TEHRAN — Yalda Moaiery received 15 years in prison this month for photographs. The charge was not stealing state secrets or organizing against the government. It was for providing images to organizations the Iranian state has designated as American or Israeli-linked. On Sunday, the parliament in Tehran voted to ensure that what happened to her would have an explicit statutory basis the next time.
The Majlis approved a bill criminalizing contact with media outlets deemed hostile to the Islamic Republic, specifically American and Israeli press and any organization financed by either country. The legislation, which now heads to the Guardian Council for constitutional review, sets prison terms of six months to two years for journalists who give interviews to such outlets, and reaches upward to 30 years for anyone found to have channeled policy proposals to foreign intelligence services. All such cases would be tried before Revolutionary Courts, whose proceedings are largely shielded from public view.
The vote formalizes restrictions that Iran’s security apparatus has been enforcing through the courts for years. The 2025 law on cooperation with hostile states, enacted after the 12-day Iran-Israel conflict last year, gave prosecutors their first statutory foothold for such cases. Iran’s parliament had separately advanced the Iran parliament Hormuz blockade framework under analogous wartime legal pressure in recent weeks. Moaiery’s sentence was the most prominent application of that earlier hostile-states framework to a journalist. Sunday’s bill, if ratified by the Guardian Council, would extend it significantly.
The new legislation draws a tiered structure of prohibited contact. At the top tier, interviews or discussions with American, Israeli, or their-financed media carry criminal penalties of up to two years in prison. Contact with foreign embassies or non-Iranian institutions without written approval from the foreign ministry would draw fines and a deprivation of “social rights,” a category that includes voting, government employment, and participation in civic life. For Iranians found to have proposed policy directions under foreign intelligence guidance, the bill sets a maximum of 30 years.
Iran’s Shargh newspaper, which has been periodically suspended for coverage the government found inconvenient, confirmed the parliamentary vote. NBC News first reported the bill’s details in English. The Times of Israel also covered the measure, citing Reuters reporting from Tehran.
For contact with foreign media outside the hostile-state designation, the bill creates a notification requirement rather than an outright ban. Journalists speaking with outlets not on the hostile list would need to notify Iran’s intelligence ministry in advance of interviews. Scientific cooperation would similarly be limited to an approved list of foreign institutions, and sharing information with foreigners without ministry clearance would face restrictions across professional categories.
The Guardian Council, a body of 12 jurists with authority to reject legislation that conflicts with Islamic law or the Iranian constitution, must review the measure before it takes effect. The council has previously modified or blocked legislation on economic reform and electoral matters. But the parliament that passed Sunday’s bill reflects the same security-oriented majority that shaped the 2025 hostile-states law, and any council objections are more likely to be procedural than substantive. No timeline for the review has been announced.
What the bill codifies is already operating in practice. Iran’s Revolutionary Courts have sentenced journalists, academics, and civil society figures under the 2025 law for activity that previously carried no explicit statutory weight. The Iran sanctions pressure that accompanied the Hormuz standoff has intensified scrutiny of Iranians maintaining foreign contacts. Sunday’s legislation makes the legal basis for that activity more durable, regardless of what the Guardian Council decides about specific provisions.
The bill’s reach extends beyond working journalists. Any Iranian citizen who contacts a foreign institution without ministry approval would face civil-rights penalties, creating a documentation trail around foreign contact that functions as deterrence even for those never formally charged. That expansion into civilian life marks the sharpest departure from how Iran has previously managed foreign contacts. The 2025 law targeted those actively cooperating with hostile states. Sunday’s bill criminalizes the failure to notify alone.
Moaiery’s case gives the bill’s probable application a human outline. A photojournalist whose work appeared in American-linked publications, she received 15 years under a law that had been on the books for less than a year at the time of her sentencing. Under the new bill, a journalist whose interview appears in a Voice of America segment or an Israeli newspaper would have violated a specific criminal statute, not merely a broad national security provision, and would face that fact from the moment the bill clears its final review.
Tehran’s press environment was among the world’s most restrictive before this legislation. The Iran-US nuclear talks that remain stalled since last year’s ceasefire have done little to ease the security environment that has driven a surge in journalist prosecutions. Whether any provisions emerge modified during the Guardian Council’s review, or whether any legislators voted against the measure, is what Sunday’s reporting did not disclose.
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