Radan said about half of the cases involved what authorities described as serious incidents, including passing along targeting information and sending footage from strike locations. Iranian media also reported arrests across several provinces, including 20 people in the northwest, 10 in the northeast and three in Lorestan, though the allegations have not been independently verified.
Iran arrests 500 as alleged informant cases spread
The latest total marks a sharp increase from the figures Iranian officials were giving only days earlier. In a March 10 Reuters report, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry said it had arrested dozens of people, including a foreign national it accused of working for the United States and Israel, while Radan separately said 81 people had been detained for sharing internal information with hostile media and foreign enemies.
The widening sweep comes as Israeli targeting appears to be relying more heavily on intelligence from inside Iran. Reuters reported March 13 that Israeli strikes had begun hitting checkpoints run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij after tip-offs from informants on the ground, a development that helps explain why Iranian authorities appear to be framing leaks, videos and location-sharing as battlefield acts rather than routine information offenses.
Together, those reports suggest alleged informant cases are no longer being handled as isolated provincial arrests. They are being folded into a broader wartime security campaign in which intelligence leaks, public messaging and internal unrest are increasingly treated as overlapping threats.
Why this looks like a continuation, not a one-day sweep
The new arrests fit a longer pattern that took shape after the June 2025 war with Israel. In the days following that ceasefire, Reuters reported that Iranian authorities were shifting into an internal crackdown marked by mass arrests, executions and heavier security deployments.
Months later, The Associated Press reported that Iran said it had detained 21,000 suspects during the June war with Israel, including more than 260 people suspected of spying and 172 accused of illegal filming. If accurate, that earlier tally showed how quickly wartime policing had already scaled up.
Rights groups also warned that espionage cases could move rapidly and with limited transparency. In June 2025, Amnesty International said people accused of collaborating with Israel were at risk of torture, enforced disappearance and arbitrary execution as authorities pushed for expedited trials.
And after nationwide protests earlier this year, AP described a countrywide dragnet in which activists said students, doctors, lawyers, teachers and reformist figures were swept up, while AP noted that internet blackouts and restricted access made the full scale difficult to verify.
Sunday’s figure of 500 arrests suggests Iran’s wartime security response is widening rather than easing. Whether authorities can substantiate the allegations in open court remains unclear, but the overlap between airstrikes, alleged informant networks and mass detentions shows the state increasingly views the home front as an active theater of war.
