Exiled Iranian activists say authorities detain family members back home

Iran’s government is detaining relatives of Iranian opposition figures who are abroad and threatening to confiscate their property, activists overseas told The Associated Press, as the war with the United States and Israel intensifies and authorities expand pressure on people who speak to outside media.

Several activists said relatives inside Iran have been taken or held in ways that appear designed to suppress contact and silence dissent from abroad. They described detentions across Tehran and other cities, alongside a separate push by courts to target the assets of prominent exiles.

Detentions reaching into families of exiled opponents

Hossein Razzagh, a former political prisoner who fled to Europe last year, told the AP that intelligence agents in Tehran detained his brother on March 15. Razzagh said the brother, who was not involved in politics, was taken to apply pressure on him, and that the brother was able to call his wife “for a few seconds” from a detention center run by Iran’s Intelligence Ministry.

Razzagh said the family and his lawyer have since been unable to contact Ali, and that the intelligence ministry told them it was reviewing his contact with his brother. Another activist described a separate case in which a young relative was detained shortly after returning to her hometown.

Behnam Chegini, who is now based in France, told the AP that his 20-year-old niece was detained on March 10 for a week. Chegini said she was taken from her parents’ home in the city of Arak soon after she returned from Tehran, where her university had closed because of the war; he said she was released on bail and placed under a travel ban.

Chegini said the detention was at least in part tied to family connections. “It’s to put me under pressure,” Razzagh said of his brother’s detention, echoing the pattern activists overseas described.

Sareh Sedighi, an activist who fled after her 2021 death sentence was overturned, told the AP that her mother was detained from her home in Urmia last month. Sedighi said her mother suffers from health problems and requires daily insulin doses, and she quoted what she said the government’s action amounted to: “The Islamic Republic took my mother away to make me be quiet.”

Mahshid Nazemi, a former political prisoner and activist now living in France, also told the AP that at least one friend was detained and questioned about contact with her, describing a wider atmosphere in which diaspora links can draw attention from security and judicial authorities.

Courts threaten confiscation of exiles’ property

In addition to detentions, activists said the judiciary has begun seizing the property of public figures critical of the country’s rulers. They tied the confiscations to an anti-espionage law approved during last year’s 12-day war with Israel, which they said punishes media and cultural activities deemed to support Iran’s enemies.

On March 31, a judiciary spokesman said on state TV that more than 200 indictments for confiscations have been or are being issued. Borzou Arjmand, an Iranian actor in California, told the AP that he learned from news reports that his assets in Iran had been confiscated, and that bank accounts had been blocked since authorities targeted him after his support for protests in 2022.

Arjmand said he has expressed support on social media for Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah who has organized an opposition movement abroad and supported U.S.-Israeli strikes. Arjmand said pressuring exiled figures is meant “so the Iranian people’s voice doesn’t reach the world.”

The AP also reported that at least three other figures living outside Iran—star soccer player Sardar Azmoun, musician Mohsen Yeghaneh, and university professor Ali Sharifi Zarchi—have appeared on lists of confiscations, according to two semiofficial news agencies in Iran. Yeghaneh and Zarchi said they had expressed support for anti-government protesters on social media.

Rights groups say the crackdown is worsening

Rights groups say security and judicial officials have warned that any new anti-government protests will be met with lethal force, while state media regularly report arrests across the country using labels such as “mercenaries” or “agents” of Israel and the United States, “royalist thugs,” or “traitorous elements.”

Iran Human Rights, a Norway-based group, said it has tracked several hundred detentions since the war began on Feb. 28, using its networks in Iran and state media reports. Director Mahmood Amiry-Moghhaddam said the full number is likely far higher.

The AP reported that human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh has been among those detained, with the group saying she was taken by intelligence agents from her home in Tehran. Sotoudeh’s daughter, Mehraveh Khandan, who lives in Amsterdam, said the 64-year-old Sotoudeh had been out on bail for health reasons following an earlier detention.

Little is known about how trials are functioning, the AP said, noting that Israeli airstrikes have targeted buildings connected to the judicial system. “It’s like they are half-closed. A lot of judges are staying home,” said Musa Barzin, a lawyer with Dadban, a group of rights lawyers based abroad.

Some families reported worsening conditions inside crowded prisons, and the AP included a statement from Tehran in which the wife of a political prisoner held at Evin Prison expressed fear the facility could be struck. Speaking on condition of anonymity for her family’s safety, she said: “Explosions and smoke can be heard and seen from everywhere in the city. Every time we hear a sound, we get scared.”

Diaspora opposition tries to organize as pressure grows

Activists said the pressure has contributed to new attempts to organize Iran’s opposition abroad, which they described as fragmented. Shortly before the war, Hossein Razzagh and others began planning an opposition conference in London called the Iran Freedom Congress, aimed at bringing together pro-democracy groups.

Razzagh said he represented a group of Iran-based opposition figures that included Soutoudeh and imprisoned Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi, and he called the conference a first step toward forming a coalition to push for a “political transition” in Iran.

For decades, Iran’s rulers have quashed organized political opposition, activists in the diaspora said, arguing that the war is worsening the pressure. Nazemi said Iran’s opponents back home are increasingly constrained, saying: “Israel and America are saying, well, if the Islamic Republic doesn’t kill you, let us bomb you. They’ve been taken hostage from both sides.”