Iran Executes At Least 23 Prisoners in Two Days

Latest Developments

• Executions Surge: Iran executed at least 23 people over the course of two days, the Norway-based nonprofit Iran Human Rights (IHR) reported on November 7. The clerical regime killed at least six of them, including an Afghan national, for drug-related offenses. Tehran executed at least 166 people in October, “the highest number of executions recorded in a single month since Iran Human Rights began documenting executions in 2007,” IHR said.

• UN Expert Condemns Executions: Mai Sato, who became the UN’s special rapporteur for human rights in Iran in August, denounced Iran’s killing spree in a report presented to the UN General Assembly on November 1. The special rapporteur “expresses serious concern at the alarming increase in the number of executions,” she wrote. “In August 2024 alone, at least 93 individuals were executed with only a fraction officially reported by the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

• Iran’s President Fails to Reform Judiciary: Despite Western hopes that Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, would moderate the regime, executions have increased on his watch, indicating continuity in Iranian policy. “We are not going to write a new program and implement a new policy,” Pezeshkian said in June. Iran experienced a record number of execution under the leadership of his predecessor, Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash in May.

FDD Expert Response

“The uptick in executions in Iran — most recently with Arvin Ghahremani, an Iranian Jew — is alarming. This is a regime that escalates not only against the United States and Israel, but against its own people.” — Richard Goldberg, Senior Advisor

“The Islamic Republic’s surge of executions reflects its continuing fear of dissent within Iran. The United States should exploit this fear by reimposing maximum pressure on the clerical regime. The incoming Trump administration should make clear that it seeks nothing less than a new government in Tehran.” — Tzvi Kahn, Research Fellow and Senior Editor