The guns have largely fallen silent in Iran after the forty-day war, but the crackdown inside the country is only intensifying. Rights groups and activists say Iranian authorities have launched a sweeping internal security campaign marked by mass arrests, heightened surveillance and interrogations carried out in streets, hospitals and private homes.
Activists who spoke to Alhurra from inside Iran said fear has become part of daily life in several cities, where Basij forces stop pedestrians to inspect identification documents and question them, while plainclothes members of the Revolutionary Guard’s intelligence branch monitor conversations and behavior in public.
According to those activists, Basij and Revolutionary Guard intelligence patrols conduct sudden operations in neighborhoods and towns, arresting young men without judicial warrants as part of what authorities describe as a campaign targeting “spies” and “collaborators” working with Israel and the United States.
Official statements suggest the scope of the campaign has widened considerably.
Iran’s police chief, Brig. Gen. Ahmad Reza Radan, announced that more than 6,500 people had been arrested since the outbreak of the war involving the United States and Israel on one side and Iran on the other, according to the state news agency IRNA on Monday. Radan described the detainees as “spies” and “traitors to the nation.”
He added that 567 of those arrested were linked to what he called “anti-revolutionary groups,” and said arrest operations would continue across Iranian cities and towns.
Rights organizations and activists, however, say the campaign has expanded far beyond direct security suspicions, encompassing arrests without warrants, interrogations inside hospitals, harsh sentences issued without fair trials, and the confiscation of property belonging to people both inside and outside Iran.
Human rights activists told Alhurra that only a limited number of detainees had been released — often after paying large sums of money — while others had received death sentences or life imprisonment without sufficient legal guarantees.
According to testimonies obtained by Alhurra, the crackdown has not been confined to homes and streets. It has also reached hospitals, where healthcare workers say Revolutionary Guard intelligence agents interrogate patients and medical staff after the treatment of wounded individuals.
“I have started to hate my specialty and my work in healthcare, even though I used to love it,” said Saeed, a pseudonym used by an Iranian nurse’s assistant working at a hospital who feared reprisals.
“Every time they interrogate us, we fear we could end up detained ourselves,” he told Alhurra.
Saeed said several colleagues had been arrested on various accusations, including helping protesters, treating wounded individuals accused of ties to Mossad, transferring wanted patients out of hospitals, or “betraying the nation.”
He added that psychological pressure had driven some hospital staff to use sedatives amid a constant fear that performing medical duties could itself become a security offense.
In another account, Majid al-Ahwazi, a young man from the city of Khorramshahr in Ahvaz, said a friend of his — a nurse — was wounded near a Revolutionary Guard facility that came under bombardment during the war and lost one of his legs.
According to al-Ahwazi, authorities detained the nurse inside the hospital and interrogated him on accusations of collaborating with Mossad and providing the Israeli military with the coordinates of the targeted site.
The nurse was released after two weeks of questioning, al-Ahwazi said, but remains under close surveillance.
The testimonies come as Iranian officials continue to vow further prosecutions.
Iran’s judiciary-linked Mizan news agency quoted Judiciary Chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei as saying authorities would continue punishing what he described as “traitors to the nation” and would support security and intelligence agencies in “pursuing, arresting and prosecuting spies, infiltrators and traitors.”
Rights groups and activists say mass arrests and home raids did not begin with the forty-day war but intensified dramatically during it.
Despite the truce that ended the confrontation between Iran, the United States and Israel between March and early April, rights sources say arrests continue in multiple cities.
According to information obtained by Alhurra from the Canada-based rights organization Hana Human Rights Organization, Iranian authorities carried out arrests without judicial warrants on accusations including cooperation with or espionage for Israel and the United States.
The organization said some detainees were arrested during home raids, while others were detained in public places without clear information being provided about the reasons for arrest or their place of detention.
Hana added that reports from field teams and eyewitnesses indicated that some detainees were elderly or suffering from medical conditions requiring treatment, with little information available regarding their health, detention conditions or legal status.
Hamid Bahrami, head of Hana, told Alhurra that Iranian authorities had executed 50 people since the outbreak of the forty-day war, including 32 on charges related to “waging war against God,” espionage, cooperation with foreign entities and spying.
Bahrami said some detainees — including individuals later executed — were forced under torture to confess and sign blank documents and were denied the right to choose their own lawyers or receive fair trials.
According to Bahrami, the campaign has extended beyond arrests and executions.
He said authorities had in recent days confiscated the property of 129 people in the provinces of West Azerbaijan and Yazd, in addition to the property of 50 others in cities across the country, including 20 residents inside Iran and 30 living abroad, on accusations of cooperating with Israel and the United States.
Bahrami argued that the confiscations were also tied to Iran’s deepening financial crisis, saying the measures appeared aimed not only at security enforcement but also at securing new sources of revenue.
While Iranian authorities portray the campaign as part of a postwar effort to root out “spies” and “traitors,” rights groups say national security accusations have become a sweeping tool used to justify arrests, interrogations, executions and property seizures in a country still grappling with the domestic consequences of war far beyond the battlefield.
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic.
