Tehran’s regime detained 130 people on Sunday over January’s protest movement and alleged espionage for Israel and the United States, then on the same day pardoned 139 inmates on death row. The Intelligence Ministry announcement, carried by IRGC-linked Fars News and semi-official Tasnim News, splits the new arrests into 126 people accused of “sabotage operations and rioting” and four accused of working with “terror-affiliated groups” in operations tied to Israel and the US. Also on Sunday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei commuted the death sentences of 139 prisoners.
The two announcements came on the same Sunday. The Intelligence Ministry framed the package as part of “the third imposed war,” the official name Tehran uses for the conflict that began on February 28, 2026, with the US and Israeli strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The Sunday pardons, in turn, came with a published list of excluded offense categories that, by the regime’s own terms, cover the same defendants the new arrests are aimed at.
The 130 New Detentions
Sunday’s announcement from Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, carried in the Iranian state media’s Sunday account of the three operations, lays out three separate operations. The first, in western Iran, arrested a suspect accused of maintaining contact with an operative “linked to the Israeli regime” and trying to extract classified government data. The second dismantled a four-member cell in southeastern Iran that the ministry tied to “terrorist and Takfiri organizations” and intended to commit sabotage; the third swept in 126 people across three provinces, labelled “field operatives and organizers of the enemy’s street disruption network.” The Intelligence Ministry’s statement did not name the four accused of espionage or specify the provinces where the 126 were arrested.
Authorities said they seized weapons, ammunition and electronic equipment during the operations. The 126 street-network arrests, the ministry said, included people with previous criminal records and links to “anti-security activities.” Investigations, the statement added, remain ongoing.
The Intelligence Ministry framed the entire package as part of “the third imposed war,” the official name Iran has given the conflict that began with the February 28, 2026 US and Israeli strikes on Tehran. The Jerusalem Post, citing Fars and Tasnim, broke the 130 figure down into the 126 rioting arrests and 4 espionage-linked detentions, and Iranian opposition groups dispute the regime’s framing of the arrests as they dispute the “rioters” label applied to January’s protesters.
The 139 Death-Row Pardons
Sunday also brought a different kind of headline. Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei approved the commutation of 139 death sentences in a single pardon, per Iran judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir. The authority flows from Article 110 of the Iranian Constitution, which lets the Supreme Leader pardon or reduce sentences on the head of the Judiciary’s recommendation.
For the first time, 139 people sentenced to death and execution were pardoned.
Asghar Jahangir, the Iran judiciary spokesman, told reporters the 139 had no private complainants and no history of security crimes, and that they had met the conditions for clemency by showing improved behavior, remorse and reform in prison. The Iranian Student News Agency, ISNA, listed four categories the pardon does not cover: security-related offenses, espionage, actions against Iran’s internal or external security, and crimes threatening public security. The full list of exclusions in the 139 commutations also includes armed struggle against the state, organized drug trafficking, armed robbery, arms smuggling, abduction, bribery and embezzlement. The 126 arrested in three provinces and the 4 accused of espionage fall inside those categories.
The Overlap in Categories
The 130 Sunday arrests, and the wider 6,500-number crackdown, sit almost entirely inside the categories the death-row pardon excludes. The Intelligence Ministry accused the 126 of “sabotage operations and rioting” tied to the January street protests, and the four accused of espionage, and the Takfiri-linked southeastern cell, each fall into a different named ISNA exclusion. The categories that benefit from Sunday’s clemency and the categories Sunday’s arrests target are nearly the same set.
