Iran executed at least 1,639 people last year, the highest number since 1989 and an increase of nearly 70 per cent from the previous year, two monitoring groups said in a report released on Monday.
The rate of executions could rise even more sharply after a crackdown on widespread anti-government protests in January and the war against the US and Israel, Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) and Paris-based Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM) said in an annual report.
If Iran “survives the current crisis, there is a serious risk that executions will be used even more extensively as a tool of oppression and repression”, the report said.
It said the number of executions in 2025 was by far the highest since IHR began tracking it in 2008 and was the most reported since 1989, the year after the Iran-Iraq war ended.
IHR, which requires at least two sources to confirm an execution, most of which go unreported in Iranian official media, said the figure represented an “absolute minimum” for the number of hangings in 2025.
The figure amounted to an average of more than four executions per day.
The NGOs behind the report also warned that “hundreds of detained protesters remain at risk of death sentences and execution” after being charged with capital crimes over the protests in January. Human rights groups say thousands of people were killed and tens of thousands arrested before the demonstrations were subdued.
“By creating fear through an average of four to five executions per day in 2025, authorities tried to prevent new protests and prolong their crumbling rule,” said IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.
Raphael Chenuil-Hazan, executive director of ECPM, added: “The death penalty in Iran is used as a political tool of oppression and repression, with ethnic minorities and other marginalised groups disproportionately represented among those executed.”
The report noted that the Kurdish minority in the west and the Balochs in south-eastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan, both of whom largely follow the Sunni strain of Islam rather than the Shiite branch dominant in Iran, are particularly targeted.
The rights group Amnesty International had warned last October that “executions have reached a scale not seen in Iran since 1989".
“UN member states must confront the Iranian authorities’ shocking execution spree with the urgency it demands,” said Hussein Baoumi, Amnesty's deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa.
