Iran International
The postwar debate over Israeli infiltration of Iran’s security and political system has added another layer to contentions in Tehran, with warnings and accusations directed at some hard-liners and radical insiders.
“These devices should be used on thieves and fraudsters, not for a teacher who simply demanded her union rights,” says one teacher and union activist.
She recounts how, in the silence of the night, the short beep of her device awakens her five-year-old daughter—a constant reminder that miles away, someone is watching. Barred from stepping more than a kilometer from her home, she must wear the virtual shackle at all times.
She is one of dozens of teachers, artists, students, writers, members of religious minorities and labor activists who, after months or years in prison, now serve the remainder of their sentences under electronic surveillance.
Their names have been withheld due to the likelihood of official retaliation for telling their stories.
The devices are fastened to the leg and tracked around the clock by Iran’s Prisons Organization. In theory, they modernize punishments and reduce prison costs. In practice, they are applied not only to financial, drug or theft offenders but increasingly to civil and political activists.
Bruised—and paying for it
“I am having to pay just to have a shackle strapped to my leg,” one activist remarks.
For many, the devices are humiliating, painful, and financially crushing. Lawyers describe them as tools of harassment, combining physical restriction with constant control.
The locally manufactured monitors are poorly designed: heavy, sharp-edged and often causing wounds or inflammation.
To add insult to injury, users must pay for their shackle: an upfront fee of about $25 and roughly $9 a month thereafter—sums that weigh heavily on activists who are out of work or barred from working.
Restricted lives
“From the hairdresser to the grocery store, people call me a hero and say: ‘Respect for your courage.’ But I’m glad my mother isn’t alive to see me wearing this shackle,” says a female teacher."
The devices typically restrict movement to a 1,000-meter radius around the home, though the exact distance is determined by a judge. The impact is immediate: disrupted jobs, missed family events, lost opportunities and even obstacles to medical care.
Protest singer Vafa Ahmadpour, known online as Vafadar, announced that he lost the chance to travel to the US as an honorary judge at an arts festival because of his ankle monitor.
Some wearers try to hide the device under socks or trousers to avoid stares. Others leave it visible and say most reactions are sympathetic.
Arbitrary power
Some lawyers say monitors allow prisoners to return to a normal life, but others stress the selective and arbitrary way monitors are used against protesters.
“In other countries, these devices are used for actual financial or violent crimes; but in Iran, they’ve become tools for controlling and humiliating protesters and civil defenders and union activists,” says another.
He notes that law enforcement agencies wield wide discretion in deciding who qualifies and under what conditions—leaving activists especially vulnerable.
The stigma of ankle monitoring often blocks people from resuming their jobs. Some have even been forced to move homes so their workplace remains within the permitted radius.
“After my release, the school principal said I needed an official letter from the judge to return to teaching,” a teacher explains. “The judge confirmed I wasn’t legally banned from working, but the school still refused to take me back. I suspect the Intelligence Ministry put pressure on them.”
An invisible prison
Another teacher describes the constant anxiety: “Even going for a jog in the park makes me anxious. Once, I stepped outside the boundary. At 6:30 in the morning, they called and threatened to send me back to prison.”
It’s a recurring theme in conversations with those wearing monitors.
“I went out to buy a book I loved. At the intersection, the device beeped—I remembered I wasn’t allowed to cross. I looked at the book with longing and turned back,” says one author.
“The painful part is that only you can see this invisible boundary. Everyone else can cross it—except you.”
“In Shiraz Adelabad Prison, my cellmates were murderers and dangerous criminals. For me, the ankle monitor was a choice between bad and worse,” says a teacher from Shiraz.
For many, the device remains preferable to the harsh conditions of Iran’s prisons—but only barely.
“This is the least we pay for demanding our rights,” one teacher says.
“The ankle monitor has limited my physical movement, but it hasn’t stopped me from thinking and writing,” says another author. “I still write—and that’s something the government can never take away from me.”
The clash over Babak Zanjani, whom Iranian media outlets say Tehran has recruited back into business as new sanctions loom, appears to indicate policy divisions among key institutions as the country reels from a damaging war in June.
Judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir on Wednesday rejected a statement last month by the central bank's governor saying Zanjani had only repaid about $15 million of a total $1.9 billion in oil revenue he was convicted of embezzling.
“At a time when the country needs calm, the judiciary cautioned central bank governor Mohammadreza Farzin to avoid comments that could disturb public opinion,” Jahangir added. The matter “rests solely with the courts," he said.
Zanjani's original 2016 conviction on fraud and money laundering charges earned him a death sentence, which was commuted to a 20-year prison term last year by Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. He was released in April.
A wily evader of Western sanctions on Iran, Zanjani was widely reviled by many Iranians struggling in straitened economic circumstances but prized by officialdom for his craft in securing oil exports, the main source of state revenue.
“The defendant served his sentence without a single day’s leave until the introduction of his assets, which were even greater in value than the debt,” Jahangir said. “Claims that these assets were not returned have no valid legal basis.”
