Iran hangs two more political prisoners as execution wave widens

In a joint statement on Saturday, the organizations Defenders of Children's Rights in Iran and the Center for Justice for Children said they were deeply concerned that authorities could soon execute 18-year-old Shervin Bagherian from Isfahan.

The groups said Bagherian's case demonstrated that death sentences against children and teenagers, issued under what they described as flawed criminal procedures, had become a continuing practice in the Islamic Republic.

Their warning came days after authorities executed another defendant in the same case, 20-year-old Arvin Kheirkhah, at dawn on Saturday, raising fears that Bagherian and other co-defendants could also face imminent execution.

The organizations said Iran had already executed two teenagers, Amir Norollahi and Amirhossein Hatami, in recent months after they were arrested during the January uprising.

Citing information gathered by human rights organizations, including the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners, the groups said at least 184 teenagers detained during the January protests remained in prison as of July 26.

Fourteen had received death sentences, they said, with two already executed and another 12 still at risk.

The warning comes as Iranian authorities increasingly target young protesters who played a prominent role in both the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom movement and the January uprising, where children and teenagers were among those killed, injured and detained.

Iran has sharply increased executions since the January protests, with rights groups saying authorities have used the death penalty more aggressively against protesters, political opponents and people accused of security-related offenses.

Activists say the escalation accelerated further during and after the recent conflict with Israel, as the government widened its crackdown under the cover of wartime security measures.

The statement accused Iran of violating its obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits capital punishment for crimes committed by people under the age of 18, regardless of the charges against them.

The groups also criticized authorities' use of national security charges such as moharebeh ("waging war against God") and efsad fel-arz ("corruption on earth") against minors, arguing that coerced confessions, prolonged interrogations and unfair trials had become the basis for death sentences.

They called on governments, international organizations, journalists and rights defenders to press for an immediate halt to executions of anyone accused of crimes committed before the age of 18.

“We must strive to compel the enemy to honor what it signed,” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on X Sunday, referring to the Iran-US memorandum of understanding signed in June. “This memorandum enhances the security of our country, the region and our allies.”

Trump said on Saturday that he had canceled the attack after Iran and other Middle Eastern countries requested a pause, saying the sides had agreed on the broad “perimeters” of a deal that would include reopening the Strait of Hormuz and ending Iran’s nuclear threat.

The Associated Press, citing a regional official involved in mediation efforts, reported that a proposal announced by Trump over the weekend calls for the US and Iran to resume negotiations and work through the remaining obstacles to a deal.

The proposal would reopen Hormuz and halt attacks across the region, including attacks by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq on Persian Gulf countries and Jordan, the official said. In exchange, Washington would end its naval blockade and allow Tehran to export oil under the tentative ceasefire arrangement.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said negotiations with Oman over the strait were nearing completion.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said the talks were bilateral and aimed at agreeing a mechanism for the strait, adding that they did not concern any other party.

“The understanding with Oman over a new transit route has nothing to do with whether the Strait of Hormuz remains open or closed,” Baghaei said. “The strait was closed because the US reneged on its commitments and imposed a blockade.”

Push for de-escalation

Regional governments continued diplomatic outreach on Sunday. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman urged dialogue and de-escalation in his call with Trump, while the kings of Jordan and Bahrain discussed efforts to restore security and stability in the region.

Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister also urged implementation of the US-Iran memorandum of understanding, including guarantees for freedom of navigation through Hormuz, during separate calls with the Saudi and Jordanian foreign ministers.

Military preparations nevertheless continued. Israel’s Channel 12 reported, citing senior US officials, that CENTCOM had prepared strikes against Iranian energy and infrastructure targets, with Israel expected to participate.

Qatar asked Trump for another 24 hours for negotiations, while Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman warned that military action could trigger wider regional escalation and damage oil facilities in Persian Gulf states, the report said.

Channel 12 said negotiators were close to a proposed Hormuz arrangement that included renewing the ceasefire, opening the strait toll-free for 60 days, establishing new shipping routes and resuming US-Iran negotiations based on the memorandum of understanding.

War clouds linger

But not all Persian Gulf states backed the diplomatic push. The United Arab Emirates had pressed Trump to take more decisive action against Iran, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing senior officials from Persian Gulf states familiar with the discussions.

The officials suggested the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would not compromise until the US escalated, took control of Hormuz and perhaps considered ground operations.

An Iranian diplomat told the newspaper that the IRGC was considering preemptive strikes even if the US did not attack, should diplomacy fail.

The Israeli military remained on high alert despite Trump's decision, assessing that Tehran could still spring surprises, Channel 12 reported.

Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen, who sits on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet, said there was close security and intelligence coordination between Israel and the United States on developments across the region.

"With or without an agreement, and regardless of any external commitments, if Iran attempts to renew its nuclear program or advance its ballistic missile industries, we will be there. We will take action, and we will strike," Cohen added.

Iran’s acting defense minister said Tehran treated every threat from its adversaries as credible and used it to strengthen military readiness and deterrence.

