EU Parliament names Iran among states behind hybrid attacks on Europe

“In some cases, prisoners have been forced to lift their shirts and the guards have also touched their breasts,” one source said.

Body searches have become routine in Evin's women's ward in recent months. Female guards search political prisoners before they leave for family visits, medical treatment or court appearances.

The searches take place in a cubicle recently designated for the purpose. Guards touch different parts of prisoners' bodies and sometimes order them to move or remove clothing, according to the account.

100%

Families and children searched

Relatives visiting prisoners are also facing more intrusive searches under tighter security measures that differ from previous procedures, another source told Iran International.

Guards force relatives to remove their shoes, inspect the inside of their mouths and touch different parts of their bodies. Children and teenagers visiting imprisoned family members are not exempt and are also touched during searches.

• 

  Female political prisoners demand accountability for sexual abuse

Twenty-two female political and ideological prisoners at Evin demanded an investigation into what they called “sexual harassment” during body searches in a letter in October 2024.

Transgender prisoner Ghazal Marzban also wrote from Evin on August 21 that she was raped following her arrest in May 2023 at an Intelligence Ministry detention facility and threatened into silence.

• 

  Trans woman prisoner says she was raped in Iran Intelligence Ministry detention

Sexual violence against detainees has been documented in Iranian prisons since the aftermath of the 1979 revolution, with former prisoners and rights groups describing its use as a means of torture and humiliation.

Searches deter treatment and visits

The increasingly invasive searches have led many women to forgo medical transfers or meetings with relatives and lawyers rather than undergo the procedures, the sources said.

100%

Pressure over prisoners' clothing when leaving the ward has also increased. Women have in some cases been forced to wear slippers and handcuffs.

Iran's Prisons Organization regulations permit searches without clothing only when necessary and under specified conditions. They also require body searches to be conducted with electronic equipment wherever possible.

The sources questioned why scanning equipment was not being used, describing the current procedures as a means of harassment rather than necessary security measures.

More than 40 women imprisoned for financial offenses were recently transferred to Evin's women's ward, and restrictions increased following their arrival, another source told Iran International.

Prison authorities have justified some of the tighter rules by pointing to the presence of non-political prisoners. Women imprisoned for financial offenses now make up around half of those held in the ward.

• 

  Iran’s prisoners endure worsening conditions amid bitter winter cold

Iran International reported on July 12 that women protested the transfer over overcrowding and the failure to separate prisoners according to offense. Special prison guards entered the ward and beat several protesters with batons.

100%

Some political prisoners view the mixing of political and financial prisoners as a deliberate policy intended to weaken collective resistance to restrictions.

Evin's women's ward has become a center of political prisoner activism in recent years, with women staging protests and hunger strikes over executions and other political and social issues.

The Alaj platform – whose name means “remedy” or “cure” in Persian – accepts information through its website, a Telegram bot and Iran's Bale messaging service.

“Alaj operates with the aim of safeguarding national security against anti-Iranian currents,” the Guards-affiliated Fars News Agency said in announcing the project on Monday.

State television also promoted Alaj, giving wider exposure to a system Iranian media had previously discussed but not promoted on the same scale.

Alaj says it has identified and monitored 1,600 people, including 600 identified through reports from members of the public, according to Iranian state media.

Its website publishes information about Iranians abroad, including names and photographs and, in some cases, national identification numbers, dates of birth and fathers' names.

• 

  Iran uses embassies abroad for surveillance and subterfuge, ex-staff say

The platform says it targets people outside Iran who act “against the country's interests and security,” including those advocating sanctions or military action and members of separatist groups.

Alaj also lists potential measures against people it identifies, including freezing assets and withdrawing access to consular and citizenship services.

The project's name carries a pointed connotation. Alaj translates as “remedy” or “cure,” framing the people targeted by the platform as a problem to be treated.

People ridicule campaign

Responses to the post promoting Alaj ranged from mockery of Iran's security establishment to explicit warnings that people who inform on opponents could themselves be identified and punished in the future.

One commenter predicted the platform would be hacked and the identities of those submitting reports made public, arguing that previous breaches of major Iranian institutions gave little reason to trust Alaj with sensitive information.

