Treatment by the authorities of family members of dissidents residing abroad

Because regime officials view opposition groups and individuals as an existential threat to the Islamic Republic, repressing dissidents abroad is a primary goal of Iran’s intelligence agencies. Iranian intelligence operations abroad focus on monitoring dissidents, preventing them from gaining the wider public’s attention, severing ties between activists and their acquaintances in Iran and placing exiled dissidents under their indirect control. Since the start of the Mahsa Amini protests in the autumn of 2022, threat levels against Iranian diaspora members have increased.

Besides directly targeting the exile community with cyber espionage, harassment, intimidation, abductions and attacks, the Islamic Republic engages in proxy punishment, in the form of the abuse of family members in Iran as a means to manipulate and subjugate dissidents outside its borders. The Iranian authorities frequently use this method against dissidents with a public profile, as it is an easy and inexpensive method to suppress dissent and instil fear in diaspora communities. The harassment of family members tends to escalate at times of tension inside the country and increased visibility for Iran on the global stage, such as when the country saw nationwide protests following the death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022, and around significant protest anniversaries. Cases of proxy punishment are underreported due to victims’ fear of further escalation.

Iranian authorities target family members of dissidents living abroad with various degrees of intimidation and harassment, including persistent phone calls or in-person visits, surveillance, summonses, interrogations, threats, economic penalties such as job or pension loss and asset freezes, travel bans and passport confiscations, as well as arrests, criminal prosecution and detention in more severe cases. Phone calls and summoning family members to security offices are the most common. The authorities can escalate the pressure when a dissident continues his or her activities. However, it is also reported that in many cases they prefer to keep the pressure subtle.

Regarding which  category of dissidents in exile the Islamic Republic targets with the proxy punishment method, it is widely reported that the regime routinely targets exiled Persian-language journalists’ family members. Family members of support staff working for Persian-language media organisations are also sometimes targeted.

Dissidents with a notable public profile or who speak out in public –addressing audiences inside Iran or international human rights organisations and foreign policymakers, including on social media, risk being targeted with proxy punishment. According to one expert consulted, the regime focuses on dissidents who have organizational ties with political groups, high-profile or influential political and human rights activists and regime-critical social media influencers with large followings. Another expert, however, emphasises that Iran’s use of repression against family members of dissidents abroad is arbitrary by nature in order to create uncertainty and instil the fear among all dissident diaspora members that something might happen to their family members. The majority of the cases of proxy punishment that Cedoca found in the consulted sources can be categorised as dissidents affiliated to political groups, high-profile or influential political and human rights activists and regime-critical social media influencers with large followings or dissidents who appear in the media. There are also some reports of anti-regime protesters’ and Christians’ families being targeted in Iran.