Iran International
A bill before Iran’s parliament that would impose new restrictions on contacts with foreign media, universities and organizations has drawn widespread objections over its potential impact on routine academic, cultural and civil-society activity.
Lawmakers approved the bill’s general principles Sunday by 183 votes to four, with five abstentions among 258 members present. Its individual provisions must still be considered and approved separately.
The latest publicly available draft contains 19 articles, although references during Sunday’s parliamentary debate to Articles 26 and 27 indicate that lawmakers may be considering a revised text.
Bill targets broader forms of foreign influence
Supporters say a new law is needed because existing legislation focuses primarily on espionage, while foreign infiltration can take broader forms.
Hassan Ghashghavi, spokesman for parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said Iran already had laws covering espionage but faced a legal gap on infiltration.
Ghashghavi said work on the proposal began before the 12-day war and that relevant state bodies had participated in reviewing it.
The published draft gives the Intelligence Ministry and the Revolutionary Guards’ Intelligence Organization roles in identifying prohibited foreign links and activities. Cases under the proposed legislation would be heard by Revolutionary Courts.
Proposed penalties include prison terms, deprivation of social rights, dissolution of legal entities and confiscation of assets.
The reformist newspaper Sazandegi wrote that the proposal “not only fails to provide a proper definition of infiltration, but is also a warning sign of intensified censorship, greater restrictions and a widening social divide in the country.”
The newspaper questioned why legislation intended to counter foreign infiltration extended to scientific, media, cultural and civic activity rather than concentrating on breaches within sensitive state institutions.
Sociologist Mohammad Rahbari wrote that if the bill is approved in its reported form, “it would be as if parliament had shot itself in the foot,” arguing that the proposed offenses are defined so broadly that even parliament’s own research center could fall within their scope.
Social media activist Hossein Ghatib wrote that “the path to combating infiltration is not to take revenge on society,” arguing that shortcomings in official security structures should not result in restrictions on “university professors, journalists, artists, researchers, students and ordinary citizens.”
Foreign media and embassy contacts
Article 6 of the published draft would prohibit interviews, participation in discussions or “any communication” with media designated as hostile, including US and Israeli outlets and media funded by either country.
Violations would carry a sixth-degree prison sentence, which under Iran’s penal code ranges from more than six months to two years. Parliament has not approved the provision.
Interviews with other foreign media would have to be notified through a system run by the Intelligence Ministry, with failure to do so subject to the same proposed punishment.
Article 7 would criminalize sending video, photographs, audio or “any data” to non-Iranian media or people engaged in media activity outside the country.
The proposed punishment would increase in circumstances the text describes as crisis, unrest or disorder, or when information was sent under a cooperation agreement or with the intent of acting against national security.
The wording could potentially apply beyond professional journalists to people who send images or video of events inside Iran to media organizations abroad.
Iranian daily Shargh wrote that the proposed restrictions could expose foreign-policy journalists, international-relations specialists, translators, academics and businesspeople to prosecution because their work routinely requires contact with foreign institutions.
The newspaper also questioned whether authorities could realistically process permits for the large number of diplomatic, academic and commercial contacts taking place each day.
Article 8 would require individuals and organizations to notify authorities and obtain written permission from the Foreign Ministry or Iranian diplomatic missions for many contacts with foreign embassies, international organizations and non-Iranian institutions, with limited exceptions for personal and consular matters.
Academic and civil-society activity
Article 3 of the published text would prohibit providing “information, reports or statistics” to non-Iranian institutions or foreign nationals without Intelligence Ministry authorization.
The provision itself does not limit those categories to classified information.
Civil-society organizations would also be directly covered by the bill. Article 4 would prohibit non-governmental organizations, associations, political groups and other legal entities from receiving money, contracts, commissions or other financial benefits from foreign governmental or non-governmental bodies without authorization from a state committee.
Proposed penalties include imprisonment and fines, dissolution of organizations and bans of five to 15 years on cultural or social activity for their managers.
In academia, the draft would require the Intelligence Ministry to publish a list of approved foreign universities and research institutions for scholarships, contracts and scientific events.
Cooperation with institutions outside that list could carry criminal penalties if the provision is approved.
Cultural and educational work could face penalties
Other articles of the published text cover films, television series, documentaries, theater, music and books produced with the direction or support of foreign entities specified in the bill.