100%

Another suggested the government's turn could eventually come, writing that authorities appeared to have little hope left even of securing future amnesty.

Others portrayed the campaign as a tactic opponents of the Islamic Republic could use themselves. One user said supporters of the Revolutionary Guards and Hamas abroad had already been publicly identified by opponents and several had lost their jobs as a result.

Several responses contrasted the effort to identify ordinary Iranians overseas with Israel's apparent intelligence penetration inside Iran.

“Start with the infiltrators inside your own ranks,” one person wrote, arguing that Israeli intelligence appeared to have extensive knowledge of Iranian officials.

Another mocked the limits of Iran's controls over information, asking whether authorities intended to “nationalize the internet outside the country” to prevent overseas opposition activity.

• 

  Iran International journalists face escalating threats from Tehran - Forbes

Other comments were considerably more explicit, threatening revenge against people who cooperate with Alaj after any future change of government.

Pezeshkian targets Iranians abroad

The campaign coincides with sharper official rhetoric toward politically active Iranians overseas.

“Some Iranians abroad, aligning themselves with the enemy, seek to incite the public within the country,” President Masoud Pezeshkian said during a social event on Monday, according to state media.

Pezeshkian accused Washington of seeking “to cause social collapse through the problems and restrictions they have imposed,” and said preserving domestic unity would prevent Iran from yielding to US pressure.

Guards used similar model at home

Alaj follows a similar crowdsourcing project launched by the Revolutionary Guards Intelligence Organization in June to identify citizen journalists and social-media users inside Iran.

Known as Jasous-Yab, or “Spy Finder,” the project used channels on the Iranian Eitaa and Bale messaging platforms to ask members of the public to identify people photographing or filming missile strikes and other sensitive locations.

“This time, you identify the spies,” the campaign told users.

100%

People were instructed to scrutinize buildings, roads, sounds, distances and other details visible in photographs and videos to determine where material had been recorded and submit information to Revolutionary Guards intelligence.

The project also sought to identify social-media users opposing the Islamic Republic, extending its scope beyond people recording events on the ground.

Alaj takes that crowdsourcing model beyond Iran's borders, asking citizens to help identify overseas opponents and feeding the resulting information into a system that advertises consequences for those it identifies.

Overseas operations

Iranian intelligence activity targeting dissidents and journalists overseas has previously prompted criminal investigations, sanctions and warnings from Western governments.

• 

  Western powers condemn Iran over targeting opponents abroad

Authorities in the United States and Europe have accused Iranian security bodies and people working on their behalf of conducting surveillance and plotting abductions or killings of opponents abroad.

Activities linked to Alaj could therefore face scrutiny under espionage, foreign-interference or transnational-repression laws in countries where targets live, depending on how information is gathered and subsequently used.

The US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York said on Monday it had filed a civil forfeiture complaint over the assets, which prosecutors said were linked to a network that moved more than $1.5 billion in proceeds from Iranian oil sales.

The IRGC is designated by the United States as a terrorist organization.

Prosecutors target oil payment network

"Today's action demonstrates our determination to deprive the Government of Iran and its terrorist proxies of the illegal money they rely on to threaten the lives and safety of the citizens of the United States and elsewhere," Deputy US Attorney Sean S. Buckley said.

• 

  Secret documents expose new network selling sanctioned Iranian oil

Buckley said Iran relied on black-market sales of sanctioned crude oil to fund its military and other activities.

"As alleged in the complaint filed today, the Government of Iran used a network of cryptocurrency actors in China and elsewhere to launder more than $1.5 billion in illicit oil money intended to benefit the Iranian military and the terror-designated IRGC," he said.

Chinese companies named in complaint

The complaint said two Chinese companies, Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale, used accounts at cryptocurrency exchange Binance in the United Arab Emirates to move proceeds from Iranian oil sales.

• 

  Iran’s oil exports near zero as Persian Gulf flows recover

Prosecutors said Blessed Trust presented itself as a wealth management or virtual asset custodial services firm but received and transferred proceeds from Iranian crude oil and petroleum product sales. They said it also helped convert traditional currency into cryptocurrency, including through US-based cryptocurrency issuers.

