Freedom House by Turkish authorities. They now face the death penalty.258 The regime has also continued to use Interpol to harass exiles, even though the clear lack of judicial independence in the country should limit the credibility of its notices. Mehdi Khosravi, a political refugee in the United Kingdom, was arrested in Italy in 2016 and held for a week based on an Iranian “red notice” with Interpol; he had previously traveled elsewhere in the European Union without difficulty.259 “Everyday” tactics: Threats, spyware, coercion by proxy, and mobility controls The Iranian state’s transnational repression reaches far beyond those who have been kidnapped, killed, or detained, exerting other forms of pressure on anyone involved in opposition politics or independent journalism. The regime is notable for the broad spectrum of tactics that it employs, which collectively amount to a constant barrage of harassment, intimidation, and surveillance. Masih Alinejad, an Iranian journalist in New York, was threatened with kidnapping following the rendition of Jamshid Sharmahd, the US-based activist.260 In January 2020, Reporters without Borders (RSF) counted 200 Iranian journalists living overseas who had been threatened, including 50 who had received death threats.261 In February 2020, four UN special rapporteurs issued a statement about the targeting of Iranian journalists abroad, highlighting a written death threat against journalist Rana Rahimpour.262 The pressure sometimes involves smear campaigns that take on surreal dimensions, such as the creation of fake news websites that mirror real ones and falsify statements by journalists in order to discredit them.263 The regime frequently pairs these threats with coercion by proxy, in which family members within Iran are threatened or detained in order to silence exiles. The journalist “It grows a distance between you.” –Iranian exile speaking about being forced to conceal their work from their family Masih Alinejad’s sister was forced to disown her on state television; her brother was arrested and sentenced to eight years in prison.264 Other journalists in RSF’s research described elderly family members being called in for questioning. The authorities often refuse to allow relatives of exiles to travel abroad, creating an implicit threat by guaranteeing state access to exiles’ loved ones. Dissidents also have their passports confiscated and their ability to travel curtailed.265 For some Iranians abroad, the only solution is to keep their family at arm’s length and to obscure their political activities. One Iranian activist described being forced to conceal his work from his family, saying, “It grows a distance between you.”266 Iranian authorities also run highly sophisticated spyware campaigns. According to a paper on the topic from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), “offensive cyber operations have become a core tool of Iranian statecraft,” and attacks on civil society “often foreshadow” attacks on other, harder targets.267 Iranians abroad receive complex spear-phishing attempts, with one example imitating an email from US Citizenship and Immigration Services, and another setting up a fake event for human rights activists in Spain in order to trick them into downloading malicious software.268 An Iranian exile journalist told researcher Marcus Michaelsen, “There is no day when I open my email and I don’t have a phishing email.”269 freedomhouse.org 37