Iran is facing mounting international scrutiny after an extraordinary surge in executions in 2025, with United Nations experts and local activists describing the situation as a grave violation of human rights that demands urgent global action. The scale and pace of these executions—more than 1,000 people put to death in less than nine months—has shocked observers worldwide and triggered widespread protests both inside and outside the country.
According to a joint statement released by UN human rights experts on September 29 and 30, 2025, Iran has executed at least 1,000 individuals since January 1. The experts, including Mai Sato, Richard Bennett, Morris Tidball-Binz, Nicolas Levrat, and Alice Jill Edwards, warned, "The sheer scale of executions in Iran is staggering and represents a grave violation of the right to life." In recent weeks, the country has averaged more than nine hangings per day—an "industrial scale" of killing that, the UN said, "defies all accepted standards of human rights protection."
Most of those executed were convicted of drug-related offenses and murder, but the list also includes people charged with security offenses and rape. The UN experts noted that at least 499 executions were for drug crimes alone, a number that dwarfs the 24 to 30 such executions recorded annually in the years between 2018 and 2020. The experts stressed that international law restricts the death penalty to the "most serious crimes," typically defined as intentional murder, and that "drug offenses do not meet this threshold."
Among those executed were at least 58 Afghans—57 men and one woman—highlighting the vulnerability of marginalized communities within Iran. The UN experts pointed out that these executions disproportionately affect ethnic minorities and the economically disadvantaged, whose families often lose their homes and farmland after a relative is executed. Trials are typically held in Revolutionary Courts behind closed doors, with little transparency or adherence to fair trial standards, further compounding the injustice.
The crackdown has also extended to those accused of espionage. In 2025 alone, Iran executed 10 people on espionage charges, including eight after June 13, following a spike in regional tensions linked to Israel’s latest military escalation. The recent passage of a new espionage bill in Tehran has broadened the definition of spying to include media-related activity—such as contact with foreign or diaspora outlets—putting journalists and activists at heightened risk. As the UN experts observed, this legislative change "poses a severe threat to journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens engaged in information sharing."
Inside Iran, the response to this wave of executions has been equally dramatic. On September 30, 2025, prisoners in 52 prisons across the country launched a coordinated hunger strike as part of the "No to Execution Tuesdays" campaign, now in its 88th week. The campaign’s statement, issued in remembrance of Somayeh Rashidi—a political prisoner who died after being denied medical care—declared, "The execution of 46 people in the past week and 190 executions in the month of Shahrivar—unprecedented in the past 35 years—present a terrifying picture of the ruthless violation of human rights."
Somayeh Rashidi’s death has become emblematic of what activists call the policy of "slow execution" in Iran’s prisons, where sick inmates are routinely denied basic medical care. The campaign expressed condolences to Rashidi’s family and used her case to highlight the dire conditions faced by prisoners across the country. "Her unjust death is part of the policy of ‘slow execution’ of prisoners and a bitter warning about the conditions of sick inmates in the country’s prisons—prisoners who have been deprived of the most basic human rights," the statement read.
The week leading up to September 30 saw a string of executions and death sentences that underscored the campaigners’ concerns. Bahman Choubi Asl was executed on espionage charges on September 29 after what activists described as an ambiguous judicial process. Meanwhile, death sentences were issued for political prisoners Hamed Validi and Nima Shahi, and the Supreme Court confirmed the death sentence for Peyman Farahavar. The campaign called these rulings "blatant violations of human rights and tools of oppression that must be stopped immediately."
The statistics are grim. In the month of Shahrivar alone (August 23 to September 22, 2025), 190 executions took place—an unprecedented figure in the last 35 years. There have been 871 executions in the first six months of the Iranian year 1404 (March 21 to September 21, 2025), according to the campaign. These numbers, activists say, paint a "horrific picture of the merciless violation of human rights" and have galvanized opposition to the death penalty both inside Iran and abroad.
UN Special Rapporteur Mai Sato has repeatedly drawn international attention to the widespread violations of prisoners’ rights in Iran. The UN experts’ joint statement urged Tehran to immediately establish a moratorium on all executions, release official data on death sentences, ensure fair trial standards, and work toward the abolition of the death penalty. They also emphasized that Iran’s parliament has a "critical opportunity" to reverse this trend, with further amendments to the 2017 drug law currently under review.
The experts did not mince words about the need for international action. "The international community cannot remain silent in the face of such systematic violations of the right to life," they declared. "States must take concrete diplomatic action to pressure Iran to halt this execution spree."
For their part, the activists behind "No to Execution Tuesdays" are calling on all opponents of the death penalty to "raise their voices against these inhuman rulings." Their message is one of solidarity and hope: "Every act of protest against a death sentence is a step toward halting this cruel process." They insist that unity and international support are essential to ending what they describe as a machinery of death.
As the world watches, the crisis in Iran’s prisons has become a test of both Iranian society’s resilience and the international community’s resolve. The coming months will show whether global pressure and domestic activism can turn the tide against the country’s unprecedented execution spree—or whether the machinery will continue unchecked.