Hexa Whale presented itself as a commodities broker but provided similar services and worked with Blessed Trust and related entities, according to the complaint.

More than $1.5 billion moved through addresses

The complaint said a group of linked, unhosted cryptocurrency addresses identified as "Entity A" received and distributed more than $1.5 billion in proceeds from Iranian oil sales.

Prosecutors said the addresses sent funds to money services businesses and cryptocurrency addresses linked to the IRGC, as well as to an Iranian cryptocurrency exchange.

• 

  Iran loses ground on trade as war hits oil and non-oil exports

They said transactions involving Blessed Trust, Hexa Whale and people associated with the companies were structured to conceal the source, ownership and nature of the funds. The complaint also said the two companies used the US financial system to send or receive tens of millions of dollars.

FBI says action cuts funding

"Today's complaint demonstrates the FBI's ability to follow the money, root out illicit schemes, and halt the stream of cryptocurrency to any government attempting to evade sanctions or committing terrorist activities," said James C. Barnacle Jr., assistant director in charge of the FBI's New York field office.

"By cutting off funds raised by the black-market sale of crude oil, the Iranian military and terrorists are weakened," Barnacle said.

The US Attorney's Office said a civil forfeiture complaint contains allegations that money or property was involved in, or represents proceeds from, a crime. The allegations have not been proven, and a court must rule in favor of the United States before the assets can be forfeited.

Saudi Arabia is taking a harder military posture after efforts to defuse tensions with Tehran stalled. Riyadh had sought de-escalation, wary that a wider conflict could threaten the regional stability on which its economic ambitions depend.

A meeting planned for Monday between Iran and several Persian Gulf states over arrangements for the Strait of Hormuz was postponed after Saudi Arabia requested a delay, amid Riyadh’s growing frustration over attacks by Iran-aligned groups.

That leaves Riyadh with options, none of them ideal.

Saudi Arabia does not want an all-out war. But the Houthis may be testing how long the kingdom can afford to avoid one.

Saad bin Tefla Al Ajmi, Kuwait's former information minister, said Saudi Arabia has so far exercised patience but its military options remain open.

That restraint reflects what the kingdom has at stake. Saudi Arabia has spent years trying to avoid being dragged back into direct conflict with the Houthis, while its economic transformation depends heavily on regional stability.

"There is no stability, there is no development. There is no stability, there is no prosperity," Al Ajmi told Iran International.

But Houthi attacks on Saudi territory and advances along Yemen’s Red Sea coast are making that restraint increasingly difficult to maintain. The Saudi-led coalition said Houthi missile and drone attacks on Khamis Mushait, Abha and Taif on Monday injured 13 civilians.

Al Ajmi believes some of the Houthis' recent territorial gains could be reversed, particularly if Saudi Arabia decides to deploy its overwhelming advantage in air power. He described Houthi forces operating along the flat Tihamah coastal plain as "sitting ducks."

Saudi Arabia led a military intervention against the Houthis beginning in 2015, with direct hostilities largely subsiding after a UN-brokered truce began in 2022. Years of bombardment failed to eliminate the movement, and Riyadh subsequently spent years trying to avoid being pulled back into a full-scale Yemen war.

The question now is whether the Houthis are pushing that restraint too far.

Houthis risk overplaying their hand

The battlefield in Yemen remains fluid. The Houthis have seized Mokha, Dhubab and Perim Island and expanded their control along Yemen’s Red Sea coast, while Saudi-backed government forces have regrouped and vowed to retake lost territory. That leaves open the question of how durable the Houthis’ gains will prove.

"The Houthis fought the Saudis and the Saudi militias for years. They also have a history of being overextended," Alberto Fernandez, a former senior US diplomat, told Iran International.

Fernandez said the Houthis may have pushed too far.

"I think we could see them lose some of the territory that they've gained," he said.

"They're arrogant. Yes, they're motivated by ideology. And when you're motivated by ideology and you're arrogant, you tend to sometimes overextend," Fernandez said.

But the Houthis are also betting on reluctance from both Saudi Arabia and the United States to become drawn more deeply into the conflict.

