Human Rights

Armed attacks and security operations in southeastern Iran have left at least 94 people dead and 33 wounded since March 31, with fighting growing more frequent and involving heavier weapons, US-based human rights group HRANA reported Monday.

Footage and images showing men wielding machetes and swords at an IRGC-backed rally in the central Iranian city of Isfahan have renewed scrutiny of the Islamic Republic's history of using unofficial armed groups to suppress anti-government protests.

The jailed wife of an Iranian protester executed this week is being interrogated and pressured to deny that the couple married shortly before his execution, a source familiar with the case told Iran International.

Iran executed at least 2,003 people over the past year, a 29% increase from the previous period, rights group HRANA reported Friday, as UN experts warned that Tehran uses capital punishment to silence dissent and instill fear.

Tehran has seized on protests by French high school students to accuse Paris of repression, seeking to obscure its own treatment of young Iranians by turning the language of human rights against one of its Western critics.

A 17-year-old boy died in custody in Iran’s Isfahan province after the IRGC’s paramilitary Basij forces beat him during his arrest and a judge refused his father’s plea for hospital treatment, a source familiar with the case told Iran International.

Men accused of spying for Iran exchanged information about Iran International’s offices and presenter Kambiz Hosseini, while one defendant discussed money transfers and his legal troubles with contacts in Iran, a London court heard.

“Write your will.” Those were the words Iranian protester Erfan Nabian says he heard in solitary confinement before he was handed a sheet of paper and asked what he wanted for his final meal before his execution.

Iran’s repression of the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising was coordinated from the top through a functioning chain of command linking senior authorities to security forces on the streets, Amnesty International says.

A theater production in Tehran displayed a notice to spectators before a performance saying two actors who embrace on stage are married, underscoring the restrictions governing physical contact between men and women under the Islamic Republic.

Iran has executed nearly two people a week in political and security cases since the January protests, including over protest- and war-related accusations, while another 194 people face death sentences, an Iran International review of cases shows.

Three Iranian men spied on Iran International journalists to assist Iranian intelligence services and prepare for serious violence against at least one target, prosecutors told a London court Tuesday.

Clothes, diaries, books and childhood dolls are being taken from the bedrooms of protesters killed in Iran, as security forces extend pressure on families seeking accountability into the most private spaces of their grief nearly nine months after the January 2026 killings.

Hadi Abbasian, a 38-year-old resident of northeastern Iran, has been sentenced to death by a Revolutionary Court in Bojnurd after being arrested over his support for the nationwide protests in January, according to information obtained by Iran International.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu predicted the eventual fall of Iran’s leadership while the Islamic Republic’s top armed forces commander warned a new conflict would engulf the region, sharpening exchanges over the prospect of renewed fighting on Monday.

The Islamic Republic executed two more people detained in connection with the January 2026 protests, bringing to seven the number put to death in the Alikhani Square case in Isfahan, rights groups and the judiciary reported Monday.

Iranian authorities have stepped up warnings against Starlink as the cost-of-living crisis deepens and the prospect of renewed public protests grows, signaling mounting concern over citizens’ access to satellite internet.

One of the last watchtowers at Iran’s Rajaei Shahr (Gohardasht) prison was demolished Saturday, as authorities dismantle a site of mass political executions despite longstanding warnings that its destruction could erase evidence of crimes against humanity.