The Islamic Republic of Iran does not see repression as something confined to its own borders. Recently, the regime’s judiciary announced that it had begun confiscating the assets of members of the Iranian diaspora. This followed a statement issued by the Office of Iran’s Prosecutor General threatening the Iranian diaspora abroad with the confiscation of their property and other punishments, including possible execution, if they are found to have ‘cooperated with the enemy’. The statement defined such cooperation in very loose terms, including alleged ‘support’ for Israel, the United States, or other hostile actors. The warning signals the regime’s clear intention to escalate its transnational repression against the diaspora, exporting repression from Iran to western cities.

This threat is not an isolated wartime measure. Rather, it is part of the regime’s broader strategy of  transnational repression. For decades, the Islamic Republic has tried to monitor, intimidate, silence, kidnap, even murder its critics outside the country.

Geographically, the regime’s attempts to target the Iranian diaspora have been primarily focused on Europe. There are practical reasons for this, of course. Not only is Europe home to millions of Iranians, but, unlike the United States, which has no diplomatic relations with Tehran, the Islamic Republic has embassies and an entire infrastructure across the European continent, providing it with a legitimate diplomatic guise for nefarious activities.

Just as it does in the Middle East, Tehran has not been afraid to exploit international protocols on diplomatic status to enable its ability to target its opponents abroad: from the murder of Iran’s last pre-revolutionary prime minister, Shapour Bakhtiar, in Paris in 1991 to the assassination of Iranian-Kurdish dissidents in Berlin in 1992, and the more recent plot to bomb an Iranian opposition conference in Paris in 2018. The fingerprints of the Islamic Republic’s embassies have been visible each time the regime has tried to enact transnational repression beyond its borders.

What is new is not the logic, but the scale of the regime’s anxiety and intent to escalate. Tehran now sees the Iranian diaspora as an active political front in the struggle over Iran’s future. That fear sharply intensified after Iran’s Women, Life, Freedom movement four years ago. The protests that began in 2022 transformed the Iranian diaspora into a much more organised and vocal political force. Iranian communities across North America and Europe, many of whom had largely refrained from political activism, became deeply engaged in lobbying, media campaigns, demonstrations and public advocacy for regime change. The regime quickly understood that this activism was no longer symbolic. It was shaping international narratives, mainstream media coverage, mobilising pressure on western governments, and helping connect the struggle inside Iran with a global political audience.

The Islamic Republic’s officials have made it clear that they view this activism as a danger for the regime. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned in 2023 that the regime should not allow protests against the Islamic Republic abroad, as they could defame and delegitimise the Islamic Republic in the world. He repeated his message in February, cautioning that outside pressure and calls for military intervention could accelerate the regime’s collapse. Even when officials did not always use the exact language of ‘diaspora activism’, their message was clear: political mobilisation abroad was helping turn domestic unrest into an international crisis for the Islamic Republic. That is precisely why Tehran increasingly treats exiled Iranians not simply as inconvenient critics, but as sworn enemies.

This became even more visible after the massacre of protestors that took place inside Iran between 8-9 January, during which the regime killed at least 30,000 people in just two days. As millions of Iranians took to the streets, the regime used unprecedented lethal force and imposed a complete internet blackout not only to hide the bloodshed on the streets but also to cut protestors off from the outside world. It was at this point, when the regime severely restricted communications, that the diaspora became even more important. Thereafter, Iranians abroad mobilised to serve as the voice of the people inside the country, drawing attention to the massacres, amplifying images and testimonies and pushing the demand for regime change more directly than before.

From that point onwards, the political role of the diaspora expanded. This resulted in major weekly solidarity protests across major western cities, including Toronto, Los Angeles and London. The scale of the movement was clear on 14 February, after the exiled Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi declared a ‘global day of action’, resulting in over one million participating in solidarity rallies with Iranians inside the country, with 250,000 gathering in Munich alone.

What mattered here was not just the size of the rallies but their political message. Iranians abroad had always tempered their messaging in part due to fear, not least repercussions they may face should they travel back to Iran to visit their families. But this mindset has fundamentally changed. Not only are many Iranians abroad now openly demanding regime change, they are increasingly advocating for western military intervention to achieve it, a call for action that was simply unimaginable just a few years ago. Some have also echoed what could be heard inside Iran itself: support for the return of the late Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, and the restoration of a constitutional monarchy.

For Ayatollahs and their thuggish Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), this is a dangerous development. The Islamic Republic has always tried to isolate domestic dissent and prevent it from becoming organised opposition on the international stage.

That is why the Prosecutor General’s recent threat matters. It is a clear signal that the Islamic Republic is about to escalate its transnational repression. The regime’s message is simple: even if you have left Iran, the regime will not tolerate your defiance. The goal is more than just to punish a few activists; it wishes to instil a sense of fear into the diaspora and silence a much wider community through intimidation. This is already starting to have an effect on the sense of security on the streets of London, Paris and Berlin. The regime wants the Iranian diaspora to know that its reach extends beyond its borders, and this is precisely where its embassies play an important role as a coordinating centre for transnational repression.

This is why calls to close down the Islamic Republic’s embassies matters. The closure of these embassies would land a decisive blow against the regime’s ability to coordinate and mobilise its supporters, target the Iranian diaspora, and recruit local criminal gangs to carry out acts of terror, such as the assassination of dissidents.

The regime’s embassies are also proactively conducting covert surveillance operations against diaspora members attending solidarity rallies globally, identifying them and transferring this information to Iran’s security and intelligence agencies. This has been made clear by an IRGC-affiliated outlet, which has openly stated that Iranians abroad who are identified as supporting the military intervention will be detained in Iran upon arrival.

The Islamic Republic is threatening Iranians abroad because the diaspora has become politically consequential. Since the early 2020s, the regime has gradually come to understand that the battle over Iran’s future is no longer confined to Tehran, Mashhad or Zahedan. It is also being fought in Toronto, Los Angeles, Munich, London, and wherever Iranians can still speak freely. This is precisely what frightens the Islamic Republic most – and why it is escalating its transnational repression abroad. To counter Tehran’s efforts to export violence beyond its own borders, the West must target the regime’s tools of transnational repression. Shutting down the Islamic Republic’s embassies should be at the top of the list.