Saudi Arabia's attempt to remain outside the wider Iran war has already "certainly backfired on them," Fernandez said.

The uncertainty over how much the kingdom can rely on its allies only complicates its options.

Fernandez described the relationship between Washington and Riyadh as increasingly complicated. The Saudis, he said, felt blindsided by the United States launching the Iran war, while Washington in turn felt unsupported by Riyadh.

That strain has become more visible as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sought direct US military action against the Houthis, while Trump declined requests for US strikes and Washington limited its support to intelligence and targeting assistance.

That uncertainty also extends to the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement, signed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan on August 7. The pact says an armed attack against any one of the three countries will be regarded as an attack against all.

"So far [it] has turned out to be a paper tiger," Fernandez said, joking that the arrangement appeared to have the equivalent of a health insurance "pre-existing condition clause."

Saudi Arabia looks elsewhere for help

As Washington hesitates, Saudi Arabia is looking elsewhere.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham is considering Saudi requests for diplomatic and military support to counter the Houthis, Bloomberg reported Monday, as London grows increasingly concerned about the economic consequences of another expanding front in the Iran war.

The requests come as Britain has backed Saudi Arabia’s right to defend itself against Houthi attacks and stressed the importance of protecting freedom of navigation and global trade through the Red Sea.

The widening conflict has raised the stakes beyond Yemen. Houthi gains along the Red Sea coast and around Bab el-Mandeb, combined with attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure, are putting pressure on westward export routes that have become more important while shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains constrained.

The Houthi offensive and attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure have added further pressure to oil markets already strained by the Iran war. Brent crude climbed above $108 a barrel Monday after attacks shut down Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, a crucial alternative export route while shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains constrained.

"It gets to push up oil prices a little more," Fernandez said.

"For them, every dollar that prices go up, for them they see that as a plus for the regime, putting a little more pressure on the Americans and the Europeans."

The paradox for Tehran is that the greater the disruption caused by the widening conflict, the stronger the incentive may become for governments outside the region to help Saudi Arabia contain the threat.

Iran does not need to control the Houthis

"The broader strategic danger is that Iran does not need to control the Houthis completely to benefit from their actions," Mohamed Fahmy, a journalist and Middle East political analyst, told Iran International.

"It only needs the movement to retain sufficient military capability, autonomy and motivation to pressure critical maritime routes while Tehran maintains distance from the confrontation."

Fahmy cautioned against reducing the Houthis to an Iranian proxy.

They are "an intensely nationalist movement with their own domestic agenda and deeply rooted local interests," he said.

Their relationship with Tehran is nevertheless exceptionally close. Iran has provided weapons, military technology, intelligence and other support, Fahmy said, while the strategic interests of the two sides increasingly converge.

That convergence has become particularly consequential around the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb.

"One of the Houthis' strategic objectives is to exert control over Yemen's Red Sea coast and the northern Red Sea, where they can increasingly influence who is permitted to transit and who is not," Fahmy said.

For Tehran, the Houthis therefore provide an additional source of pressure on its adversaries without requiring direct Iranian military involvement.

But Saudi Arabia's military answer is not straightforward.

Fahmy pointed to Saada, the Houthis' traditional stronghold and geographical heart of their power, which has been repeatedly targeted by Saudi forces since the intervention began in 2015. Despite years of Saudi-led bombardment and military pressure, the Houthis survived and retained significant military capabilities.

"A limited campaign of additional strikes is therefore unlikely to fundamentally diminish their ability to threaten shipping or project power across the Red Sea," Fahmy said.

That leaves Saudi Arabia confronting a difficult choice.

Continued restraint risks allowing the Houthis to impose greater costs on the kingdom and giving Tehran additional leverage. But a renewed military campaign carries risks Riyadh knows well after years of fighting failed to eliminate the movement.

Iran has gained leverage as the war reaches Saudi Arabia. But the more Houthi attacks raise the costs for Riyadh, the greater the risk that Tehran’s leverage provokes the response that ultimately erodes it.

