The Execution Machine: Iran's Death Penalty as Political Tool

Situation Assessment

Iran executed at least 975 people in 2024, according to Iran Human Rights (IHR), a monitoring organization based in Oslo. That figure exceeded the 834 executions IHR recorded for 2023 and represented a 17 percent increase year-on-year. Amnesty International, using a more conservative methodology, documented at least 853 executions in 2023 alone, the highest by that organization's count since 2015.

Then 2025 broke every record. IHR documented over 1,900 executions by the end of the year. Other monitoring organizations placed the figure above 2,200. By September, the count had already passed 1,000 in less than nine months. Iran's execution rate did not merely continue its upward trend; it roughly doubled.

In the first months of 2026, the machinery has not slowed. IHR recorded at least 141 executions by late February. On March 19, three men were hanged in connection with the January 2026 anti-government protests, the first executions linked to that wave of unrest.

The numbers are not in dispute between the major monitoring bodies. They differ on exact totals because methodology varies, but the direction is unanimous: Iran's execution rate has been climbing since 2021, accelerated sharply after the Woman Life Freedom protests of 2022, and surged to unprecedented levels amid the war.

Iran accounted for 74 percent of all recorded executions worldwide in 2023, excluding China, according to Amnesty International. Within the Middle East and North Africa specifically, Iran's share was 80 percent. Globally, only China is believed to execute more people in absolute terms, but Beijing treats its execution statistics as a state secret. Among countries that permit any independent monitoring, Iran's per-capita execution rate is the highest in the world.

This is a fact ledger. What follows is organized by what the sources support, where the data runs out, and what is being claimed without evidence.

What We Know

The charge sheet is the first indicator of political function.

Drug-related offenses account for over half of all executions in Iran. IHR's 2024 data shows 503 drug-related executions out of 975 total, approximately 52 percent. In 2025, the proportion held near 45 percent as political and security-related executions surged alongside the drug charges. The regime presents these as ordinary criminal justice. The pattern tells a different story. Drug charges concentrate in Sistan-Baluchestan and other minority-populated border provinces, where they function as a tool of social control against marginalized Sunni Baloch communities.

For explicitly political cases, three charges recur. Moharebeh, translated as "enmity against God," carries a mandatory death sentence and has been applied to protesters, journalists, and minority activists. Efsad-e fel-arz, "corruption on earth," serves a similar function with equally vague legal boundaries. Baghi, translated as "rebellion" or "taking up arms against the state," has been leveled against participants in the 2022 protests who, according to documented trial records, were unarmed. In practice, the charge does not require evidence of actual arms use.

As of August 2024, at least 10 men had been executed in direct connection with the Woman Life Freedom protests, according to joint documentation by IHR and Amnesty International. One of those, Reza Rasaei, was secretly executed in Kermanshah Central Prison in August 2024 without prior public announcement. Several of these cases involved defendants who reported being tortured into confessions that were subsequently broadcast on state television before their trials concluded.

The executions connected to the January 2026 protests represent a new phase. IHR verified death sentences against at least 27 protesters before an internet shutdown on February 28 cut monitoring access. Three were hanged on March 19, 2026. How many more sentences have been carried out in the information blackout remains unknown.

The UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran has repeatedly flagged the use of these vaguely worded national security charges as vehicles for suppressing dissent. The charges carry mandatory death sentences under Iran's Islamic Penal Code, leaving judges with no sentencing discretion even in cases where the evidence is contested.

The Ethnic Dimension

Iran's execution apparatus does not operate uniformly across the country. The data reveals a persistent ethnic pattern that monitoring organizations have documented for years.

Baloch prisoners accounted for approximately 20 percent of all executions in 2023, according to IHR and Amnesty International. In 2022, that figure was 30 percent. In 2024, IHR documented 108 Baloch executions, approximately 11 percent of the total. The year-to-year fluctuation is significant, but even the lowest figure represents gross overrepresentation: the Baloch population constitutes an estimated 2 to 6 percent of Iran's total, depending on the source. In 2025, IHR recorded at least 162 Baloch executions.

Kurdish political prisoners face a parallel trajectory. IHR documented 84 Kurdish executions in 2024, representing 9 percent of the total. In 2025, the figure rose to at least 115. Hengaw, a Kurdish human rights organization, has documented dozens of Kurdish political prisoners on death row, many charged with moharebeh or baghi for alleged ties to Kurdish political organizations. The Kurdistan Human Rights Network has reported accelerated sentencing timelines in cases handled by IRGC-linked courts in western Iran.

Arab minorities in Khuzestan province face charges framed around separatism and threats to national security. The Ahwaz Human Rights Organization has documented cases where Arab cultural and political activists received death sentences under efsad-e fel-arz provisions.

