Pick To Run Iran’s Judiciary Shows Repression Will Live on Long After Ali Khamenei’s Death

If Iranians were hoping for a softening of the Islamic Republic’s iron rule, new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has wasted no time in disillusioning them. He has appointed Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei to another term as head of the country’s judiciary. First appointed by Ali Khamenei in 2021, Ejei now begins another five-year term running one of the regime’s key instruments of repression.

But with the memorandum of understanding (MOU) intended to stop the war between the United States and Iran teetering, President Donald Trump has another opportunity to degrade the regime’s judicial repression apparatus through sanctions and strikes against its physical infrastructure.

Ejei’s Path to Chief Justice Made Him the Regime’s Ideal Enforcer

The Treasury Department sanctioned Ejei under Executive Order 13553 in 2010 for overseeing the torture and forced confessions of protesters, journalists, dissidents, and political figures as minister of intelligence during the post-2009 crackdown. The European Union and the United Kingdom also designated him in the following years for the same violations.

Under Ejei, the judiciary has driven Iran’s execution surge from 333 executions in 2021 to 582 in 2022, 834 in 2023, 975 in 2024, and an estimated 1,639 to 2,159 in 2025. Ejei has been particularly ruthless toward political defendants — expediting their execution verdicts, carrying out public hangings, ordering asset confiscations, and excluding protesters from annual pardons marking the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

This repression is carried out through the Revolutionary Courts, a parallel judicial system separate from Iran’s criminal and civil courts that handles security cases, where judges such as Iman Afshari have already issued at least four death sentences against political defendants in 2026.

Iran’s Judiciary Institutionalizes Repression by Jailing Lawyers and Overseeing Brutal Prisons

Political detainees often find that the lawyers representing them become defendants themselves. Following the 2022 protests, authorities detained more than 60 lawyers. Within a week in early 2025, authorities summoned 20 attorneys in the city of Yazd and 18 in Mashhad before indicting 16 of them. During the first two months of 2026 alone, security forces arrested at least 16 lawyers across Iran.

The same judiciary that sentences political prisoners also oversees the prisons where the abuse continues. Authorities subject those held on security charges to torture, forced confessions, prolonged solitary confinement, denial of medical care, unsanitary conditions, and placement in overcrowded facilities alongside violent offenders. Many are then executed following sham trials. Female political prisoners face sexual violence by prison officials and inadequate access to basic hygiene products, while visiting female relatives are subjected to forced strip searches and other humiliating treatment.

Iran’s 2026 Arrests and Executions Surge

Following the January 2026 massacre of around 40,000 unarmed protesters, the regime reportedly arrested another 27,000 Iranians. Authorities have detained a further 6,000 since the start of the conflict with the United States on February 28. Iran’s 2026 execution toll had reportedly reached 612 by April, including more than 55 executed on political charges, with more than 100 executions in June alone.

Washington Should Target Iran’s Legal Repression Apparatus

Article 9 of the MOU states that the United States “will not impose any new sanctions,” while Article 2 says the two sides agree “to refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs,” effectively sidelining U.S. support for Iran’s democratic movement while limiting sanctions against Iran’s human rights violators. But Tehran’s provocations give the administration an opportunity to reevaluate these policies.

In addition to responding to the regime’s aggression by striking military assets, the United States should focus on the apparatus of legal repression. The people of Iran are the only existential threat to the regime. As in early stages of the war, strikes should again target the Revolutionary Courts that try political prisoners.

The other step is imposing sanctions on judges who hand down death sentences, such as Iman Afshari, who is already designated by the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

Janatan Sayeh is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he focuses on Iranian domestic affairs and the Islamic Republic’s regional malign influence. For more analysis from the author and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow Janatan on X @JanatanSayeh. Follow FDD on X @FDD and @FDD_Iran. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.