I wonder how much cooperation the Islamic Republic can get out of a diaspora consists mostly of people who hate them.
The Iranian government can, apparently, place quite a lot of pressure upon their nationals living aboard. For one, Iranian intelligence agencies are capable of offering benefits to the domestic families of expatriates, say "you help us out with this, we'll give your dad a cushy government job," or similar. Even if such carrots fail, the same agencies are equally capable of coercing cooperation from their nationals through threats against relations still within the country.
Then there's political pressure as well. The Iranian government can offer considerations in terms of visa allowances to its nationals or similarly threaten to revoke already existing visas.
And, of course, there's also economic levers to be moved, such as freezing assets or offering, I don't know, a reduced tariff to an import-export business. Bribing can also be effective.
Plus, there's a lot of Iranians living aboard. Making a broad statement about how Iranian expatriates feel in general is pretty flawed; you'll always be able to find someone who is happy to work with the Iranian government.
What's more, I've heard that a lot of requests that these intelligence offices place with Iranian expatriates are seemingly innocuous. A person might be asked to snap a few photos of people protesting outside the Persian embassy or do something similar. Not every bit of spycraft need be overt, even to the operatives.
Such requests don't necessarily need to appear from an intelligence agency either; an intelligence officer could pose as a representative from some economic agency, a business, an NGO, or any other organization or even a friend.
According to what I've heard, the Iranian intelligence agencies view EVERY Iranian living aboard as a potential agent. Obviously, this isn't a completely viable notion, but the view point is there. The idea that their nation has millions of sleeper agents aboard is a very powerful one.
So that's how I've heard the Iranian intelligence agencies view their expatriates, but that's not the limit to the intelligence resources of Iran. There's also organizations like Hamas with very strong ties to Iran that have a LOT of supporters, many of whom support the Palestinian cause while also skeptical of Iran. Iran can use these organizations as proxies to fulfill their own national desires. So it's not just Iranian nationals who can be manipulated, but also Palestinians and Palestinian supports.
