Authoritarian governments have long drawn ordinary citizens into political surveillance. Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union encouraged denunciations. East Germany’s secret police service, the Stasi, embedded informants in workplaces and neighbourhoods.

From 1960, Cuba’s leaders organised local committees to monitor political dissent. And informant culture is so embedded in everyday Iranian life that there are common Persian terms to describe it. A mokhber or khabarchin is an informant and a zirabzan secretly passes private information to the authorities, often to damage someone.

My latest research sheds light on how Iran’s informant system operates. I interviewed 90 Iranians aged between 17 and 52, including students, teachers, university staff, bazaar workers, and government and energy sector employees. All had been encouraged, pressured or offered incentives to report on people they knew.

Iran’s informant network runs through the intelligence ministry, as well as the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its affiliated Basij paramilitary force. It reaches workplaces, government bodies, universities and private lives through internal security offices known as Herasat and recruitment vetting bodies such as Gozinesh or Salahiyat-e Omumi.

As in other authoritarian settings, these security bodies hold considerable power in Iran. They can act in the name of security with little legal oversight or opposition to their decisions.

Informants may be asked........

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