Iranian security forces have executed three people and detained more than 700 in a mass crackdown on alleged Israeli collaborators.
Since the beginning of Operation Rising Lion, which saw Mossad and the IDF destroy Iranian nuclear sites from within the Islamic Republic, the regime has drastically stiffened its approach to dissent.
State-affiliated media reported this week that more than 700 Iranians have been arrested over alleged links to Israel in the two weeks that followed the outbreak of war.
"Since the beginning of Israel’s attack on Iran, the Zionist regime’s spy network has been highly active in the country”, reported Fars News.
However, at least one of the detainees had reportedly already been in prison for several months, while the BBC Today programme reported this morning that some of those arrested were known dissidents with no known links to Israel “caught up in the crossfire” of harsher enforcement.
Elsewhere, Mizan News – an outlet linked to the Iranian judiciary – confirmed on Wednesday that three men had been executed after being accused of working for Mossad.
Named as Idris Ali, Azad Shojai and Rasoul Ahmad Rasoul, the regime claimed that the trio had been involved in smuggling equipment used in the assassination of an unnamed official.
Mizan reported that they were “arrested and tried for… cooperation favoring the Zionist regime” and had been hanged that morning.
It comes after the US made a direct intervention into the war by striking several of Iran’s nuclear sites, including the Fordow enrichment plant hidden beneath a mountain in the north-west of the country.
A total of 14 “bunker-busting” bombs, which the US has not yet supplied to Israel, were used, with President Trump claiming that the facilities had been “completely, totally obliterated”.
Dozens of Iranian officials, nuclear scientists and military chiefs have also been eliminated by Israeli strikes, including a gathering of senior IRGC figures allegedly brought together by a faked phone call from Mossad.
It has also been reported this morning that Ali Qanatkar, the prosecutor general of the notorious Evin Prison had been killed in an Israeli strike on the site.
The prison, which largely houses political prisoners and dissidents (including the now-released British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliff), had its gates blown off in the attack, but it is not believed that any significant prisoner escapes took place.
Meanwhile, Israel and Iran are currently working under an uneasy ceasefire, which was almost crippled in its first day by an exchange of missiles.
Israeli officials have confirmed that they intend to respect the ceasefire deal, which is not time limited and provides the backdrop for frantic diplomacy, including attempts by the US to revive the prospective nuclear deal that was reportedly coming together before the war.
