Human Rights

The men who spent the war demanding control of the Strait of Hormuz have returned to demanding control of women's clothing. As the fighting subsides, Iran's hardliners are pressing to revive a hijab law the state itself suspended for fear of new protests.

A student at Iran's most prestigious technical university has been expelled and banned from all universities for four years over a stuffed rat hung from a campus tree, a toy that carried the nickname protesters gave the late supreme leader.

Iran executed Ghaem Hosseini, also known as Arian, on Thursday over his involvement in protests in the central city of Isfahan in January, making him the fifth person put to death in a case in which UN experts have raised concerns about the defendants' trials.

President Masoud Pezeshkian's government has formally opposed a bill aimed at countering foreign intelligence infiltration, saying it violates citizens' rights, restricts academic ties and could accelerate the emigration of Iranian experts and researchers.

Journalists are not supposed to become the story. We are usually on the other side of it. Someone lives through an event and we write about it. Someone is gone and we report their passing. A crisis unfolds and we try to find the right words to tell its story.

Allegations by Iran’s Intelligence Ministry that two French diplomats briefly detained in Tehran last month were involved in espionage are “completely false,” a French diplomatic source told Iran International.

Iranian security forces detained three relatives of the family of Kian Pirfalak, a nine-year-old killed during the 2022 protests, after raiding a village in the southern city of Izeh on Sunday evening, informed sources told Iran International.

Seven months after the January massacre, Iranians answering an Iran International call-out describe lives still bent around it: sleep and nerves that never recovered, friendships remade or broken, politics hardened, and a future they struggle to picture.

I stop people from bleeding to death. As a trauma and vascular interventional radiologist in Los Angeles, I find catastrophic bleeding and stop it within minutes. Still, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw in victims of Iran’s January protests inside and outside the country.

Iranian lawmakers have advanced sweeping legislation that could send people to prison for speaking to journalists, academic cooperation and unauthorized contact with foreign embassies, dramatically expanding the conduct security agencies could treat as foreign infiltration.

Iran executed Shahram Sadeghi early Sunday after accusing him of security offenses and deliberately driving into police officers during protests in Karaj on January 8, the judiciary’s Mizan News reported.

Iranian courts have handed down a new wave of prison terms and other punishments against protesters, activists and citizens accused of national security offenses, as the judicial crackdown that followed January’s nationwide protests continues months later.

Security forces used cultural venues and medical clinics as firing positions, ammunition stores and sites for holding bodies during Iran's January 2026 protest crackdown in Alborz province, according to material reviewed by Iran International.

Iranian authorities have sealed at least 42 cafés, restaurants, shops, sports clubs and other businesses across the country in the past three weeks, over compulsory hijab rules and what officials describe as violations of Islamic norms.

Iran International's Negar Mojtahedi has won Canada's 2026 Bill Good Award, part of the Jack Webster honors regarded as western Canada's preeminent journalism awards, cited for reporting that bridged the gulf between the West and Iran, often at risk to her own safety.

The child understands every word her grandmother says in Persian. She answers in English. She can ask what's for dinner in her parents' language, but not describe her anxiety, her love or her future in it. She calls herself Iranian. Persian is no longer the language of her life.

Iran has carried out at least 916 executions since the start of 2026, including 15 so far in August, the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran said on Tuesday.

Iranian security forces shot protester Farid Ramezani during the January protests in Tehran, then targeted his Pahlavi crown tattoo as he lay wounded before killing him with a shot to the forehead, a source familiar with the case told Iran International.