By “overseas media,” Ghalibaf was referring to Persian-language outlets based outside Iran, a term Iranian officials sometimes use to refer to such broadcasters. Iran International was the first outlet to announce Khamenei’s death.

Ghalibaf said officials had initially decided to wait until 8 a.m. the following morning, when they planned to announce his death alongside the formation of a new Leadership Council.

“At 12:30 at night, the television channels abroad announced the martyrdom,” Ghalibaf said, adding that he and Ali Larijani re-established contact around 1 a.m. and decided the original plan could no longer stand.

Officials feared losing control of the streets

Ghalibaf said officials instead decided to announce Khamenei’s death around dawn, while people were eating their pre-dawn Ramadan meal, and immediately call supporters onto the streets.

“We decided that we absolutely had to announce it at dawn, when people were at the suhoor table, and at the same time say: whether you’ve eaten or not, everyone come out into the streets,” he said.

“Otherwise, believe me, the situation in the streets could have taken a completely different turn,” Ghalibaf added.

He described the street as one of four fronts that authorities needed to manage alongside the military, diplomacy and government services. “The military front is one front, diplomacy is one front, services are another, and the street is also a front,” he said.

Street pressure later turned on Ghalibaf

The comments shed new light on the government’s efforts to mobilize supporters immediately after Khamenei’s death. But some of the hardline demonstrators who took to the streets later turned their anger on Ghalibaf and other officials over negotiations with Washington.

The street criticism echoed a revolt among a small but vocal group of ultraconservative lawmakers, who accused Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator in talks with the United States, of crossing leadership red lines and shielding the negotiations from parliamentary scrutiny.

His comments came days after Iran publicly hanged two protesters in the central city of Isfahan, prompting renewed international condemnation and a rare display of public defiance.

He argued that the executions cannot be separated from the mass killing of protesters during January's nationwide uprising.

"There is no doubt that we have a crime against humanity," Akhavan told Eye for Iran.

“What we actually have in Iran are arbitrary executions. These are killings. They are murders,” Akhavan said. "Specifically, the case can be made that this is a crime of extermination, given the large scale of the killings."

Akhavan, who testified before the UN Human Rights Council during its January special session on Iran, said the scale and method of the killings could support the more specific charge of extermination.

The crime against humanity of extermination involves mass or large-scale killing. Unlike genocide, it does not require proof that the perpetrators intended to destroy a protected national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

Public hangings provoke defiance in Isfahan

Iran publicly hanged Amirhossein Safari and Abolfazl Sepahi on July 28 in Isfahan's Alikhani Square after accusing them of involvement in the killing of four police officers during the January 8 unrest.

The two men were among a group sentenced to death in connection with the case. Golmohammad Mohammadi and Erfan Esfandiari were executed in prison on July 19, while eight others reportedly remain under sentence of death.

The judiciary says Safari and Sepahi took part in the killings. Rights groups, however, have raised serious concerns about the proceedings, including restrictions on access to lawyers and case files, the rejection of potentially exculpatory evidence and the use of televised confessions that may have been obtained under coercion.

UN human rights experts called on Iran to halt the executions one day before the hangings, warning that coerced confessions must not be admitted as evidence and that broadcasting them before trial violates the presumption of innocence.

Rather than intimidating the public into silence, the hangings triggered a rare display of defiance.

Hundreds of people gathered near the execution site before dawn. Videos showed crowds booing police and chanting “shame on you” as the call to prayer rang out. Security forces later dispersed them through surrounding streets, with witnesses reporting the use of tear gas, Tasers and warning shots.

An online campaign opposing the death penalty was shared hundreds of thousands of times within a day. At Ghezel Hesar prison near Tehran, an estimated 1,500 death-row prisoners also staged a hunger strike as part of the “No to Executions” campaign.

“A death sentence which is carried out without any due process and on legal grounds that are entirely unacceptable is not really a lawful execution,” he said. “It becomes a form of murder or extrajudicial execution.”

International human rights law permits capital punishment only for the most serious crimes in countries that have not abolished it and only following strict respect for due process.

Akhavan said many of Iran’s death sentences instead rely on vague national-security charges, including moharebeh, or “waging war against God,” as well as forced confessions and trials in courts that cannot be considered independent or impartial.

“What we’re witnessing today in this surge in executions is not an isolated phenomenon,” Akhavan said. “It is inextricably connected with the events of January and it is really a continuation of the same criminal transaction.”

Article 7 of the Rome Statute defines crimes against humanity as certain acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population.

From January’s massacre to extermination

The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran previously concluded that serious violations committed during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising amounted to crimes against humanity.

Its investigation into the January 2026 crackdown is ongoing. Akhavan acknowledged that the mission must complete its own investigation before issuing formal conclusions, but said his legal assessment is clear.

He cited the internet blackout, restrictions on reporting, allegations that hospitals were pressured to record gunshot deaths as natural causes and accounts of bodies being transported in refrigerated trucks and potentially buried in unmarked graves.

