By Fahimeh Robiolle
[Fahimeh Robiolle is a French-Iranian former nuclear engineer who was, until 2016, a lecturer at the École Nationale d’Administration in France. Prior to that, she taught at universities in France, Iran, Lebanon, and Afghanistan, where she organized leadership programs to help female lawmakers participate in their country’s governance. She is an author and a Knight of the French Legion of Honor. The views expressed are her own.]
Every morning, we receive news of the executions of individuals – named or anonymous — in the prisons of the Islamic Republic. Each execution is associated with a specific prison: Ahvaz, Evin, Karchak, Ghazelhesar, Roudbar, Aligoudarz, Shiraz, Arak, Qom, Shahre Kord…
The victims are women, men, Baluchis, Arabs, Kurds, and Azeris. They face a variety of accusations: rape, drug trafficking, and premeditated murder. Some women are charged with the murder of a loved one in response to the violence they suffered. The victims also include political prisoners, some convicted of spying for Israel — based on confessions obtained under torture–– and others accused of waging “war against God” and spreading “corruption on earth.”
A number of the individuals who were executed were minors at the time when the acts were committed.
In some cases, victims were executed publicly, causing infinite distress to their families and to the rest of society.
These pieces of news reach us discreetly every morning. Discretion, in some cases, allows families to recover the body of their loved one: The return of the body is used as a morbid bargaining chip in exchange for the silence of the bereaved.
Other cases concern individuals transferred to the section of the prison reserved for those sentenced to capital punishment, who are then led one by one, under the horrified gaze of the other inmates, to an execution quarantine cell, where they are made to wait — an interminable wait. Those prisoners die twice: from the anguish of not knowing when their turn will come —an anguish that is shared by fellow inmates who watch them going past — and from the execution itself.
Since January 1, 2025, at least 1,300 people have been executed in Iran. Only 8 percent of these executions are reported by the regime; the rest are reported by human rights organizations in Iran, which indicate that the official number of executions has doubled since 2024, and is at its highest in 36 years. That puts Iran in the grim position of holding the world record for executions per capita.
Every day, so many families are grieving or commemorating the anniversary of the disappearance of a victim of the regime. Lives are lost by bullet or under torture, as citizens are made to confess a crime they did not commit, or accused of setting fire to a trash can, or of burning a poster of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Others die by suicide upon leaving prison, where they suffered injections. Even doctors and nurses have been known to disappear after treating injured protesters. The bodies of some victims are found much later, bearing traces of beatings and injuries.
On November 9, 2025, when the Karaj dam dried up because of a water shortage, 74 unidentified bodies were discovered, most of them with their hands and feet bound. Undoubtedly, there were not just 74 bodies involved in this tragedy. Others, thrown into the dam years ago, had long since decomposed. The authorities simply removed the news from the website of the official regime newspaper, which had published the information – an implicit admission of responsibility. This is an unspeakable tragedy that adds to all of the other crimes of the regime.
Violence is not limited to executions and forced disappearances. It also manifests itself in silent deaths resulting from human despair. How many children commit suicide because of a lack of school supplies or because they cannot attend school? How many doctors, young interns, university students, professors, journalists, and workers have taken their own lives, driven by pressure or victimized by zealous, corrupt members of the regime? How many distressed young girls refusing forced marriage, or women enduring domestic violence, or desperate and impoverished workers have set themselves on fire?
And yet the resilience of Iranians emerges where it is least expected.
Every Tuesday since February 2024, in 52 prisons across Iran, prisoners go on hunger strike against the death penalty, irrespective of the accusations they face or their personal or political beliefs.
Last month, the strike inside the Ghazelhesar prison went beyond the “Tuesdays Against Executions” campaign. For seven days, 1,500 prisoners facing death sentences staged intensive strikes inside the prison compound; some sewed their lips shut. On October 19, they obtained:
- the suspension of drug-related executions for six months
- the return of six prisoners from execution quarantine
- the promise of a review for sentence reductions
This victory is due to the courage of the strikers, the extension of the movement to other prisons, and a massive international campaign. Despite 17 executions in the first two days and the activation of cellphone jammers, their determination never wavered.
The mobilization of families in front of Parliament on October 19, despite the ongoing repression, shows that Iranian society rejects this death policy. Nevertheless, it will take a massive mobilization for this death machine to stop.
The six-month suspension allowed by the government could, without a written commitment or international oversight, be a mere tactic to calm the mobilization and quietly resume executions later. The regime’s history is one of unkept promises. Hence, this call for vigilance.
Political prisoners must be released. The 1,500 death-row inmates from Ghazelhesar and all those sentenced to capital punishment in other prisons in Iran must be permanently saved, because it is the system itself that is responsible for the acts that brought them to prison. Poverty, lack of opportunities or education, and social injustice push desperate individuals toward making tragic choices, often in the service of networks controlled by the Revolutionary Guards.
As the late French Justice Minister Robert Badinter — who abolished capital punishment in France — stated: “The death penalty does not defend society; it dishonors it.” Prisoners have the right to rehabilitation, not death. And the Iranian people have the right to freedom, not oppression.
Every life counts.
Let us support the people of Iran – behind bars or in the streets — in their quest for freedom.
