Why Afghans still risk death to reach Iran

In late July, the governor of Iran's central bank, Abdolnaser Hemmati, announced a victory: monthly inflation, he said, had been nearly halved in a single month — from 7.4 percent in the month ending June 21 to 3.6 percent in the month ending July 22 — thanks to “measures and tools at the bank’s disposal.” He did not name a single tool.

Numbers like these need translation. Monthly inflation is a standard statistic everywhere, but in Iran it is the number people live by: when prices move this fast, the month-to-month change is what a household actually feels at the store.

By the central bank’s own report, prices are now about 84 percent higher than a year ago. Even the “victory” month is nothing to celebrate: 3.6 percent, repeated for 12 months, compounds to an annual rate above 50 percent.

What the announcement omitted is that for almost exactly that statistical month, Iranians could not use their banks.

On June 13, electronic services failed at four major state banks. The state-linked company that runs their infrastructure claimed a cyberattack and said it had taken backup systems offline as a precaution, while official promises of a fix kept slipping.

On June 23, a second wave hit eight banks. Card readers went dead and banking apps would not load in a country where everyday life runs on debit cards, leaving millions of people unable to reach their own money for weeks.

Bank Melli, one of Iran’s largest banks, later waived late-payment penalties for a precisely defined window: June 13 to July 14. That amounted to a full month of disruption, by the bank’s own admission.

The same month piled on more. The state semi-shut the country for about a week in early July for Ali Khamenei’s funeral ceremonies. In the second week of July, fighting with the United States resumed and the naval blockade of Iran’s ports returned.

Extreme heat and a failing power grid then closed offices and banks in several provinces in the final week. In a month like that, a great many purchases simply never happened — not because prices had calmed, but because buying was impossible. A purchase that cannot happen puts no pressure on prices.

The central bank’s own report records the tell. Food inflation — groceries, the most card-dependent of all purchases — collapsed from 8.7 percent to 1.8 percent.

The dials the governor did not mention moved the other way: prices versus a year earlier accelerated, and the 12-month average rose from 57.7 to 61.4 percent.

Street prices told the same story. The announced consumer price of a carton of eggs rose about 20 percent between late May and mid-July, roughly double the official inflation rate for the same stretch.

Halving an inflation rate ordinarily requires tight money sustained over a long period. In Iran’s case, no tightening of any kind occurred: deposit rates did not move until late July, liquidity kept growing rapidly, and there was no sign of fiscal restraint.

A central bank that possessed a painless one-month cure would also need to explain why it kept that cure in the drawer while annual inflation has averaged above 40 percent over the past five years.

There is an old warning in economics, associated with the British economist Charles Goodhart, that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Iran’s monthly inflation rate has now completed that journey.

In July, it stopped measuring price pressure in the Iranian economy and began measuring something else: the downtime of the country’s payment system.

A government can manage inflation, or it can manage the inflation statistic. Only one of these shows up at the grocery store.

Omid Behzad and Pouria Safvat, the judiciary's news outlet said, were executed on Monday, after Iran's Supreme Court upheld their death sentences.

According to Mizan, the two men transmitted “coordinates, images and information about Iranian military and security sites to officers from Israel's Mossad intelligence agency and affiliated communication channels” during the 12-day and 40-day wars in 2025 and 2026.

The pair, the report said, were identified and arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' intelligence organization but did not specify when, where or how they were detained.

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  Iran executes 20-year-old protester as fears grow for other detainees

The judiciary outlet also said Behzad maintained direct contact with the administrator of a Telegram channel linked to Israel and supported the US and Israeli military campaign against the Islamic Republic.

Mizan cited Behzad's confessions as evidence, although rights groups have for years documented that Iranian authorities have extracted confessions under coercion, torture or harsh detention conditions.

Iranian authorities use broadly worded charges such as espionage, acting against national security, armed rebellion, enmity against God and corruption on earth to crush dissent and remove political opponents.

Human rights organizations say these labels are routinely applied to protesters, dissidents and political prisoners to portray them as security threats and provide a legal pretext for execution.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and UN experts have documented repeated cases in which such convictions were issued by revolutionary courts after grossly unfair or highly expedited proceedings, with defendants denied meaningful access to lawyers and verdicts based on torture-tainted forced confessions.

Charges against Safvat

Safvat, Mizan said, photographed Iranian air defense systems from rooftops during the 12-day war and sent the images through communication channels linked to Israel.

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The outlet said some of the locations he photographed were later bombed. Without providing evidence, it also alleged Safvat had direct contact with Mossad in some instances and sent messages to Iran International.

The court, according to Mizan, sentenced both men to death based on what it described as “explicit confessions, technical evidence, recovered messages and other evidence.” The sentences were upheld by the Supreme Court before being carried out on Monday.