The overlap between ethnicity and religious minority status compounds the pattern. Sunni Baloch and Sunni Kurds face a double marker in a state apparatus dominated by Shia clergy. The UN Special Rapporteur has noted this compounding effect in multiple reports, describing it as systemic discrimination rather than isolated incidents.

The Wartime Acceleration

The hypothesis that external conflict might divert regime attention from internal repression has not been supported by the data. The opposite is demonstrably true.

Execution counts in 2024 exceeded 2023 despite Iran's escalating involvement in regional hostilities. Then 2025 shattered the precedent entirely, with the execution rate roughly doubling. IHR's monitoring showed no slowdown during periods of heightened military activity. The Iranian judiciary, through its official news agency Mizan, has signaled no moratorium, no pause, and no policy shift connected to the conflict.

This pattern has a historical precedent within Iran itself. During the Iran-Iraq War of 1980 to 1988, the regime conducted one of the largest mass executions of political prisoners in modern history. In the summer of 1988, based on a fatwa issued by Supreme Leader Khomeini, thousands of political prisoners were executed over a period of weeks. Estimates vary significantly: Amnesty International cited approximately 4,500 to 5,000 deaths, Human Rights Watch used a range of 2,800 to 5,000, while opposition groups claim figures of 30,000 or higher that cannot be independently verified. The prisoners had already been sentenced and were serving their terms. The war provided the security rationale and the public distraction.

The current acceleration is approaching a comparable scale in annualized terms. The structural logic is consistent. War creates a national security framing that makes judicial scrutiny of individual cases even less likely. It occupies international attention. And it provides a patriotic vocabulary that can be used to delegitimize domestic dissent as treason.

Emergency security provisions in Iranian law allow for expedited judicial processes during periods of declared security threat. The UN has noted that these provisions have been invoked with increasing frequency since hostilities intensified. The February 2026 internet shutdown, imposed days before executions of protesters, suggests the regime is actively managing information flow around politically sensitive executions.

How Trials Work

The machinery between arrest and execution in a political case follows a documented pattern.

Revolutionary Courts, established after the 1979 revolution, handle all cases classified as national security threats. Judges are appointed by the head of the judiciary, who is in turn appointed by the Supreme Leader. There is no jury. Defense lawyers are routinely denied access to their clients during the interrogation phase, which can last weeks or months in Ministry of Intelligence or IRGC detention facilities.

Amnesty International has documented multiple cases where defendants met their court-appointed lawyers for the first time at their trial. Some trials for capital charges have lasted under an hour, according to IHR's trial monitoring reports.

Forced confessions represent a well-documented component of this system. Defendants are coerced into recording video confessions that air on state television, sometimes before charges have been formally filed. The Committee to Protect Journalists and BBC Persian have investigated this practice extensively, identifying a production apparatus within state media specifically dedicated to confession broadcasts.

Appeals in political cases are frequently pro forma. The Supreme Court review process, which is mandatory for death sentences, has been documented approving sentences within days in cases where defendants reported due process violations throughout their proceedings. Execution is sometimes carried out before families are notified, with bodies returned bearing marks consistent with the method of execution but with no independent medical examination permitted.

The case of Reza Rasaei, executed secretly in August 2024 without family notification, illustrates the system's capacity to operate entirely outside public view when it chooses to do so.

What We Don't Know

The documented figures are minimums. Every major monitoring organization states this explicitly.

IHR's methodology relies on cross-referencing state media reports, family contacts, local sources, and leaked judicial documents. When none of these channels report an execution, it does not appear in the count. IHR has acknowledged that executions in some provinces receive no media coverage of any kind, making them invisible to external monitoring. In 2024, less than 10 percent of executions were officially announced by Iranian authorities, down from an average of 33 percent in 2018 to 2020.

The number of people currently on death row in Iran is not publicly disclosed. The UN Special Rapporteur has requested this information repeatedly and been denied. Estimates range widely, and none can be independently verified. Following the January 2026 protests, IHR verified death sentences against at least 27 protesters before communications were severed. The actual number of sentences issued is unknown.

Deaths in custody present an additional blind spot. Human Rights Watch has documented cases where prisoners died under circumstances suggesting extrajudicial killing, but where official causes of death were listed as suicide or medical events. Without independent forensic access, these cases remain in a gray zone between documented executions and suspected but unverifiable killings.

The wartime period has further complicated monitoring. Communication disruptions, restricted journalist access, and the general fog of conflict have degraded the information channels that monitoring organizations depend on. IHR has noted that the true execution rate during the current hostilities may be significantly higher than reported figures suggest, a concern amplified by the declining official disclosure rate.

What's Being Falsely Claimed

Both the Iranian state and some opposition voices make claims that do not hold up against the documented record.

