Iran Turns Citizens Into Informants in Expanding Global Crackdown

Iran has introduced a new system that encourages people to report on Iranians living overseas, effectively crowdsourcing surveillance of the diaspora through a website and messaging services including Telegram, according to Iranian media reports and an Iranian official familiar with the program who confirmed it to News Outlet.

Called Alaj—the Persian word for “remedy” or “cure”—the platform asks users to submit information about people abroad whom it accuses of threatening Iran’s national interests or security. Iran International reported that tips could be sent through the Alaj website, a Telegram bot and Iran’s Bale messaging platform. Iranian state television and the Revolutionary Guard-linked Fars News Agency also publicized the initiative, the outlet said.

An Iranian official source told News Outlet that Alaj and its Telegram chatbot were created as a new channel for reporting information about Iranians living outside the country. The source said the website was later removed after the project faced widespread criticism in Iran.

The site went offline soon after its public launch, though the circumstances behind its suspension remain contested.

Iran International reported that Alaj claimed to have identified and tracked 1,600 people, including about 600 whose identities allegedly came from public submissions. Those figures have not been independently confirmed. According to the outlet, the platform posted names and images of Iranians living abroad and, in some cases, included national identification numbers, birth dates and their fathers’ names.

Iranian American journalist and foreign policy analyst Lisa Daftari said the most significant aspect of the initiative is not only the collection of information by Tehran, but its effort to persuade Iranians to report on one another.

“Even if it’s just the perception that other Iranians can report you or can get you in trouble or that this app exists, it makes a lot of people fearful,” Daftari told News Outlet. “You’ll think twice before going to that next protest.”

Daftari said the threat feels especially serious for members of the Iranian diaspora who have family members still living in Iran.

“Now your face could be captured, you can get in trouble,” she said. “If you have family in Iran, they can get into trouble.”

She characterized the program as a digital version of a longstanding method of control. In her view, Iran’s clerical establishment has spent decades fostering uncertainty about whether neighbors, coworkers or acquaintances could report each other to authorities.

“Now the regime wants to take this show on the road and do that here, here in the West,” Daftari said. “They want to intimidate people. And it works.”

Daftari said she has personally faced such intimidation for years. “I’ve been followed, I’ve been hacked multiple times, I have been approached in person in LA, in New York, even at the airport,” she told News Outlet.

Following a major hacking incident that exposed her social media accounts along with her personal and work email, Daftari said her local FBI office contacted her and she began cooperating closely with agents.

She said the hackers also accessed private bikini photographs taken during a vacation and sent them to her husband. “The message they want to send is very clear, that we know where you are, we can reach you,” she said. “And obviously the point is to intimidate and silence those who speak out, who report, who speak the truth and talk about all the crimes of this regime.”

Daftari said the intimidation affects more than high-profile journalists and activists. Years ago, while filming at a Los Angeles café where Iranian Americans were watching a World Cup match, she said she saw people trying to conceal their faces from the camera because they feared the footage could reach Iran and place relatives there at risk of retaliation.

That fear-driven calculation, she said, shows how a system like Alaj can exert influence even when people do not know whether anyone has actually reported them.

The threat has also changed Daftari’s own behavior.

She recalled being unable to stop thinking about security when the location of her father’s memorial service had to be announced publicly after his death. Daftari said she routinely considers where she parks, what details she shares online and security vulnerabilities at places she visits. “It does silence a lot of people, and it does change the freedom by which we think we can operate here in the United States, where we believe we have full freedom,” Daftari said.

“Their intimidation works,” she added. “It works to a certain extent on each individual.”

Daftari said the broader campaign should also shape how Americans understand the confrontation with Tehran, arguing that the threat extends beyond Iran’s nuclear program.

“It’s not just about nuclear weapons, it’s about a deadly ideology that has made its way here to U.S. soil,” she said. “We have to understand that.”