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated VTB under Executive Order 13902 for operating in Iran’s financial sector, expanding Operation Economic Outcast to one of Russia’s largest banks. The action follows measures targeting banking channels in Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

Treasury said VTB established correspondent relationships with sanctioned Iranian financial institutions over the past three years, took steps to move billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets and created a settlement system using rial- and ruble-denominated accounts to increase trade between Russia and Iran.

VTB has also had a presence in Tehran since 2023, when it became the first Russian bank to open a representative office in Iran. The bank stressed at the time that the Tehran operation was a representative office rather than a full branch. Treasury said VTB began taking steps in January 2025 to expand its presence in the Iranian capital.

“Under Operation Economic Outcast, Treasury will continue to target and disrupt those who provide material, technological, or financial support that allows the Iranian regime to sustain its terrorist enterprise,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.

“Treasury will not tolerate any support to the regime and will continue to identify, expose, and isolate Iran’s enablers,” he added.

VTB sanctioned again

Monday’s action does not mark the first time Washington has sanctioned VTB.

The bank was subjected to US sectoral restrictions in 2014 following Russia’s actions in Ukraine and was fully blocked by OFAC in February 2022 under Executive Order 14024 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Treasury also designated VTB in January 2025 under Executive Order 13662. The new action adds an Iran-specific sanctions authority targeting its activities in Iran’s financial sector.

Treasury said the Iran designation creates additional sanctions exposure for foreign financial institutions conducting certain transactions with VTB and urged institutions that continue dealing with the Russian lender to sever those relationships.

The move was foreshadowed by Bessent on September 10, when he said Washington would sanction an unidentified “large bank” on Monday as it continued ratcheting up pressure on Iran.

“We are just going to continue with this process until everyone stops dealing with this regime,” Bessent told Real America’s Voice.

“We will make it so unprofitable that if you want to risk an extinction-level event for your company or for your person, your personal finances, then have at it. But we are coming for you,” he said.

Bessent had earlier warned financial institutions on X after Washington sanctioned Turkey’s Golden Global Bank on September 4.

“Financial institutions continue to find out the hard way that we are serious about Operation Economic Outcast,” he wrote, adding: “We know who you are, we know where you are.”

Economic D-Day

Bessent launched Operation Economic Outcast on August 24, describing it as an economic “D-Day” aimed at severing the remaining financial lifelines sustaining Iran.

The initiative goes beyond imposing restrictions on Iranian entities themselves by threatening foreign companies and financial institutions with loss of access to the US market and financial system if they continue doing business with Tehran.

The VTB action follows two significant moves against foreign banking channels used by Iran.

On September 4, Treasury sanctioned Turkey’s Golden Global Bank and two subsidiaries, alleging the lender facilitated tens of millions of dollars in transactions for the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force and helped move Iranian oil revenue from China into Turkey, where money exchangers could convert funds into cash and gold. Golden Global denied the allegations.

On August 28, US authorities took a different approach against the UAE operations of Egypt’s Banque Misr. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network proposed cutting the branches off from US correspondent banking after identifying them as a “primary money laundering concern.”

The measure was not an OFAC asset-freezing sanction and applied to Banque Misr’s UAE operations rather than the Egyptian parent bank more broadly.

FinCEN estimated that Banque Misr UAE processed approximately $1.8 billion between January 2024 and June 2026 for 103 companies potentially connected to Iranian shadow-banking networks.

Iran’s overseas banking network

An Iran International investigation published September 2, however, found that Iran’s overseas banking network extended considerably beyond the institutions Washington had targeted.

Based on leaked Bank Parsian correspondence and transaction records spanning November 2022 to May 2023, the investigation identified 15 banks in the UAE and China through which Iranian financial institutions conducted international transactions. Thirteen had faced no publicly recorded US penalties or enforcement action over their involvement at the time of publication.

• 

  US crackdown leaves much of Iran’s shadow banking untouched

The records included 33 payment instructions worth roughly $36 million. One showed Bank Parsian directing Bank Shahr to transfer 3.06 million UAE dirhams purchased from Iran’s central bank from a trustee account to an account at Banque Misr.

Iran International found no evidence that the UAE and Chinese banks knowingly helped Iran circumvent US sanctions.