Wider crackdown

Iran has intensified arrests, prosecutions and executions in recent months, with authorities sentencing or executing dozens of people on charges including espionage, involvement in protests and membership of the exiled opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK).

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  Iran executes two protesters amid heavy security in Isfahan

Human rights groups and activists say the authorities have expanded the crackdown following recent military confrontations, arguing that the campaign is intended to deter renewed public unrest over Iran's deepening economic and political crises.

Iran's latest wave of public hangings of protesters amounts to "killings" and "murders" that form part of a continuing crime against humanity, former United Nations prosecutor Professor Payam Akhavan told Iran International's 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."

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.

In April, an American F-15 fighter jet was shot down over southwestern Iran, likely by a Chinese-made shoulder-fired missile. Both crew members ejected and were rescued, one of them after two days on the ground in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains.

The loss was historic. No American fighter had been downed by enemy fire in decades.

Iran has reportedly been sourcing these weapons from China, through schemes Washington has been watching for months.

In early May the Treasury Department put one scheme on the public record, sanctioning a network of middlemen arming the Islamic Republic with Chinese weapons, including shoulder-fired missiles. Days later, President Trump traveled to Beijing for a state visit with Xi Jinping.

In late July, he told the public that Xi had personally assured him China would not, “under any circumstances,” sell weapons to the Islamic Republic.

Five days later Reuters reported that a Chinese company had agreed to supply the Islamic Republic with 300 to 400 shoulder-fired air defense missile systems in a deal worth $60 to $70 million.

While the two leaders met and traded assurances, the Islamic Republic appears to have kept buying, likely working several supply channels at once.

The reported deal could help the Islamic Republic close a dangerous gap at exactly the wrong time for Washington. During the 12-day war in June 2025, Israeli aircraft operated over Iran almost at will after the opening strikes severely damaged the country’s air-defense network. The United States later joined the campaign with strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

A shoulder-fired missile will lose most encounters with a modern fighter, but it only has to win occasionally. After the April shootdown, every pilot flying low over Iran has to assume there may be a missile team underneath him, so planners may fly higher or less often, and spend more time and aircraft clearing threats before anyone goes in.

It’s the same effect CIA-supplied Stinger missiles had during the Soviet–Afghan War after 1986, when they made low-altitude flying dangerous enough to force Soviet pilots to change their tactics.

We’ve already seen the effect of this strategy at sea, where the Islamic Republic’s missiles, mines and drones along the Strait of Hormuz have sunk few ships yet collapsed traffic and multiplied insurance costs.

These missiles reach only a few thousand meters into the sky. They cannot touch high-flying aircraft or ballistic missiles, and they will not rebuild the air defense shield the Islamic Republic lost. What they will do is make low-altitude missions—including helicopter operations and some strike and support flights—riskier and more expensive

Since the ceasefire, Basij and Revolutionary Guard units around the country have been training with shoulder-fired air-defense weapons. They also won’t all stay in Iran.

Iran has previously been accused of supplying MANPADS to allied armed groups like the Houthis and Hezbollah, raising the risk that some systems could leave the country. Shoulder-fired missiles have also posed a longstanding threat to civilian aviation worldwide.

China’s answer to all of this has been denial. When NBC reported that a Chinese missile likely downed the F-15, Beijing dismissed the reporting as a groundless smear. When Reuters described the new deal in July, the foreign ministry called it “completely groundless” as well.

Reuters reports that the contract runs through a company registered in Hong Kong and that the missiles are set to travel from Urumqi in western China through Pakistan into Iran. Pakistan, which brokered April’s ceasefire, denies any role.

Strategic credulity?

Trump has taken America’s adversaries at their word before. Xi told him China would not arm the Islamic Republic, and he repeated the assurance to the public as though it settled the matter.

When Volodymyr Zelensky said in late July that Russia was feeding the Islamic Republic satellite imagery to help target American bases, Trump said he would ask Putin about it. He says what he says with a purpose.

Repeating Xi’s promise keeps the relationship warm and the Washington visit on track, while his own government sanctions the middlemen and works to stop the shipments. The message serves diplomacy and the action deals with the missiles, and he sees no contradiction in running both at once.

The Islamic Republic never puts all its eggs in one basket. Washington got ahead of one channel, and we are starting to see the others. The network Treasury sanctioned in May ran through Hong Kong, Belarus and Dubai, while the reported July deal runs through a different Hong Kong company and a different route, through Pakistan.

As the reported Chinese deals advanced, Tehran also signed an agreement with Russia, as reported by the Financial Times, for roughly half a billion euros’ worth of Verba shoulder-fired missiles.

Every route runs at once, and the Islamic Republic plans on losing a few. The first Chinese shipment is said to be weeks away. It should be one that the Islamic Republic loses.

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.