The Iranian regime executed more than 1,600 people last year — marking a three decade high not seen since the end of the Islamic Republic’s war against Iraq in 1989.
The shocking figures were included in a joint report released by the nonprofit Iran Human Rights and Together Against the Death Penalty, which estimated that in 2025 at least four people were put to death each day in Iran.
In total, at least 1,639 were executed in Iran last year, the highest reported number since the post-war bloodbath in 1989, where an estimated 1,700 political prisoners were executed, according to the report.
It’s not clear how many of the executions were done publicly.
Most of last year’s prisoners were hanged for drug-related offenses or murder at ostensibly higher rates compared to 2024. Drug-related convictions resulting in death saw a 58% increase, while murder convictions — which almost always leads to execution — jumped a staggering 79%, according to the report.
At least 57 others, including two protesters, were given the death penalty for intangible charges like “waging war against God” and “corruption on Earth,” according to the report.
At least 48 women were also killed, setting another 20-year record, according to the report.
A bulk of the death sentences were handed down by the Revolutionary Courts “after grossly unfair trials and without due process,” the report said.
The nonprofits noted that those in marginalized groups, including ethnic and religious minorities, were “disproportionately represented among those executed.”
The report does not account for the slew of executions that have been ordered since January’s nationwide revolt and the start of the war with Israel and the US.
State media has already confirmed at least 14 executions by the brutal regime this year, though the Norwegian-based Hengaw Organization for Human Rights reported evidence of as many as 160 hangings since January.
Seven of the known hangings linked to protest activity took place after Operation Epic Fury launched in late February. Six other victims were convicted of membership with the exiled opposition group Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), and one was accused of spying for Israel, the report said.
Separately, upwards of 7,000 protestors were slaughtered in the streets during the height of the winter revolution, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, though thousands more are still under investigation
Just last week, Iran’s hardline chief justice demanded all death penalty cases of “agents and affiliates of the enemy” — which includes protesters — be expedited.