Works deemed to present a “dark image of Iran” or challenge religious principles could bring financial penalties or professional restrictions if the provisions are ultimately approved.
The draft would also allow prosecutors, based on material supplied by security agencies, to stop production of some works before completion.
Asr-e Iran questioned how authorities would define a “dark image of Iran,” asking whether portrayals of poverty, addiction, discrimination, corruption or migration could fall within that category.
“A country that is afraid of seeing its own wounds is not a healthier country; it may simply have broken its mirrors,” the outlet wrote.
In-person and online courses and workshops could also fall under the legislation if authorities considered them incompatible with “Iranian culture” and linked them to foreign entities covered by the bill.
Participants could also face punishment under the published text if they knew of the organizers’ stated purpose.
Another provision would criminalize certain forms of cooperation with foreign intelligence services, foreign governments, international organizations or non-Iranian individuals and entities to implement the UN 2030 Agenda or international instruments Iran has not formally undertaken to implement under its constitutional procedures.
Scope of bill draws criticism
Osman Salari, a member of the presidium of parliament’s Judicial and Legal Commission, said much of the proposal concerned criminal and judicial matters and argued that the judiciary and his commission had not been sufficiently consulted in its preparation.
Supporters argue that existing rules are fragmented and that a broader law is needed to establish a single framework for countering what the Islamic Republic describes as foreign infiltration.
Individual provisions remain unsettled
Article 1 of the published draft would also punish certain policy, legislative or executive proposals made under the supervision, direction, training or guidance of specified foreign intelligence services, governments or organizations when they result in harms defined by the text.
Those harms include damage to Iran’s security or independence and, under specified circumstances, undermining public trust in the political system, reducing election participation or directing votes toward a particular group or political current.
Other provisions would increase penalties for some economic crimes committed under foreign direction.
Iran enacted separate legislation in October 2025 increasing punishments for espionage and cooperation with Israel and states it designates as hostile. Supporters of the new proposal argue that “infiltration” requires a broader legal framework than espionage alone.
The new bill has yet to be considered article by article. Parliament must also determine the procedure for its further examination, and any final text it approves would require Guardian Council review before becoming law.
Salari said reports about punishments contained in the circulated draft should not be treated as final because lawmakers have not yet considered the individual provisions.
The provisions may therefore change during parliamentary scrutiny. What parliament has approved so far is the principle of legislating against what it describes as foreign infiltration, not the individual restrictions or penalties contained in the publicly available draft.
The setting was routine government business: a signing ceremony between two ministries, with footage showing Araghchi alongside Health Minister Mohammad-Reza Zafarghandi. The headline strap announced an agreement between the ministries of health and, in Persian, khavarejeh, Kharijite affairs, instead of kharejeh, foreign affairs. The difference is a single letter vav. A screenshot was circulating within minutes.
Within hours, the strap was a national argument. "Abbas isn't the foreign minister anymore. He's the minister of the Kharijites now," one widely shared post said of the man leading Iran's talks with Washington.
Another user drew the lineage: "Zarif was America's foreign minister. This one turned out to be the Kharijites'." Mohammad Javad Zarif, the architect of the 2015 nuclear deal, spent years being mocked with that title by the broadcaster's favorite guests; to many, the strap was the same insult upgraded, from serving the enemy to heresy.
The reformist daily Etemad asked the question on everyone's screen: "Mistake or mischief?" One viral post refused the innocent reading outright: "With this budget, this many staff, editors, broadcast supervisors and layer after layer of managers, you don't get to say 'it was a typo.'" The post tagged Peyman Jebelli, the broadcaster's hardline chief.
The deadliest word in the lexicon
The name Kharijites means "those who went out," and the story behind it is Islam's first civil war, remembered as the First Fitna. In 657 AD, at the Battle of Siffin, followers of Imam Ali, the first imam of Shia Islam, pressed him to accept arbitration with his rival Muawiya rather than fight on. When the arbitration went badly, the same men turned on Ali for accepting it, declared that "judgment belongs to God alone," walked out of his camp and made war on him. Ali crushed them at Nahrawan; three years later, a Kharijite assassin's poisoned blade killed him at prayer.
In the Islamic Republic's political language, no insult reaches deeper. "Kharijite" means the traitor within, the pious-faced insider who deserts the rightful leader, the author of fitna, the sedition that splits the faithful.
