Iran’s parliament is trying to turn fears of foreign infiltration into law. But as lawmakers work through the legislation, the debate is exposing an increasingly awkward question for the Islamic republic: How far should the state go in policing Iranians’ contact with the outside world?
At the center of that debate is Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who, at least publicly, is doing a balancing act. He has defended the need for tougher measures against foreign infiltration while warning that the current draft of the legislation goes too far.
“No patriot opposes countering foreign infiltration,” Qalibaf said during a recent parliamentary session. But, he added, lawmakers needed to ensure that people’s “rights, their lives, and their trade” were not affected.
He said security agencies may need to be able to vet Iranians’ contacts with foreigners but that they cannot demand permission at every stage.
“They say they want to be certain, to have permission sought from them at every stage,” the conservative speaker said. “That’s not possible, because then we’d have to lock the country down.”
That balancing act gets to the heart of a bill that was conceived as a wartime response to genuine security failures. The two recent wars exposed how deeply Israeli intelligence had penetrated Iran and prompted calls for tougher measures to identify and prevent foreign influence.
But what began as a security response has evolved into a much broader fight over the boundaries of the Islamic republic’s security state.
The bill, formally called the Plan To Counter The Infiltration Of Intelligence Services And Foreign Governments Or Institutions but commonly referred to as the “infiltration bill,” would require Iranians to obtain prior approval from the Intelligence Ministry and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Intelligence Organization before engaging in a sweeping range of activities.
Those activities include publishing books or articles, academic cooperation, interviews with foreign media deemed “hostile,” and participation in scientific conferences or arts festivals. The bill also includes provisions criminalizing interviews, discussions, and other communication with media deemed hostile, as well as sending photographs, videos, audio, or other material to foreign media, with violations punishable by prison terms of up to two years.
Parliament approved the bill’s general framework in mid-August by a lopsided 183-4 vote. The draft has since expanded from 19 to 33 articles as it has moved through the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee.
Only its first two articles have so far cleared the floor, while the remaining provisions remain subject to revision. Even if parliament approves them, the bill will still require Guardian Council approval before it can become law.
The political resistance, however, has already begun.
Qalibaf has sent two of the bill’s most consequential provisions — Articles 7 and 8, which deal with the disclosure process and penalties for exceeding the scope of a permit — back to the committee because of ambiguities.
Qalibaf has insisted that parliament must address the security agencies’ concerns, saying their “needs” would be met “within reasonable bounds.” But he has rejected the idea that the Intelligence Ministry and IRGC Intelligence Organization should effectively have the power to approve Iranians’ foreign contacts at every turn.
He has also dismissed suggestions that the bill should be shelved at the government’s request.
When First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref claimed Qalibaf had privately promised to stop the legislation, an MP repeated the allegation on the parliamentary floor. Qalibaf rejected it, stressing that parliament is not “a branch of the government.”
The result is a political fault line that does not fit neatly into Iran’s usual hardliner-versus-reformist divide.
Some lawmakers have been far more openly hostile to the bill. Mohammad Mehdi Shahriari, a member of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, called it “completely at odds with national interests.”
He said it had been drafted too hastily by inexperienced lawmakers rather than the state’s own security establishment and suggested Qalibaf’s presiding board was itself now “strongly opposed” to the legislation.
The government of President Masud Pezeshkian has also publicly opposed the bill.
Hossein Afshin, the vice president for science, technology, and the knowledge-based economy, warned the current draft could isolate Iran’s academic and research community and lead to “scientific stagnation.” He pointed to the risks of an accelerated brain drain and additional obstacles for Iranian scientists working or studying abroad.
Conservative commentator Mohammad Mohajeri, editor of Khabar Online, made much the same point more sarcastically, writing on X that just as the government was trying to persuade Iranians living abroad to return home, parliament was giving elites, scholars, and students fresh reasons to leave.
The controversy has also attracted international criticism.
On September 3, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran called for the bill to be withdrawn, warning it could further restrict fundamental freedoms and isolate Iranians from the international community. UN Special Rapporteur on Iran Mai Sato separately warned that Iranian intelligence agencies should not become “the gatekeepers of Iranian people’s contact with the world.”
For Iran’s political establishment, however, the more immediate problem may be closer to home.
Few in the system appear willing to dispute that foreign infiltration is a genuine security threat. The argument is increasingly over what should follow from that threat and where the state should draw the line.
