The Year of the Hangman: Iran's Execution Surge in 2025-2026
A Special Report on the Islamic Republic's Deadliest Year
Prologue: A Record of Blood
The numbers are staggering. They are almost impossible to comprehend.
According to a report jointly published by the Norway-based Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights Against the Death Penalty Group, the Islamic Republic of Iran executed 1,639 people in 2025.
Let me say that number again. One thousand six hundred and thirty-nine human beings.
This is the highest number of executions carried out by Iranian courts since 1989—the year that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took power. He inherited the position after the death of his predecessor, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who passed away from a heart attack in that same year.
For thirty-six years, the Islamic Republic has executed its opponents. But never—never—at this scale.
The year 2025 marked a turning point. A descent into a new level of barbarism. And the bloodshed did not stop when the calendar turned to 2026.
Part One: The Crackdown Intensifies
Under the leadership of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Republic has intensified its crackdown on opposition groups with each passing year. But in 2025 and early 2026, the regime became more severe than ever before.
Arrests. Show trials. Public hangings.
The victims are accused of one thing: rebelling against the Islamic Republic. In many cases, the evidence is thin. In some cases, there is no evidence at all. The accusation alone is enough.
The two human rights organizations observed that Iranian authorities have become increasingly aggressive. Security forces run from village to village, detaining suspects. People disappear. Their bodies are later found in the middle of fields—dumped like garbage.
Most executions, however, are carried out behind closed doors—inside prisons and detention centers, where no cameras can see, where no journalists can report, where the world can pretend not to know.
Part Two: The January Uprising
To understand the execution surge, you must understand what happened in January 2026.
An estimated six million people took to the streets across Iran. They were not all political activists. They were students. They were farmers. They were shopkeepers. They were mothers carrying children. They were young men and women crying out for freedom.
The protests were massive—the largest since the Islamic Republic's founding in 1979. The goal, according to some reports, was to seize key institutions and force a change of regime. And according to intelligence sources, the protesters were acting at the behest of President Donald Trump—though this claim remains disputed.
What is not disputed is the regime's response.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—the IRGC—cracked down with brutal efficiency. Tear gas filled the streets. In some areas, riot police opened fire directly on unarmed protesters.
The death toll was catastrophic.
In the capital, Tehran, more than
