Middle East — 2026-09-11

Iran Executes 29 Protesters in Five Months in Escalating Unlawful Campaign

BLUFTehran is very likely to execute additional protest-linked defendants within the next month, leveraging vague national-security statutes and fast-track courts to entrench deterrence through judicial killing.

Human Rights Watch and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran reported on Thursday that Iranian authorities executed at least 29 people connected to the December 2025–January 2026 protests between March 18 and the end of August, including several teenagers aged 18 and 19; five executions were carried out in public 1. The two groups said authorities executed at least 59 men in total on national security charges in the same period, including three tied to the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests, based on interviews with 12 people and review of court verdicts, audio recordings and state media confessions 1. In 16 of the 29 protest-related cases no killing was alleged, with defendants convicted on charges such as "waging war against God" for acts including throwing stones or property damage, and at least eight were charged under a 2025 espionage law 12. Proceedings ran from five weeks to eight months between arrest and execution. Amnesty International separately identified 60 people, including three children, at risk of execution as of late July, while the Boroumand Center recorded 2,113 executions in Iran in 2025, the country's highest annual total since the late 1980s 12.

Analysis
Tehran will very likely carry out at least one more protest-linked or national-security execution within the next month, as revolutionary courts fast-track cases under the 2025 espionage law and vaguely worded "waging war against God" charges requiring no killing allegation, with the 60 people Amnesty flagged in July as at imminent risk giving authorities a ready pipeline. Moderate confidence rests on HRW and Boroumand's twelve-source interview base, court verdicts, and confession recordings, though internet shutdowns and reprisal fears limit independent verification, and the finding leans on that single joint report rather than independently corroborating outlets. The surge may instead reflect a decades-high rise in Iranian capital punishment overall rather than protest-specific deterrence, given 2025's 2,113 total executions spanned all categories. A confirmed execution within the window would strengthen European and UN cases for opening universal-jurisdiction investigations against named judicial officials, while a pause lets Tehran calculate that the diplomatic costs remain low.

4 sources

Iran: Ongoing Unlawful Execution Campaign Against Protesters - Human Rights Watch
Iran Executes 29 Protesters in Five-Month Crackdown, Rights Groups Say - Brit Brief
Rights Groups Say Iran Escalating Executions To Deter Dissent - Shabtabnews
Iran: Ongoing Unlawful Execution Campaign Against Protesters, HRW Reports - Eurasia Review