still under arrest, and we have no news about them.

“The war in the region has just ended, but our war with the Islamic Republic has just started.”

‘Shift the blame’

Iranian media has carried several reports of arrests and executions of Iranian citizens in the days following the eruption of conflict between Israel and Iran.

Just two days after the 13 June attacks, state media reported that the head of the Islamic Republic’s judiciary had instructed its officials to punish “elements that disrupt the security and peace of the people”, whether that’s “physical” security or “psychological” security.

This instruction has been felt by activists inside the country.

“Over the past 12 days [of conflict], the only thing in Iran that hasn’t been shut down and has remained systematically active was the execution of Iranian citizens,” another activist, who requested anonymity, told SBS News.

“These days, the regime tries to shift the blame for its security failures onto the people, using terms like ‘infiltration’ or ‘domestic spies’.”

According to the country’s Fars News agency, at least 700 people were arrested in the past 12 days for crimes related to collaboration with Israel.

Six people have reportedly been executed in recent days, accused of “spying for Israel”. Some of them were already on death row before the conflict started.

According to the Centre for Human Rights in Iran, at least 54 individuals were in prison waiting for death sentences to be carried out before the conflict began.

SBS News has approached the Iranian embassy for comment, but they haven’t responded at the time of publication.

‘I heard lots of others have been arrested’

Ehsan Hakimi, an Iranian-Australian anti-regime activist and head of the Iranian-Australian Republicans organisation, has been in touch with activists in Iran in recent years in order to “help them and support them” in their push for regime change.

In recent days, an activist in Iran who was in touch with Hakimi was arrested and released.

“I heard lots of others have been arrested,” Hakimi told SBS News.

He said the regime is trying to “warn” these activists by arresting them, to prevent them from coming “to the streets” and protesting.

“They are trying to convince them that we’re monitoring you … they want to prevent them to connect together and unite together and do their demonstration or do any activity against the regime, while the regime is in the weakest situation.”

Ehsan Hakimi has been in Australia for 12 years and is working with some activists inside Iran. Credit: SBS According to Amnesty International, there are growing fears of arbitrary executions of individuals accused of espionage for Israel.

Kyinzom Dhongdue, advocacy manager at Amnesty International Australia, told SBS News some of the people have been arrested and charged after “grossly unfair trials”.

“These are conducted in the Revolutionary Courts, [which are] devoid of any independence and transparency. People do not have access to lawyers of their choosing. And many of the confessions were forced under duress, under torture,” Dhongdue said.

“The government is weaponising the death penalty to instil fear and stifle any form of dissent during these very tense times in Iran.

“[The] death penalty is used by very repressive governments … and people who are charged [with] espionage have often been accused of these so-called crimes on very vague, broad national security terms.”

SBS News has contacted the Iranian embassy in Australia for a response to these claims.

Kyinzom Dhongdue said Amnesty International was “calling on the Iranian authorities to halt all plans to execute, especially the eight people who are at imminent risk of execution”. Credit: SBS

‘When the bombs stop falling’

Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a research fellow at Macquarie University who spent two years in prison in Iran, also expressed concerns about an uptick in domestic suppression.

“When the bombs stop falling and when the hot part of this conflict comes to an end, the regime is almost inevitably going to turn its attention to the domestic population and they’ll see a wave of crackdown,” Moore-Gilbert told SBS News.

“It’s very possible that the regime will seek retribution against those in its population that it perceives to have not been sufficiently behind it during the conflict, particularly people posting on social media.”

In 2018, Moore-Gilbert was convicted of spying and spent two years behind bars in Iran on espionage charges , which she has always denied.

Kylie Moore-Gilbert said she was “really worried about the fate of a number of political prisoners who’ve been in prison for a number of years now, some with death sentences for espionage”. Credit: SBS Hours after US President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire on Tuesday (AEST), Asghar Jahangir, a spokesperson for the regime’s judiciary, told a state broadcaster that the country’s espionage law was being updated as it “may not cover many of the [current] cases”.

“Today, enemy infiltrators work in different ways, and if we try to prosecute these individuals using the previous law that defined espionage, we may encounter limitations,” he said.

“A plan has been envisaged whereby infiltrators who tried to play on enemy territory during these times will be dealt with exemplary punishments.”

One day later, the Telegram channel of Hossein Ronaghi, a prominent Iranian human rights activist, reported that he had been arrested by Islamic Republic forces.

“The regime’s going to be very worried about its domestic survival … this is probably the weakest the Islamic Republic has ever been since its inception and might actually start an uprising or start to agitate for change,” Moore-Gilbert said.

