Iranian police said on Tuesday they detained about 21,000 people described as suspects during the country’s 12-day war with Israel, arrests they said were largely based on public tip-offs, while the judiciary had put the figure closer to 2,000.
Four current and former Israeli intelligence officials, cited in the report, said the offensive had been a long-term contingency plan, but strategic timing was key.
“Israel has never hidden the fact that it wants to destroy the Iranian nuclear program, and it has never hidden the fact it was also willing to allow it to be resolved diplomatically, as long as the diplomatic solution prevents Iran not only from enriching uranium, but from ever getting the capacity to pose an existential threat to the state of Israel,” one intelligence source told Euronews.
On June 13, Israel launched land and air strikes targeting senior Iranian military leaders, nuclear scientists, and politicians, while damaging or destroying Iranian air defenses and nuclear facilities. Iran retaliated with missile and drone attacks on Israeli cities and military sites. On the ninth day of fighting, the United States bombed three Iranian nuclear sites. Iran then struck a US base in Qatar.
A US-brokered ceasefire was reached on June 24. Both sides claimed victory, with Israel and Washington saying they had significantly degraded Iran’s missile and nuclear programs -- claims Tehran denied. Independent assessments remain limited due to the secrecy surrounding Iran’s nuclear activities.
Trump’s re-election
The intelligence sources told Euronews that Trump’s second election win in 2024 was pivotal to Israel’s decision-making.
“The original plan was to attack in October 2024. That was after the second direct missile attack by Iran on Israel following Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon in September,” the first intelligence source said. However, the strike was postponed until after the US elections.
“I think it was very important for Israel that Trump should win those elections. Once Trump was elected, he put the main emphasis on reaching a hostage deal,” said a second source, referring to the Hamas-Israel conflict.
Once the hostage deal was signed in March 2025, Israel again considered an attack on Iran, but US-Iran negotiations temporarily stalled those plans.
A 60-day ultimatum
Indirect talks between Washington and Tehran began in March 2025 but failed to produce an agreement, despite being described by counterparts as “constructive.”
“Trump gave 60 days to those negotiations. The day after, Israel attacked Iran. I think that obviously was coordinated with the US administration,” all four sources told Euronews.
Although the US has never publicly confirmed coordination, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on June 23 that the operation had been “planned for many years.”
“When we attacked, we were at the end of the 60-day period of negotiations. I think it was very clear to Trump at this stage that the Iranians were not willing to forego enrichment on Iranian soil, even though the negotiations did bring up some interesting solutions to that. For example, some sort of international enrichment agency that would allocate enriched uranium at civilian levels to all countries in the region interested in it,” the first intelligence source said.
“Trump realized Iran was engaging in negotiations merely to buy time, with no real intent to reach a resolution. The talks served as a decoy, giving Iran the impression it wouldn’t be attacked, especially amid widespread press reports that Israel was on the verge of striking,” the source added.
On the first day of conflict, Trump said in a post on Truth Social: “Two months ago I gave Iran a 60-day ultimatum to ‘make a deal.’ They should have done it! Today is day 61. I told them what to do, but they just couldn’t get there. Now they have, perhaps, a second chance!”
Iran’s missile attacks
The proxy conflict between Israel and Iran had been intensifying for years, but the intelligence officials said a turning point came in April 2024 when Iran launched missiles directly from its own territory at Israel.
“I think the pivotal moment was in April 2024, when Iran launched missiles directly from its own territory at Israel. Until then, Iran had primarily relied on proxies to attack Israel, while Israel carried out covert operations inside Iran with plausible deniability, aiming to prevent escalation into full-scale war,” the first source said.
The strike followed an Israeli attack on Iran’s consulate in Syria that killed Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, at the time the highest-ranking Iranian military official killed since the 2020 US assassination of Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani.
“I think Israel had to wait from April 2024. It needed time to gather all the intelligence and planning it needed in order to feel confident that, already in the first two or three days of the war, we would be in a position where we had complete control over the situation, minimal casualties at home, and complete control of Iranian airspace, with the ability to attack whenever and wherever we want to,” the source added.
A second intelligence source told Euronews that Israel intends to “destroy anything that even suggests that the Iranians are preparing to rebuild any of the capabilities that we have destroyed.”
Police spokesman Saeed Montazeralmahdi told state media the arrests followed 7,850 reports to the national emergency line 110. “The 41% increase in public calls and the arrest of 21,000 suspects in the 12-day war shows the high level of vigilance and participation of the people in ensuring security,” he said.
Montazeralmahdi said officers had set up more than 1,000 tactical checkpoints across the country during the conflict, deploying over 40,000 police for round-the-clock road and site security.
He said security forces thwarted “field conspiracies by the enemy,” including the disruption of a planned gathering in Tehran’s Palestine Square.
The police spokesman also reported the detention of 127 escaped prisoners during an incident at Evin prison, and the seizure of unexploded bombs.
Authorities detained 2,774 undocumented foreign nationals, finding 30 “special security” cases through phone checks, and arrested 261 people on suspicion of espionage and 172 for alleged unauthorized filming, he added.
However, Judiciary Chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei had given a far lower figure, saying that “around 2,000 people” were arrested during and after the conflict, some of whom face the death penalty on charges of “organizational collaboration with the enemy.”
“In our law, anyone who cooperates with a hostile state during wartime must be arrested and prosecuted,” Ejei told state TV late in July. He said some detainees had been released after investigations found no evidence of espionage, while others were freed on bail but remain under suspicion.
The judiciary says trials are being fast-tracked under wartime procedures.
UN experts, including the special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, have urged Tehran to halt what they called a “post-ceasefire crackdown,” citing the arrests of hundreds of journalists, rights defenders, social media users, foreign nationals – particularly Afghans – and members of Baha’i, Kurdish, Baluchi and Ahwazi Arab minorities.
Iran Human Rights, an Oslo-based NGO, said 21 people were executed during the June conflict period, including six accused of spying for Israel.
The arrests come as President Masoud Pezeshkian’s government faces a backlash over internet restrictions imposed during the war and a now-withdrawn cybercrime bill that critics said would have criminalized dissent.
The draft law, “Combating the Dissemination of False Content in Cyberspace,” proposed prison terms, fines and bans for online users, with harsher penalties during “crisis or wartime.”
Government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said last month the cabinet withdrew the bill “in line with national cohesion and on the president’s directive.” Critics argued its vague language, including phrases such as “distorted, misleading, and harmful to public perception,” would have enabled arbitrary prosecutions.
