Australian Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who was held hostage in Iran for more than 800 days on trumped-up espionage charges, revealed she was "implicitly threatened" in 2025 by a supporter of the regime.
It was difficult to tell if the person was linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or another arm of the Iranian regime, the academic told parliament's security and intelligence committee on Thursday.
"But I think the overall kind of Zeitgeist ... is that this is increasing in Australia, and people are feeling more and more fearful for their safety," she told a hearing into the listing of the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation.
The listing of the guard has been broadly welcomed by community groups who have given evidence to the committee, which is routinely told personal examples of people who feared for the safety of their families in Iran.
Parisa Glass told the committee she had been in Australia for almost four decades and was too scared to speak out against the regime for the first 20 years.
Symbols and flags of the regime at protests and in the community had been intimidating and resulted in people self-censoring for fear of their safety and the safety of their families back in Iran, she said.
"They've been very visible to people who know who they are," she said.
Anti-regime protesters had been harassed and intimidated during recent marches in Sydney, and his wife's ribs were broken in 2024 during another protest, Association to Defend Freedom and Human Rights in Iran president Mohammad Sadeghpour said.
The Albanese government took the unprecedented step of expelling ambassador Ahmad Sadeghi after intelligence agencies traced a spate of anti-Semitic attacks in Australia back to the Revolutionary Guard through criminal intermediaries.
It then enacted laws to allow for the guard corps to be listed as a terrorist organisation.
Dr Moore-Gilbert said the expulsion had little impact on the ground as the guard corps and Iran's foreign ministry often acted as separate entities.
"The peaks and troughs of intimidation by regime forces in Australia more mirror events inside Iran rather than events in Australia," she said.
Iranian-Australian and independent Ryde councillor Tina Kordrostami told the hearing people linked to the regime had become more emboldened at public events such as protests.
"Their tentacles are everywhere ... there's a lot of surveillance happening within the community," she said.
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