“I think we can expect a really firm, brutal, decisive response, at least at the opening, from the Islamic Republic.”

In an interview with SBS News on Tuesday, Iran’s ambassador to Australia, Ahmad Sadeghi, warned that any Western-led attempt to remove Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be so severe that he does “not want even to talk about it” .

He also said “solidarity and unity among Iranian people from different [ethnic] groups and ages has solidified” amid the recent conflict.

Moore-Gilbert said: “I think everybody’s in danger in Iran at the moment, including regime supporters, because of the amount of paranoia that’s going to ensue within those ranks as well.”

But for activists inside Iran, the coming days and weeks will likely be clouded in anxiety.

In a message received by SBS News, an activist in Iran, who requested anonymity, said: “In authoritarian systems, wars are neither started by the will of the people nor sustained with their consent.

“Yet they are always settled with their lives, their bread, and the future of the nation.”

ISTANBUL/BAGHDAD, June 25 (Reuters) – Iranian authorities are pivoting from a ceasefire with Israel to intensify an internal security crackdown across the country with mass arrests, executions and military deployments, particularly in the restive Kurdish region, officials and activists said.

Within days of Israel’s airstrikes beginning on June 13, Iranian security forces started a campaign of widespread arrests accompanied by an intensified street presence based around checkpoints, the officials and activists said.

Some in Israel and exiled opposition groups had hoped the military campaign, which targeted Revolutionary Guards and internal security forces as well as nuclear sites, would spark a mass uprising and the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.

While Reuters has spoken to numerous Iranians angry at the government for policies they believed had led to the Israeli attack, there has been no sign yet of any significant protests against the authorities.

However, one senior Iranian security official and two other senior officials briefed on internal security issues said the authorities were focused on the threat of possible internal unrest, particularly in Kurdish areas.

Revolutionary Guard and Basij paramilitary units were put on alert and internal security was now the primary focus, said the senior security official.

The official said authorities were worried about Israeli agents, ethnic separatists and the People’s Mujahideen Organisation, an exiled opposition group that has previously staged attacks inside Iran.

Activists within the country are lying low.

“We are being extremely cautious right now because there’s a real concern the regime might use this situation as a pretext,” said a rights activist in Tehran who was jailed during mass protests in 2022.

The activist said he knew dozens of people who had been summoned by authorities and either arrested or warned against any expressions of dissent.

Iranian rights group HRNA said on Monday it had recorded arrests of 705 people on political or security charges since the start of the war.

Many of those arrested have been accused of spying for Israel, HRNA said. Iranian state media reported three were executed on Tuesday in Urmia, near the Turkish border, and the Iranian-Kurdish rights group Hengaw said they were all Kurdish.

Iran’s Foreign and Interior Ministries did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Checkpoints And Searches

One of the officials briefed on security said troops had been deployed to the borders of Pakistan, Iraq and Azerbaijan to stop infiltration by what the official called terrorists. The other official briefed on security acknowledged that hundreds had been arrested.

Iran’s mostly Sunni Muslim Kurdish and Baluch minorities have long been a source of opposition to the Islamic Republic, chafing against rule from the Persian-speaking, Shi’ite government in Tehran.

The three main Iranian Kurdish separatist factions based in Iraqi Kurdistan said some of their activists and fighters had been arrested and described widespread military and security movements by Iranian authorities.

Ribaz Khalili from the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI) said Revolutionary Guards units had deployed in schools in Iran’s Kurdish provinces within three days of Israel’s strikes beginning and gone house-to-house for suspects and arms.

The Guards had taken protective measures too, evacuating an industrial zone near their barracks and closing major roads for their own use in bringing reinforcements to Kermanshah and Sanandaj, two major cities in the Kurdish region.

A cadre from the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK), who gave her nom de guerre of Fatma Ahmed, said the party had counted more than 500 opposition members being detained in Kurdish provinces since the airstrikes began.

Ahmed and an official from the Kurdish Komala party, who spoke on condition of anonymity, both described checkpoints being set up across Kurdish areas with physical searches of people as well as checks of their phones and documents.

(Reporting by Parisa Hafezi and Ahmed Rasheed; Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Aidan Lewis)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Israel and Iran seemed to honor the fragile ceasefire between them for a second day Wednesday and U.S. President Donald Trump asserted that American and Iranian officials will talk next week, giving rise to cautious hope for longer-term peace.

Trump, who helped negotiate the ceasefire that took hold Tuesday on the 12th day of the war, told reporters at a NATO summit that he was not particularly interested in restarting negotiations with Iran, insisting that U.S. strikes had destroyed its nuclear program. Earlier in the day, an Iranian official questioned whether the United States could be trusted after its weekend attack.

