Full Breakdown
Iran Publishes “Hostile” List Under New Espionage Law
7/18/2026, 11:32:51 AM
Legislative Background and Scope
Iran’s parliament passed the “Law on Intensifying Punishment for Espionage and Cooperation with the Zionist Regime and Hostile States” on Sept. 28, 2025; the Guardian Council approved it in October 2025. The law mandates three separate lists supplied by the Ministry of Intelligence in a May 3 letter to Prosecutor General Mohammad Movahedi Azad: 44 hostile networks, 61 hostile media persons, and 310 hostile virtual pages. The “hostile virtual pages” category encompasses “sites, accounts and channels belonging to the institutions, executive agencies, ministries, embassies and representative offices of the Zionist regime, on all platforms.”
Targeted Individuals and Potential Penalties
Among the 61 media persons is Emily Schrader, host of the Jerusalem News Syndicate podcast “Axis of Truth,” listed at No. 2. The list also includes Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, Israeli analysts such as Raz Zimmt, and Israeli advocacy figures Naftali Hananya (No. 1) and Yoseph Haddad (No. 3). Under the law, forwarding protest video to an anti-regime outlet or replying to an IDF post in Farsi can carry two-to-five-year prison terms and possibly a capital charge. The designation “hostile instruments of the enemy” has historically preceded kidnapping and assassination plots abroad, according to a Flack Partners analysis.
International and Human-Rights Reactions
U.N. experts, citing an October 2025 report, said Iran’s execution rate—“more than nine hangings per day in recent weeks”—constitutes an “industrial scale” that violates human-rights standards. The United Nations also noted “40,000 summarily executed in the streets of Iran during mass protests at the end of 2025 into early 2026.” Alireza Salimi, a prominent cleric and politician, warned that any activity favoring Israel, the United States or other “hostile countries” could be charged as Efsad fel-arz (“corruption on Earth”), an offense punishable by death.
Verbatim Quotes
- “Writing for Ynet in March 2023, Schrader said that “as a feminist, an Israeli, an American, and a journalist, I am the epitome of everything the Islamic Republic despises and wants to destroy.” — Emily Schrader, journalist
- “Legally, the instrument completes the conversion of Iran’s information space into criminal jurisdiction.” — Flack Partners report
- “[I]t is a prosecutorial feature rather than drafting carelessness: it lets any court treat contact with a journalist as the legal equivalent of contact with a terrorist organization.” — Flack Partners report
- “With an average of more than nine hangings per day in recent weeks, Iran appears to be conducting executions at an industrial scale that defies all accepted standards of human rights protection,” — U.N. experts, October 2025 report
- “any intelligence or espionage activity or practical action” that favors Israel, the United States and others could be considered Efsad fel-arz—“corruption on Earth”—an offense that carries the death penalty. — Alireza Salimi, cleric and politician
