The BfV has said that in recent months, the rate of Iranian opposition supporters in Germany fearing reprisals in their country of origin has risen significantly.

Since February 2024, the BfV has been operating a hotline for reports of espionage and transnational repression -- but "(i)n recent months, there has been an increase in reports related to Iran," it told the Reuters news agency without disclosing detailed figures.

German security authorities say that much of Iran's intelligence activities are focused on trying to intimidate opposition groups and individuals, both at home and abroad.

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Dealing with Iran's illegal intelligence operations in Germany has become a key focus of the BfV's counterintelligence work, especially as Iran's autocratic ruling classes consider a dissident voice a threat to the Islamic Republic's survival.

German intelligence services regularly issue reports on Iran's espionage activities, especially when it comes to exerting pressure against exile groups in Germany.

In the latest BFV report published last year, the threat of Iranian espionage was still classified as high.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry was contacted by Reuters for comment but did not immediately respond to the request.

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Iranian exile groups aware of growing issue

"The are numerous reports which we have received from various parts of Germany, especially over the past year which confirm an unprecedented intensification of the activities of the Iranian regime's secret services in Germany," said Javad Dabiran, spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NWRI), a banned Iranian opposition group with a strong presence outside the country.

He told Reuters that he personally was aware of more than 100 such cases arising since the beginning of the year; in nearly all of those cases, he explained that operatives working for Iranian secret services had tried to pressurize the people they contacted into revealing information about other Iranians in exile.

NWRI cited a number of cases in which its own members in Germany had reported to the authorities that they had been harassed. 

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Dabiran highlighted one case, in which a 40-year-old Iranian Christian from the Western city of Essen recounted how his sister and brother in Iran had been approached by Iran's secret services after he took part in a demonstration in Brussels in September, with threats being issued against his entire family. 

Another similar case highlights an NWRI supporter in Cologne whose parents in Iran had been threatened by the Iranian spy agencies. Operatives had reportedly told the parents to convince their son to leave the movement's branch in Germany and provide information to the secret services about its operations.

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Intimidation as a government policy

The pressure exerted by Iranian intelligence services on Iranian refugees and even Iranians living abroad of their own choosing is not a phenomenon that is unique to Germany. 

Earlier this year, Scotland Yard in the UK charged three Iranian nationals with espionage in May, reportedly targeting individual Iranian journalists working for an independent media organization based in London.

Then in July, the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) in the UK released a 260-page report warning that Iran posed one of the gravest state-based threats to British national security, comparing its subversive activities to those of Russia and China.

The same report said that since January 2022, there had been at least 15 attempts to murder or kidnap British nationals or UK-based Iranian individuals.

Last month, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights referred to a "growing pattern of transnational repression" conducted by Iranian authorities, saying that they are targeting dissidents abroad through methods that include "intimidation, surveillance, and threats."

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Change in mood since Israel-Iran war

Within Iran itself, human rights groups and activists report a growing crackdown on political opponents -- with numerous cases of harassment, detention, torture and other forms of pressure.

Meanwhile, there has also been a spike in arrests of foreign nationals in Iran, who are accused of spying against the regime.

Both the UN and individuals on the ground in Iran report that the rate of such activities conducted by Iran's intelligence services has risen sharply since the Israeli-American airstrikes on the country in June, which destroyed much of Iran's air defense capabilities as well as its nuclear enrichment facilities.

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with Reuters