“We may sign an agreement, I don’t know,” Trump said. “The way I look at it, they fought, the war is done.”

Iran has not acknowledged any talks taking place next week, though U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff has said there has been direct and indirect communication between the countries. A sixth round of U.S.-Iran negotiations was scheduled for earlier this month in Oman but was canceled after Israel attacked Iran.

Earlier, Trump said the ceasefire was going “very well,” and added that Iran was “not going to have a bomb, and they’re not going to enrich.”

An Iranian woman walks past a banner showing head of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters Gen. Gholam Ali Rashid, who was killed in Israeli strike, at Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) street in downtown Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, June 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi) Photo:

Iran has insisted that it will not give up its nuclear program. In a vote underscoring the tough path ahead, its parliament agreed to fast-track a proposal that would effectively stop the country’s cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. watchdog that has monitored the program for years.

Ahead of the vote, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf criticized the IAEA for refusing “to even pretend to condemn the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities” that the U.S. carried out Sunday.

“For this reason, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran will suspend cooperation with the IAEA until security of nuclear facilities is ensured, and Iran’s peaceful nuclear program will move forward at a faster pace,” Qalibaf told lawmakers.

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said he wrote to Iran to discuss resuming inspections of their nuclear facilities. Among other things, Iran claims to have moved its highly enriched uranium ahead of the U.S. strikes, and Grossi said his inspectors need to reassess the country’s stockpiles.

“We need to return,” he said. “We need to engage.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said he hoped Tehran would come back to the table. France was part of the 2015 deal with Iran that restricted its nuclear program, but the agreement began unraveling after Trump pulled the U.S. out in his first term. Macron spoke multiple times to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian during the war.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director Rafael Grossi said Wednesday that Iran must quickly resume cooperation with international inspectors, telling French broadcaster France 2 that the IAEA had lost visibility over sensitive nuclear materials since the onset of hostilities.

Grossi said Iran is legally obligated to cooperate with the IAEA under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

“During a war, inspections are not possible. But now that hostilities have ceased, and given the sensitivity of this material, I believe it is in everyone’s interest that we resume our activities as soon as possible,” he said.

Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful, and U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Tehran is not actively pursuing a bomb. However, Israeli leaders have argued that Iran could quickly assemble a nuclear weapon.

Israel is widely believed to be the only Middle Eastern country with nuclear weapons, which it has never acknowledged.

Questions over effectiveness of the US strikes

The Israel Atomic Energy Commission said its assessment was that the U.S. and Israeli strikes have “set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.” It did not give evidence to back up its claim.

The U.S. strikes hit three Iranian nuclear sites, which Trump said “completely and fully obliterated” the country’s nuclear program. When asked about a U.S. intelligence report that found Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months, Trump scoffed and said it would at least take years to rebuild.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, confirmed that the strikes by American B-2 bombers using bunker-buster bombs had caused significant damage.

“Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure,” he told Al Jazeera on Wednesday, refusing to go into detail.

He seemed to suggest Iran might not shut out IAEA inspectors for good, noting that the bill before parliament only talks of suspending work with the agency, not ending it. He also insisted Iran has the right to pursue a nuclear energy program.

“Iran is determined to preserve that right under any circumstances,” he said.

Witkoff said late Tuesday on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” that Israel and the U.S. had achieved their objective with “the total destruction of the enrichment capacity” in Iran, and Iran’s prerequisite for talks — that Israel end its campaign — had been fulfilled.

“The proof is in the pudding,” he said. “No one’s shooting at each other. It’s over.”

Hopes for a long-term peace agreement

An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the ceasefire agreement with Iran amounted to “quiet for quiet,” with no further understandings about Iran’s nuclear program going ahead.

Witkoff told Fox News that Trump is now looking to land “a comprehensive peace agreement that goes beyond even the ceasefire.”

“We’re already talking to each other, not just directly, but also through interlocutors,” Witkoff said, adding that the conversations were promising.

However, Baghaei, the Iranian spokesman, said Washington had “torpedoed diplomacy” with its attacks on nuclear sites, and that while Iran in principle was always open to talks, national security was the priority.

“We have to make sure whether the other parties are really serious when they’re talking about diplomacy, or is it again part of their tactics to make more problems for the region and for my country,” he said.

Grossi said Iran and the international community should seize the opportunity of the ceasefire for a long-term diplomatic solution.

“Out of the … bad things that military conflict brings, there’s also now a possibility, an opening,” he said. “We shouldn’t miss that opportunity.”