The late supreme leader Ali Khamenei's own commemorations dwelt on Nahrawan as the hardest of Ali's wars, fought against old companions whose foreheads were calloused from prayer, and his loyalists spent the years after the 2009 protests hanging the word on the opposition.
One user reached for exactly that memory this week, asking a government supporter: "So does your definition cover 2005 and 2009 as well?"
The alibi written into the alphabet
The typo has a linguistically respectable defense, which is part of what makes the episode so perfectly Iranian. Persian preserves a silent vav in a handful of ancient words, a fossil of pronunciation lost a thousand years ago: "sister" is written khvahar but said khahar. A typist's hand trained on those spellings could, in theory, plant the ghost letter in kharejeh on autopilot.
The defenders made that case. "It's a typo, not sabotage. Stop making a mountain out of a molehill," one wrote. Another blamed simple ignorance, at the establishment's expense: "Pure illiteracy at the mullahs' broadcaster. They figured if 'sister' takes the silent vav, 'foreign' must take one too."
The skeptics' answer was the broadcaster's record, which is where the story stops being about spelling.
A seminar, then a knife fight
What happened next may be the most Iranian part of all: the country fell into a theological flame war over the year 657, conducted in quote-tweets, as a proxy for a live question of war and peace.
One camp insisted the label fits the diplomats. "The Kharijites were the negotiation camp. That's the historical record," one post read. Another cast Araghchi in an even older role: "He's standing right where Amr ibn al-As stood, and his caliph is Muawiya," a reference to the silver-tongued arbitrator who outfoxed Ali's side at the table.
The rival camp threw the word back across the aisle. "The Kharijites were the ones pushing the imam into talks with the devil, and when it all went wrong, they blamed the imam," one wrote, a reading with a sharp contemporary edge, since hardline media have spent recent weeks portraying Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei as having opposed the negotiating process that produced the Islamabad agreement.
Another user completed the thought: "The Kharijites were inside Ali's own government. They kept pressuring him to negotiate, and when the whole thing blew up, they said: we had nothing to do with it."
Others turned the word on the broadcaster's own patrons: "If anyone here fits the Kharijites, it's Jalili and his gang. Extremism is all they've got." A government supporter fired back: "If only you people read some history. The Kharijites were the ones with no seat at the table, endlessly kicking at the government of the day to get one. Exactly like you."
And beneath the seminar, a threat. One account declared "the Kharijites' coup is near," amplifying a post that urged toppling President Masoud Pezeshkian's government before, it said, the government topples the system.
The broadcaster with a record
The reason so few Iranians extend the benefit of the doubt is that the strap did not appear on a neutral screen.
The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting is run by Jebelli and his cultural deputy Vahid Jalili, the brother of Saeed Jalili, the hardline politician who styles his circle a shadow government, and it has spent months in open warfare with the state's own diplomats.
In recent weeks alone, the broadcaster censored Pezeshkian's disclosure that the late supreme leader had privately ordered officials to negotiate with Washington while publicly ruling talks out; cut short a live interview with parliament speaker and chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf; ignored a formal order from its own supervisory board to stop censoring senior officials; and answered a complaint from Araghchi with a sneer that it could not give him "24/7 coverage."
The timing gives the letter a forward edge. Jebelli's five-year term expires within weeks, and whether the new supreme leader reappoints the current management has become an early test of the postwar balance between the war camp and the talks camp.
A one-letter insult to the chief diplomat, aired on Jebelli's channels while his renewal hangs in the balance, is either spectacular carelessness or a message about who does not fear the outcome.
One establishment, two masks
A caution belongs here, and some Iranians supplied it themselves. The fight between the broadcaster and the diplomats is real enough to produce casualties, but the moderate-versus-hardliner frame is also the Islamic Republic's most exportable fiction; every actor in this drama supports the system, and the menace of one camp has always been useful to the bargaining of the other.
As one user put it: "It's an open division of labor. America and Israel attack from the outside, the Ahmadinejad crowd and the shadow government undermine from the inside."
A typo that cannot be proven deliberate is the perfect weapon for a factional war that cannot be proven real.
In Persian, the silent vav is written but never pronounced. On Iranian state television, it was the only letter that spoke.