He also pointed to statements by senior Iranian officials depicting protesters as combatants, foreign agents or people “waging war against God,” language he said effectively created a licence to kill.

There is also evidence of snipers, heavy machine guns and armour-piercing ammunition being used against unarmed protesters.

“The case can be made that this is a crime of extermination, given the large scale of the killings.”

Executions as a display of control

Iran carried out at least 2,159 executions in 2025, Amnesty International has said, most in drug-related cases.

Since the January uprising, rights groups have documented a sharp increase in politically motivated executions. Amnesty says at least 52 people have been arbitrarily executed this year for alleged offences connected to the protests following torture-tainted and grossly unfair Revolutionary Court proceedings. At least 60 others remain at risk, including three who were children at the time of their alleged offences.

Public political executions remain comparatively rare. The last widely reported case was the 2022 hanging of Majidreza Rahnavard during the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising.

Akhavan said the return of cranes as public gallows was therefore particularly shocking and appeared designed to project strength and frighten a population that continues to challenge the state.

“Under cover of war, they are escalating executions in order to create fear,” he said.

“The biggest threat to the Islamic Republic is not the US and Israeli military operations, as damaging and unlawful as they may be. It is the Iranian people first and foremost.”

The authorities have now expanded their pressure beyond those facing execution. Tehran’s prosecutor has opened cases against an unspecified number of people accused of opposing executions or supporting defendants linked to the January uprising and the recent war.

More than 200 bodies passed through Shohadaye Ashayer Hospital during the crackdown, according to an Iran International investigation based on more than two dozen sources, including medical personnel, eyewitnesses and people close to victims' families, as well as hospital records and videos obtained from inside the facility.

One eyewitness said at least 70 critically wounded protesters who could have been saved were transferred to the morgue instead of receiving further treatment.

Others were removed from treatment wards by security personnel before later reappearing in the morgue with fresh gunshot wounds to the upper body or what staff described as "finishing shots."

Iran International has so far verified the identities of 23 people killed in the city.

Hospital under siege

According to a member of the hospital's medical staff, Shohadaye Ashayer became the only hospital authorized to treat people wounded during the crackdown.

Armed security forces surrounded the hospital while police, intelligence officers and other security personnel operated inside the building. Officers stood over doctors and nurses as they treated patients, confiscated staff mobile phones and prevented them from contacting their families.

Hospital staff were effectively confined inside the facility for three days, the medical worker said. Several employees were arrested, while security forces moved through treatment wards identifying wounded protesters for detention.

Videos obtained by Iran International show dozens of bloodied bodies, many naked or partially unclothed, lying uncovered across the morgue floor and an adjoining room.

Some still had oxygen tubes in their mouths and electrocardiogram pads attached, suggesting they had been receiving treatment before being moved.

Several appeared to have been shot directly in the forehead, while others were covered with pellet wounds. Some had suffered catastrophic head injuries, with parts of their skulls missing. Several bodies also showed severe injuries to the genital area.

Some remained handcuffed despite bearing fatal gunshot wounds.

From operating room to morgue

Eyewitnesses described the hospital as overwhelmed, with blood covering corridors and bodies filling both the courtyard and the morgue. Multiple witnesses estimated that between 200 and 250 bodies passed through the hospital during the crackdown.

A student at Khorramabad University of Medical Sciences who witnessed patients arriving at the hospital described a similar pattern.

According to the student, wounded protesters repeatedly arrived alive on January 8 and 9, only for their deaths to be announced around 20 minutes after they had been taken into operating rooms. The student said the pattern was repeated across numerous patients.

The student also recalled a protester admitted on January 22 with extensive pellet wounds and a severe infection. Before treatment could be completed, security forces removed the patient from the hospital despite objections from the attending physician and took them to an unknown location.

Crackdown beyond the hospital

Witnesses said protests spread across much of Khorramabad on January 8 and 9, drawing tens of thousands of people into the streets.

They described security forces firing military-grade weapons, sniper rifles, shotguns and pellet guns at demonstrators, with several witnesses saying protesters were deliberately shot in the head and chest.

One witness said they personally saw at least five people killed after being struck from behind by bursts of gunfire.

Witnesses said security forces prevented many wounded protesters from reaching medical care, leaving some to bleed to death in the streets. Those who managed to reach Shohadaye Ashayer Hospital remained at risk of arrest, abduction or forced removal.

Witnesses also described an internet shutdown, movement restrictions and the widespread deployment of plainclothes officers, the Basij, the Revolutionary Guards and police units throughout the city.

Families under pressure

Eyewitnesses said bodies accumulated in the courtyard of Shohadaye Ashayer Hospital on January 9 while Basij forces prevented relatives from approaching them.

Some families removed the bodies of loved ones immediately, fearing security forces would seize them.

Among the victims whose identities Iran International has verified was Hossein Yaghmaei, who died after being shot and taken to a nearby home.

Retired municipal employee Hojjat Ahmadian was also among those killed. People familiar with his case said authorities pressured his family to record his death as suicide to avoid losing his pension.