The ISNA list names four excluded categories: security-related offenses, espionage, actions against internal or external security, and crimes threatening public security. The Intelligence Ministry’s three Sunday operations charge all of them.
| What qualifies for Sunday’s pardon | What Sunday’s 130 arrests cite |
|---|---|
| No private complainants (Jahangir) | “Sabotage operations and rioting” (126 detainees, Intelligence Ministry) |
| No history of security crimes (Jahangir) | Espionage for Israel and the US (4 detainees, Intelligence Ministry) |
| Demonstrated remorse and reform (Jahangir) | “Field operatives” in street disruption network (126 detainees, Tasnim) |
| Improved prison behavior (Jahangir) | Links to “terrorist and Takfiri organizations” (southeastern cell, Tasnim) |
| Sentences commuted on Judiciary recommendation (Article 110) | “Anti-security activities” (Intelligence Ministry, Tasnim) |
The Jerusalem Post reported that many January demonstrators, and demonstrators from the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom uprising, were convicted of national security offenses and would not qualify for the amnesty. The “national security” framing that bars those convictions from clemency is the framing the regime is now applying to the new 126. By the regime’s own published categories, the clemency’s exclusions and the arrests’ charges overlap.
The number of new arrests is smaller than the number of pardons, and the number of categories the new arrests fall into is roughly the number the pardon excludes.
The 6,500-Number Crackdown
Iran’s police chief, Ahmadreza Radan, told state-linked outlets in May that security forces had arrested more than 6,500 people accused of espionage and collaboration with the enemy since the start of the war. Radan, who runs the Law Enforcement Force known as FARAJA, said the process of identifying and arresting people “linked to the enemy” was ongoing. The 6,500 figure, first announced in May, frames the 130 Sunday arrests as the latest instalment of a much larger operation that began with the February 28 strikes, not as an exception. The May statement from Iran’s police chief also reported that none of those arrested in connection with January’s unrest had been released. The statement, carried on the Mehr News wire, was issued as the regime marked the third month of fighting under the same “third imposed war” label.
Radan said police are “still in the process of identifying and arresting these individuals.” The 130 Sunday arrests, by the ministry’s own description, are part of that ongoing sweep, not a separate event.
- 6,500+ espionage arrests since the war’s start, per police chief Ahmadreza Radan
- 130 new detentions announced on Sunday
- 139 death-row commutations on the same day
- 166 armed thieves shot and detained by police during the war period
- 100+ weapons seized in the same operations
Radan also reported wartime operations against armed and professional criminals, with the force pledging to the public that it would not tolerate theft during the conflict. Police shot and detained 166 armed thieves who resisted, Radan said, and killed a number of others in the operations. More than 100 weapons were seized, he added, and the process remains ongoing. Radan closed by thanking the public for cooperating with police throughout the wartime period and promising that police would not leave the field of public security. The figures match the wartime tally the regime has been publishing since the spring.
The January Protests the Pardons Leave Untouched
Iran’s January unrest began on December 28, 2025, with shopkeepers in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar going on strike after a sharp collapse of the rial. The bazaar strike, sparked by the 72 percent food inflation rate by December 2025, turned into a nationwide street movement that, per the United Nations, reached all 31 of Iran’s provinces, with demonstrators calling for the end of the Islamic Republic. By the regime’s own account, the previous Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, said in a January 17 speech that “thousands of people” were killed in the crackdown.
- National security offenses, the published charge in many January convictions, disqualify detainees from the pardon
- “Security-related offenses,” the first ISNA exclusion, cover most protest-related cases
- “Actions against Iran’s internal or external security,” another ISNA exclusion, applies to Takfiri-cell and foreign-link charges
- “Crimes threatening public security,” the fourth ISNA exclusion, is the category the regime uses for the new 126 street-network arrests
- Suspects with any history of “armed struggle” or “organized” activity fall under the ABNA24 list of exclusions
The official Supreme Council of National Security put the January death toll at 3,117 on January 21, 2026. The UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, Mai Sato, said in a media interview on January 16 that “at least 5,000 people had been killed” and that the figure might be as high as 20,000. The human rights documentation of the January crackdown indicated that tens of thousands of people, including children, had been arbitrarily detained since the protests began. The clemency that spared 139 death-row inmates explicitly excludes the categories the regime is arresting, including the demonstrators whose pardons international human rights groups have called for. The published pardon and the published arrests run on the same day, and the categories one includes and the other excludes are nearly the same list.