The regime maintains that the vast majority of executions target drug traffickers and violent criminals, not political prisoners. This is partially accurate on raw numbers. Drug offenses do account for the largest single category of charges, over half in most recent years. But this framing omits three facts: drug charges disproportionately target ethnic minorities in a pattern that monitoring organizations describe as discriminatory; the number of executions under explicitly political charges has surged since 2022; and the regime's own definition of "criminal" encompasses nonviolent protest, journalism, and minority rights advocacy under national security statutes.

The regime also asserts that its judiciary operates independently. This claim is contradicted by the structural reality that the judiciary head is appointed by the Supreme Leader, that Revolutionary Court judges serve at executive discretion, and that the UN Special Rapporteur has documented specific instances of executive interference in judicial proceedings.

On the opposition side, some sources circulate execution figures significantly higher than those documented by IHR, Amnesty, or the Boroumand Center. These higher figures may reflect actual executions that evade monitoring, but they cannot be independently verified. The documented minimum is severe enough that inflating the numbers is unnecessary and, from an evidentiary standpoint, counterproductive. Unverifiable claims give the regime grounds to dismiss all criticism as propaganda.

One specific claim that has circulated on social media warrants direct address: that Iran declared a formal execution moratorium during the early phase of hostilities. No credible monitoring organization has confirmed this. IHR's continuous monitoring recorded no pause in executions during any phase of the conflict.

Global Comparison

Context requires comparison, though comparison risks false equivalence.

China almost certainly executes more people than Iran in absolute terms, but China classifies its execution data as a state secret. Amnesty International stopped publishing estimates for China in 2009, noting only that the figure is believed to be in the thousands annually. Iran is therefore the country with the highest documented execution count that allows any external monitoring, however incomplete.

Saudi Arabia executed 172 people in 2023, according to Amnesty International. Iran's documented total that year was roughly five times higher. By 2025, the gap widened further as Iran's count surged past 1,900 while Saudi Arabia's trajectory remained comparatively stable. Both countries apply the death penalty for drug offenses and use national security charges against dissidents, but Iran's volume, the ethnic targeting pattern, and the wartime acceleration distinguish its apparatus.

The global trajectory runs counter to Iran's direction. More than two-thirds of the world's countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice, according to Amnesty International. As of end 2024, 145 countries had abolished capital punishment in law or practice. Iran is moving against this trend with increasing velocity.

International Response

International mechanisms exist. They have not altered the trajectory.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran has issued reports documenting execution patterns, calling for moratoriums, and recommending targeted sanctions against judiciary officials. Iran has denied the Special Rapporteur entry to the country since 2005.

The UN General Assembly passes a resolution on Iran's human rights situation annually, with consistent majority support. These resolutions are non-binding. Iran's representative votes against and describes them as politically motivated interference in domestic affairs.

The EU maintains a human rights sanctions framework, but its Iran-related designations have historically targeted actors involved in the nuclear program and military exports rather than judiciary officials responsible for execution orders. Some individual judges and prosecutors have been sanctioned, but the scope remains limited relative to the apparatus.

The UN Human Rights Council established a Fact-Finding Mission following the 2022 protests. Iran rejected the mission's mandate, refused cooperation, and denied investigators access to the country. The mission's reports, based on interviews with witnesses and survivors outside Iran, have documented patterns consistent with crimes against humanity, but no enforcement mechanism exists to act on these findings.

The structural gap is straightforward: the international community possesses the documentation, the legal frameworks, and the institutional platforms. What it lacks is the enforcement capacity and the political will to translate resolutions into consequences that the Iranian judiciary would have reason to weigh.

Assessment

The trajectory is not ambiguous. Iran executed roughly 834 people in 2023, at least 975 in 2024, and over 1,900 in 2025. In the first months of 2026, executions of protesters from the January unrest have begun, with at least 27 death sentences verified before an internet shutdown cut monitoring access.

No structural factor currently visible in the Iranian political or judicial system points toward a reversal. The judiciary is led by appointees of the Supreme Leader who have publicly endorsed the use of capital punishment as a deterrent. The war provides ongoing security justification. International pressure has produced documentation, not deterrence.

The documented record is sufficient for assessment without speculation. Iran operates an execution apparatus that is accelerating, ethnically discriminatory, procedurally deficient by international legal standards, and functionally integrated with the state's broader machinery of political repression. These are not contested characterizations. They are the conclusions of every major monitoring body with access to the data.

Where the data runs out, intellectual honesty requires silence rather than extrapolation. The true numbers may be higher. The ethnic patterns may be sharper. The wartime acceleration may be steeper. But what is documented is already enough to constitute the assessment: the machine is running, and it is running faster than at any point in the past three decades.