While many Iranians took to the streets to celebrate the end of the short but dramatic 12-day war with Israel in June, Abdullatif, 23, couldn’t join the joyful crowds. As an undocumented Afghan in Iran, he couldn’t risk running into the Iranian security forces, whose presence was heavier than usual.

“I’m afraid they’ll arrest me as a spy. I can’t leave the house,” he told Foreign Policy at the time. Abdullatif was referring to the common claim that Afghans collaborate with the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. In the 12 days following Israel’s large-scale attack on Iranian nuclear and military facilities on June 13, more than 700 people were arrested for espionage and sabotage. State media aired confessions extracted from Afghans among them, creating fertile ground to accelerate what has become one of the biggest mass deportation campaigns in modern history.

While many Iranians took to the streets to celebrate the end of the short but dramatic 12-day war with Israel in June, Abdullatif, 23, couldn’t join the joyful crowds. As an undocumented Afghan in Iran, he couldn’t risk running into the Iranian security forces, whose presence was heavier than usual.

“I’m afraid they’ll arrest me as a spy. I can’t leave the house,” he told Foreign Policy at the time. Abdullatif was referring to the common claim that Afghans collaborate with the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. In the 12 days following Israel’s large-scale attack on Iranian nuclear and military facilities on June 13, more than 700 people were arrested for espionage and sabotage. State media aired confessions extracted from Afghans among them, creating fertile ground to accelerate what has become one of the biggest mass deportation campaigns in modern history.

For more than four decades, Iran provided refuge to millions of Afghans fleeing conflict and the poverty of their own country, creating the largest Afghan diaspora and one of the biggest refugee populations in the world. The estimated number of refugees currently residing in Iran ranges from around 4 million to 6 million, according to Iranian officials—the vast majority of them from Afghanistan.

On June 24, Abdullatif became one of more than half a million Afghans deported since the war’s start. Many were brutally taken—seized by security forces at home, sometimes while asleep, at workplaces, or at mosques, with families torn apart in the process.

Abdullatif was arrested outside the bakery where he’d been buying bread. “The Iranian police treated us extremely badly,” he recalled, speaking to Foreign Policy from his family home in Kabul. “They took me to a refugee camp where they beat us and kept us hungry and thirsty. Those who gave money to the Iranian police were able to leave easily. After a lot of beatings, I paid 3 million tomans and was deported. They tore up my passport and humiliated us nonstop.” (The 3 million tomans, roughly $70, is a “municipality fee” Afghans have reportedly been asked to pay before deportation.)

Abdullatif’s story isn’t abnormal. According to........

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