A rare video by Mossad

Israel revealed details of the intelligence and covert operations that it said allowed the country to effectively target Iranian military commanders, nuclear scientists and key facilities.

In a rare video released by Israel’s Mossad spy agency, chief David Barnea thanked the CIA for being a key partner, and his own agents for work over years to achieve what was “unimaginable at first.”

“Thanks to accurate intelligence, advanced technologies and operational capabilities beyond imagination, we helped the air force strike the Iranian nuclear project, establish aerial superiority in Iranian skies and reduce the missile threat,” the agency said in a Facebook post alongside the video.

Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the military chief of staff, asserted that commandos had operated secretly “deep inside enemy territory” during the war.

Tehran on Tuesday put the death toll in Iran at 606, with 5,332 people wounded. The Washington-based Human Rights Activists group released figures Wednesday suggesting Israeli strikes on Iran had killed at least 1,054 and wounded 4,476.

The group, which has provided detailed casualty figures from multiple rounds of unrest in Iran, said 417 of those killed were civilians and 318 were security forces.

At least 28 people were killed in Israel and more than 1,000 wounded, according to officials.

In the past two weeks, Iran has executed six prisoners accused of spying for Israel, including three on Wednesday.

___

Associated Press writers Josef Federman and Julia Frankel in Jerusalem, Natalie Melzer in Nahariya, Israel, Chris Megerian and Sylvie Corbet in The Hague, Netherlands, and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

People walk next to a mural with a picture of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on a street, early hours of ceasefire, in Tehran, Iran, June 24, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

Iranian authorities are pivoting from a ceasefire with Israel to intensify an internal security crackdown across the country with mass arrests, executions and military deployments, particularly in the restive Kurdish region, officials and activists said.

Within days of Israel’s airstrikes beginning on June 13, Iranian security forces started a campaign of widespread arrests accompanied by an intensified street presence based around checkpoints, the officials and activists said.

Some in Israel and exiled opposition groups had hoped the military campaign, which targeted Revolutionary Guards and internal security forces as well as nuclear sites, would spark a mass uprising and the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.

While Reuters has spoken to numerous Iranians angry at the government for policies they believed had led to the Israeli attack, there has been no sign yet of any significant protests against the authorities.

However, one senior Iranian security official and two other senior officials briefed on internal security issues said the authorities were focused on the threat of possible internal unrest, particularly in Kurdish areas.

Revolutionary Guard and Basij paramilitary units were put on alert and internal security was now the primary focus, said the senior security official.

The official said authorities were worried about Israeli agents, ethnic separatists and the People’s Mujahideen Organisation, an exiled opposition group that has previously staged attacks inside Iran.

Activists within the country are lying low.

“We are being extremely cautious right now because there’s a real concern the regime might use this situation as a pretext,” said a rights activist in Tehran who was jailed during mass protests in 2022.

The activist said he knew dozens of people who had been summoned by authorities and either arrested or warned against any expressions of dissent.

Iranian rights group HRNA said on Monday it had recorded arrests of 705 people on political or security charges since the start of the war.

Many of those arrested have been accused of spying for Israel, HRNA said. Iranian state media reported three were executed on Tuesday in Urmia, near the Turkish border, and the Iranian-Kurdish rights group Hengaw said they were all Kurdish.

Iran’s Foreign and Interior Ministries did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

CHECKPOINTS AND SEARCHES

One of the officials briefed on security said troops had been deployed to the borders of Pakistan, Iraq and Azerbaijan to stop infiltration by what the official called terrorists. The other official briefed on security acknowledged that hundreds had been arrested.

Iran’s mostly Sunni Muslim Kurdish and Baluch minorities have long been a source of opposition to the Islamic Republic, chafing against rule from the Persian-speaking, Shi’ite government in Tehran.

The three main Iranian Kurdish separatist factions based in Iraqi Kurdistan said some of their activists and fighters had been arrested and described widespread military and security movements by Iranian authorities.

Ribaz Khalili from the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI) said Revolutionary Guards units had deployed in schools in Iran’s Kurdish provinces within three days of Israel’s strikes beginning and gone house-to-house for suspects and arms.

The Guards had taken protective measures too, evacuating an industrial zone near their barracks and closing major roads for their own use in bringing reinforcements to Kermanshah and Sanandaj, two major cities in the Kurdish region.

A cadre from the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK), who gave her nom de guerre of Fatma Ahmed, said the party had counted more than 500 opposition members being detained in Kurdish provinces since the airstrikes began.

Ahmed and an official from the Kurdish Komala party, who spoke on condition of anonymity, both described checkpoints being set up across Kurdish areas with physical searches of people as well as checks of their phones and documents.