From air fresheners to oil billions
Babak Zanjani, born in 1951, was the prime defendant in one of Iran’s biggest corruption cases. He once said that during his military service he was the driver of the central bank governor and used the connection to trade hard currency—an account the bank has denied.
What is clear is that he developed ties with the Revolutionary Guards’ Khatam al-Anbia engineering arm through Ahmad Vahid Dastjerdi, then head of the IRGC cooperative foundation.
Before that, Zanjani had worked in small businesses, from producing air fresheners on Kish Island to selling sheep hides abroad. His fortunes changed in 2007 when he began supplying parts for IRGC projects.
In 2010, Zanjani became a crucial oil broker under Oil Minister Rostam Ghasemi. He acquired Malaysia’s First Islamic Investment Bank to channel oil revenues and built a network of exchanges in the United Arab Emirates and Tajikistan.
A 2012 decree signed by three ministers and the central bank governor allowed 14.5 percent of oil revenues to flow into his bank—a key focus of his eventual indictment.
In the last year and a half of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency, Zanjani not only took delivery of crude shipments offshore but also received that 14.5 percent of oil sales directly, leaving him with a large debt to the oil ministry.
At the same time, his Sorinet holding bought domestic carrier Qeshm Air, extending his empire into aviation.
Fall and rise
Only months before his downfall, Zanjani called himself an “economic Basij member,” a reference to a domestic enforcement militia loyal to the Islamic authorities.
In 2013, after disputes with then-President Hassan Rouhani's government, he was arrested. In March 2016 judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Eje’i announced that Zanjani and two associates had been convicted as so-called corruptors on earth and sentenced to death.
The Supreme Court upheld the ruling but allowed clemency if he returned the funds.
“As the assets were returned and the debt was settled, the Supreme Leader granted clemency, reducing his sentence to 20 years,” his lawyer said in April 2024. He was released in December 2024.
Reports this year suggested Zanjani had resumed business activities, including launching an airline called Dot-One with 32 aircraft, as well as ventures in ride-hailing, shipping and rail imports.
In May, an $800 million contract between the transport ministry and a company linked to him marked his apparent full rehabilitation, sparking controversy.
Concerns have intensified as politicians on both sides beat the drums of a possible new war following the activation of the trigger mechanism by European powers which could reimpose international sanctions by month's end.
"Infiltration of Iran’s security organizations cannot be ignored,” former lawmaker Mohammad Ali Pourmokhtar told Khabar Online on Wednesday. “It has now become clear that infiltrating agents were involved in some of the attacks on military establishments."
He stressed that infiltrators often operate from within: "They gain trust by posing as insiders, allowing them to advance their agendas … (they) often disguise themselves as true believers in the system, and sometimes as radicals."
Revolutionary Guards commander and former MP Mansour Haghighatpour echoed the sentiment. "The people should be vigilant and suspicious of those who race ahead of the revolution and chant radical slogans," he said on Wednesday.
His remark, a rare swipe at hardliners who cloak themselves in revolutionary zeal, underscored how the infiltration debate is feeding into wider factional infighting.
No official explanation
Despite such warnings, no major counter-intelligence breakthroughs have been reported beyond the swift execution of a nuclear scientist accused of betraying slain colleagues to Israel.
Instead, blame has shifted to Afghan refugees, social media vulnerabilities and figures within the intelligence community, adding more confusion than clarity.
Family members of some slain commanders said the victims did not use smartphones or social media—though it later emerged that some of their bodyguards did.
What has most stunned officials is the depth of Israel’s penetration.
Drones used in the assassinations were reportedly built or assembled inside Iran by Israeli agents, who vanished without a trace after their mission.
One reason Supreme Leader Khamenei has avoided public appearances and even meetings with insiders is his likely deep mistrust of suspected infiltrators in the security apparatus.
Pourmokhtar warned that infiltration can reach the very top: "Sometimes infiltrators operate in the deeper layers of government, figures unknown to the public, yet capable of influencing top-level decisions."
‘In whose interest?’
Last week, security chief Ali Larijani acknowledged the problem as a “serious matter,” adding that Iran “had painful weaknesses" in the war with Israel.
The debate has also spilled into parliament, where critics have accused hardliners of damaging national security by advancing extreme policies, citing a recent urgent move to pull Iran from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Lawmaker Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani admitted: "The triple-urgency bill to exit the NPT was a gift to Trump." Abbas Goudarzi, spokesperson for the presidium, added: "Withdrawing from the NPT is a matter of governance, and the Majles cannot decide on it independently."
Reformist outlet Fararu went further, accusing parliament’s National Security and Foreign Relations Committee of driving confrontational policies.
It pointed to the committee’s push to raise enrichment levels, promote aggressive rhetoric, and even table a motion to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty—moves it said are justified as bargaining tools but fail to deter war.
"Does the committee act to ensure national security," it asked, "or does it work against it?"
