Iran’s 2025 death penalty report records 1,639 executions, rising repression, and growing concern for Christian minorities and other vulnerable groups.
Newsroom (16/04/2026 Gaudium Press ) The 18th Annual Report on the Death Penalty in Iran documents an unprecedented escalation in executions in 2025, with at least 1,639 people put to death, the highest recorded total since 1989 and a 68% rise from 2024. The report says the crackdown continued the post-2022 surge that followed the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests, while rights defenders warn that the state is using capital punishment to spread fear, suppress dissent and tighten its grip on power.
Moral warning beyond Iran
The report lands in a wider debate about power and legitimacy. Pope Leo XIV warned that democracy without moral law can become “majority tyranny or a mask for the domination of elites,” adding that legitimacy depends on virtue rather than force. That warning echoes the report’s core argument: that political authority loses its moral foundation when it relies on fear, coercion and mass execution instead of justice and accountability.
Record executions in 2025
Iran’s execution tally for 2025 reached at least 1,639, according to the report by Iran Human Rights and Together Against the Death Penalty. The figure represents the highest number recorded since 1989 and a sharp rise from the 975 executions documented in 2024. The report says the authorities were averaging roughly four to five executions a day in 2025, a level of violence rights advocates describe as both systematic and strategic.
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam of Iran Human Rights said the government used fear to try to block new protests and prolong its weakening rule, but the public returned to the streets by year’s end to demand their rights. His assessment frames the death penalty not as a legal exception, but as part of a broader policy of repression.
Who was targeted
Nearly half of the executions were for drug-related offences, with at least 795 people executed on those charges, while hundreds more were killed under qisas laws for murder. The report says poverty was a major underlying factor, and ethnic minorities were disproportionately affected. It also says access to counsel, due process and fair trial rights were repeatedly violated, often even under the Islamic Republic’s own legal standards.
Women and foreign nationals were also hit hard. At least 48 women were executed, the highest number in at least two decades, while the state also executed at least 84 Afghan nationals, three Iraqi nationals and one person identified only as a foreign national. The report further notes that 11 executions were carried out publicly, with children among the spectators, a practice intended to intimidate communities and normalize state violence.
Christian minorities
The report’s wider picture of persecution is especially significant for religious minorities, including Christians, who remain vulnerable in Iran’s security and judicial system. While the material provided does not give a separate execution total for Christians, it places religious minorities within the same pattern of coercion, secrecy and politicized punishment that has defined the 2025 execution surge. In this context, executions of Christian minorities should be highlighted as part of Iran’s broader targeting of marginalized groups, especially where religious identity intersects with dissent, conversion or alleged national-security offenses.
That pattern matters because religious minorities often face charges through the same deeply flawed court system described in the report, including Revolutionary Courts and proceedings that rights groups say routinely deny basic due process. The result is a climate in which faith, identity and political suspicion can overlap, increasing the risks faced by Christians and other vulnerable minorities.
Repression and accountability
Raphaël Chenuil-Hazan of ECPM said the death penalty in Iran is used as a political tool of oppression and repression, with ethnic minorities and other marginalized groups disproportionately represented among those executed. He argued that large-scale drug executions carried out after grossly unfair trials may amount to crimes against humanity and said UN agencies must ensure their cooperation does not contribute to abuse.
The UN Fact-Finding Mission also warned in October 2025 that if executions are part of a widespread and systematic attack on civilians, those responsible, including judges, could face accountability for crimes against humanity. That language underscores how the issue has moved beyond domestic criminal justice into the realm of international legal concern.
Opposition inside Iran
Despite the surge in executions, resistance to the death penalty inside Iran continues to grow. The “No Death Penalty Tuesdays” movement, which began in one prison, has expanded into 56 Iranian prisons and gained support from civil society and international advocates. In October 2025, drug death-row prisoners in Ghezelhesar Prison staged a six-day strike that reportedly forced authorities to halt drug executions there, suggesting that organized prison resistance is becoming harder to suppress.
Why this matters now
The report arrives amid a period of instability, conflict and renewed fear inside Iran, with detainees still at risk of death sentences and execution. Its authors warn that periods of crisis give authorities cover to intensify repression away from international scrutiny. They also argue that any political transition in Iran must include abolition or strict restriction of the death penalty, so the country does not repeat the cycle of violence seen after the 1979 revolution.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from https://www.iranhr.net/
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