Iran Shifts Tactics to Use Covert Police, Tech to Crack Down on Protests

As protests in Iran enter a second month, authorities are using plainclothes security officers, digital surveillance and drones to target the demonstrations that are now characterizing the movement, marking a new phase in the harsh government response.

The techniques are a response to protesters’ adaptations in an uprising that began after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini’s Sept. 16 death in police custody over alleged violations of the country’s dress code. Security forces have used live ammunition and tear gas to disperse large crowds, leaving hundreds dead and injured. In response, protesters have moved away from big gatherings in favor of pop-up demonstrations and other displays of resistance, such as women removing their headscarves, in a shift that has given the movement staying power.

In recent weeks, plainclothes security officers have quietly mingled among the crowds in areas where protests are taking place and physically attacked or threatened those they suspect of backing the antigovernment movement.

Plainclothes officers have also used smartphones to take photos and record videos of demonstrators, said protesters, witnesses and human-rights groups. Security forces said they have used this footage to identify and track some of these protesters and later arrest them.

Mahshid, a 28-year-old student who joined the protests in the southern city of Shiraz, said that on Saturday, a civilian car drove in front of her and a friend, blocking their path, after she took pictures of an unmarked police vehicle. The Wall Street Journal agreed to use only her first name.

Mahshid said the plainclothes officers tried to arrest the women. “The man shot at our car with a handgun five times,” leaving a deep hole in the vehicle, according to Mahshid and images of the vehicle reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The two women managed to escape.

From Tehran to the far eastern province of Sistan-Balochistan, Iranian authorities have also begun using drones to surveil the protests, according to demonstrators and police forces. The government has also relied on CCTV footage and food-delivery services that track locations and other apps to locate activists, according to Iranian experts and officials.

On Saturday, eight people died when a fire ignited at a huge prison in Tehran that holds political prisoners, and clashes between inmates and prison guards broke out. Demonstrations have continued throughout Iran, including in the northern town of Ardabil where a schoolgirl allegedly died during police beatings. The government says she died of a heart condition.

Saeid Golkar, an authority on Iran’s security services who teaches at the University of Tennessee, at Chattanooga, said using tracking apps and other forms of technological surveillance allows authorities to identify the most active protesters. By sending in plainclothes officers they can deny any responsibility for beating or shooting at protesters, videos of which have circulated on social media.

Prior protests, such as those in 2009 over disputed elections and in 2019 over rising commodity prices, relied more on uniformed officers, such as riot police in black gear, Basij paramilitary in dark green caps and police in light green shirts. The use of technologies was also much less extensive.

 “They have learned a lot” compared with previous waves of protests, Mr. Golkar said. “They are getting more advanced technologies of surveillance.”

One protester in Tehran said he has witnessed the change from sending in uniformed officers to plainclothes officers. “On the first day of the clashes, a significant number of uniformed men, a regular force with a visible hierarchy, were active in arrests and beatings,” he said. But as the protests spread, security men in “nonuniform clothing, even teenage boys, became more abundant,” he said.

On Oct. 2, men in plain clothes installed closed-circuit cameras at Sharif University, which had been occupied by protesters for almost two weeks, according to the Islamic Association of Sharif University Students. The next day, individuals in civilian attire arrived on motorbikes and surrounded the buildings. They used their phones to film students holed up in the campus before attacking them with batons, paintballs and pellets, protesters inside the complex said. “They only had one revealing sign though, they all wore cross-body bags,” said one protester who managed to escape, referring to bags where the strap is worn across the body.

A Tehran resident who watched protests at another university, said he saw men wearing T-shirts and blue jeans ask protesters for their cellphones to check footage. “They looked like any student,” he said.

On Oct. 8, a video posted to social media and verified by Storyful, which is owned by News Corp., the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, showed a crowd of protesters in a northeast Tehran neighborhood running and screaming as a man in a blue shirt brandished a gun.

Tehran’s shadow army has used deadly force. In Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Balochistan, which is home to Iran’s Baloch minority, snipers dressed in local dress—a long shirt over loose trousers—suddenly appeared on rooftops overlooking an open-air prayer area, according to two residents. They initially filmed the crowds then shot at worshipers, the residents said. “I myself noticed some snipers who were shooting from the rooftops” for an hour-and-a-half, said one resident. They “were disguised in Baloch clothing.”

Footage obtained by Iranian Baloch human-rights group HAAL Vash and Amnesty International confirms the men’s account.

Men in Baloch dress also fired from a nearby police station. In total, 96 people died in the protests in Zahedan that day, according to HAAL Vash. Amnesty International said 66 people died.

Some of the covert operatives deployed in Sistan-Balochistan and other remote provinces appear to be foreigners, at times speaking Arabic in a Lebanese dialect, according to the head of HAAL Vash, Shir Amad Shirani, a U.S. official and a Zahedan resident.

In some instances, the use of plainclothes officers has backfired. The day of the shooting on the Zahedan worshipers, men in unmarked cars carried out a drive-by shooting on the country’s Sunni mosque, who are a minority in the Shia-dominated Islamic Republic. A resident fired back, killing several of the attackers, said Sheikh Maulana Abdul Hamid, a conservative cleric. Hours later, the government revealed the local intelligence chief of the paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and three other members of the security forces had been killed in the skirmish, blaming terrorists.

Two undercover officers also appear to have been killed by friendly fire after blending into crowds of protesters on Sept. 21, according to Amnesty International.

To monitor demonstrations at a distance, Iran has also started using its thriving drones industry against its own population, according to state media, Zahedan residents and HAAL Vash. In Zahedan, two residents said they saw drones flying overhead for three days, starting on the day of the massacre.

Mahshid, the Shiraz student, said the violent use of covert techniques allows government forces to crack down with impunity.

“They do and act as they wish.” She said she has given up protests for now. “I was so shocked that I couldn’t call or talk to anyone and I couldn’t stop crying.”