Rights group says Iran uses missions in Europe to track dissidents
Kurdish rights group Hana warned that Iran is using its embassies and consulates in Europe to monitor, identify and pursue dissidents, journalists, rights activists and asylum seekers.
Hana said some Iranian diplomatic missions go beyond their legal duties by working with security and judicial bodies to collect information on activists’ addresses, assets and family ties.
The group urged European governments and EU institutions to take “decisive legal and security measures” against any abuse of diplomatic cover to threaten and suppress Iranian dissidents.
The US State Department said Iran’s nuclear program poses a global threat and urged Tehran to enter serious negotiations with Washington to resolve the dispute.
“Iran’s nuclear program poses a threat to the United States and the entire world,” a State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
“Iran today stands in breach of its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations by failing to provide full cooperation with the IAEA,” the spokesperson said, adding that Iran’s leadership “must engage in serious diplomatic negotiations with the United States to resolve the nuclear issue once and for all.”
"For 47 years, we tried the 'nice' way — endless diplomacy — while Iran chanted 'Death to America' and took numerous American lives. My Democrat colleagues have loved every second of it. No more," Republican lawmaker Randy Fine said.
"Now we have a strong President in the Oval Office. We are choosing PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH to crush the Iranian Regime," he added in a post on X.
On Sanaei Street in central Tehran, young people spill onto pavements and crowd around tiny tables late into the evening, smoking and laughing as if the war never happened.
The street has become a kind of world within a world, a haven where people briefly lose sight of what is happening outside.
At times it almost feels normal—with one tiny but crucial difference: fewer phones are out. There is no internet to warrant the persistent scrolling.
The music is low. The coffees are overpriced. Couples flirt. Groups of teenagers debate politics and migration plans over cheesecake and iced americanos as if the country around them were not still carrying the shock of war.
But the conversations are different now.
“We thought it would be over in a few days,” says Mani, 17, referring to the January protests that were brutally crushed. “It wasn’t.”
He says he was on the streets with many of his school friends but would think twice if there were another call to action.
“If the US and Israel couldn’t get rid of them, no one can,” Mani says. “I don’t think I’d go out again. I’ll leave Iran as soon as I can.”
That appeared to be the dominant mood among the Gen Zs I met in one cafe this week. One was my best friend’s daughter. The others were her friends.
Their worldview is hard to grasp and harder to explain. The best phrase I can find for it is “suspended expectation”: a belief that the Islamic Republic may eventually fall, paired with almost no confidence that they themselves can bring it down.
The January massacre and the war that followed appear to have fundamentally altered how many young opponents of the system think about change.
“I still like the Prince,” says Saba, another 17-year-old, referring to Iran’s most prominent opposition figure, Reza Pahlavi. “I think he’s a decent man. But I don’t think he can beat this seven-headed dragon.”
The contempt for Iran’s ruling elite is unmistakable. It may be the closest thing to a shared political feeling in the cafe.
Saba and her friends describe moments of fear during the bombings, but also flashes of exhilaration after reports that senior officials had been killed.
“We partied hard when Khamenei was killed,” says Tannaz, 19. “We danced through the night wearing headphones so no music could be heard from outside the apartment.”
File photo by ISNA shows a woman leaving a cafe in Tehran
Tannaz says she protested too and saw a friend badly injured with pellets. The crackdown, she says, “shattered” her emotionally.
“After January 10, I couldn’t get out of bed for days,” she says. “Then there was a ray of hope when Khamenei was killed. But not anymore. I really don’t know what’s going to happen to Iran. I’m trying to take it day by day until I can leave.”
That last sentiment may be the most common political position among parts of Tehran’s urban youth today: not revolution, not reform, but exit.
The war does not appear to have softened hostility toward the ruling system among these circles. If anything, it deepened it. But it also reinforced a conclusion many seem to have reached after January: that the state is far harsher and more durable than they once believed.
So they “chill,” as Mani puts it with a laugh. “What else can one do?”
They are still hanging out when I leave—no doubt drifting from politics to names and trends non-Gen Zs would struggle to decipher.
Tehran has regained its noise after the war. But beneath it sits a generation that no longer seems to believe history belongs to them.
Senator Bernie Sanders on Saturday accused the Trump administration of lying about the cost of the Iran war, saying the conflict could exceed $1 trillion rather than the $25 billion figure cited by the administration.
IRGC-linked media called for Iran to generate revenue from undersea internet cables passing through the Strait of Hormuz, framing the waterway not only as an energy and shipping chokepoint but also as a digital pressure point.
Tasnim, in an article titled “Three practical steps for generating revenue from Strait of Hormuz internet cables,” wrote that submarine fiber-optic cables passing through the strait carry more than $10 trillion in financial transactions each day, but said Iran has been deprived of the economic and sovereign benefits of this critical communications infrastructure because of what it called a traditional view of the strait.
The outlet said the Islamic Republic should take three steps: charge foreign companies initial licensing and annual renewal fees; require major technology companies such as Meta, Amazon and Microsoft to operate under Iranian law; and give Iranian companies exclusive control over maintenance and repair of the cables.
Tasnim said the measures would turn the Strait of Hormuz into a “strategic center for legitimate wealth creation.”
Fars, another IRGC-linked outlet, published a similar thread on X, describing Iran as the ruler of a “hidden highway” in Hormuz.
It said more than 99% of international internet communications are carried through undersea cables, describing them as the backbone of global technology giants including Google, Meta and Microsoft.
Fars said disruption to the cables for only a few days could cause tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to the regional and global economy.
It said an important part of this communications route passes through the Strait of Hormuz and claimed the cables are legally within an area where Iran can exercise sovereignty, adding that the right of transit passage does not remove that authority.
Under its proposed model for governing the strait, Fars said the passage of undersea cables should require permits and toll payments, while foreign companies should operate under Iranian rules. It also said management, repair and maintenance of the cables could be assigned exclusively to Iranian companies, turning Hormuz into one of Iran’s “digital power” levers.
The comments follow an earlier Tasnim report in April that mapped undersea internet cables and cloud infrastructure around the Persian Gulf, including routes serving the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
That report argued that countries on the southern side of the Persian Gulf depend more heavily than Iran on maritime internet routes, and highlighted landing stations, data hubs and cloud infrastructure as strategic pressure points in the conflict.
