The world can no longer ignore the crimes against humanity being committed in Iran. Last year over 1,000 executions took place in 86 of the mullahs’ medieval prisons. Those hanged included 34 women and 7 juvenile offenders, executed after they turned 18. Among those executed were 119 Baluchis, highlighting the disproportionate targeting of this marginalized and oppressed ethnic group.
Barbarically, 4 of the hangings were carried out in public in an attempt to terrify the rebellious youth into placid submission. Public hangings are generally from a construction crane, an especially slow and agonizing execution method.The frenzy of executions, over 70% of which took place since the so called ‘moderate’ president Masoud Pezeshkian took office in August, are testimony to the theocratic regime’s fear of imminent overthrow.
The psychotic and ageing Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has watched the gradual unravelling of his warmongering stranglehold in the region, with the decapitation of his proxies Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The sudden and unexpected fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Islamic Republic’s greatest ally, has sounded the death knell for the mullahs’ regime. Now, Khamenei can only shudder in anticipation of the arrival of President Donald Trump, with his maximum pressure sanctions campaign and his unwavering antipathy to the Iranian regime’s sponsorship of international terrorism.
Ever since the mullahs hijacked the popular revolution that ousted the dictatorship of the Shah in 1979, they have resorted to bouts of brutal repression at times of crisis to subdue the populace. But their atrocities only strengthen the determination of the Iranian youth to overthrow the fascist tyranny. The regime must be ostracised by the international community and any dealings with it should be conditional on an end to executions and torture. Its leaders must be brought to justice. There can no longer be a business-as-usual approach by Western appeasers. Too much innocent blood is being spilled as Khamenei sets new records for crimes and executions in a bid to delay his inevitable downfall.
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According to Amnesty International, the number of executions in Iran in 2023 accounted for about 74% of all documented executions worldwide. That record has been surpassed in 2024. Undeterred, the regime began the New Year with a fresh wave of hangings. 12 people were executed on 1 January 2025. Five prisoners were executed in Qezelhessar prison, five in Bandar Abbas and two more in Yasuj and Malayer.Among those executed were 119 Baluchis, highlighting the disproportionate targeting of this marginalized and oppressed ethnic group.
The Iranian regime’s involvement in the international drug trade has been known for years. Its elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) maintains extensive mafia networks, laundering billions of dollars of dirty money for gangsters and cartel Godfathers, helping the mullahs to overcome the impact of western sanctions, and providing the regime with the means to finance and supply its terrorist proxies. Despite this well-known fact, more than half of the victims (502 prisoners) were executed on drug-related charges. In Iran drug charges are commonly used as cover for the execution of political prisoners, particularly members or supporters of the main democratic opposition movement, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK).
Part of the IRGC’s narco-network was exposed after the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria.His regime played a key role in the captagon drug trade alongside Hezbollah. Captagon is an amphetamine-type stimulant widely misused in the Middle East. The US Treasury Department noted last year that Assad and his allies had“increasingly embraced the production and trafficking of captagon to generate hard currency.”Hezbollah were actively involved in supervising the building of a new captagon factory in eastern Syria before Bashar al-Assad’s ouster. They were being closely overseen by the IRGC.
The tumult of hangings is the tip of an iceberg of barbarism. The cruelty and inhumanity of Iran’s judicial system goes well beyond executions. Individuals may be arrested and indefinitely detained without charge on trumped-up offenses,and subjected to degrading treatment, including torture, in order to extract confessions. Those accused and/or convicted of perpetrating crimes are incarcerated in overcrowded prisons where they may be subject to torture, rape, and other atrocities. Iran’s densely populated and dirty penitentiaries are also breeding grounds for COVID-19 and other illnesses, and prisoners are often denied necessary medical care, personal protective equipment, and disinfectant. Under the mullahs’ ‘justice’ system they are denied rights such as access to legal counsel and a fair and speedy trial, and sentenced to other barbaric penalties such as amputation, blinding, and flogging.
In Urmia prison in West Azerbaijan province, the regime’s Sharia courts ordered the amputation of the fingers of two brothers for the crime of petty theft. On January 2 a further 4 prisoners were hanged in Urmia Central prison. Two other prisoners had their fingers amputated in the main prison in the Holy City of Qom. The supposedly ‘moderate’ president,Masoud Pezeshkian, demonstrated his moderation by allowing the prisoners to be anaesthetised before their limbs were amputated! In another blatant crime against humanity, Khamenei's judiciary sentenced a political prisoner from the 2017 nationwide uprising to having his eyes gouged out, for allegedly blinding a State Security Force (SSF) officer by throwing a stone at him.
In a poignant Christmas letter smuggled out of the notorious GhezelHesarstate prison in Karaj and written by a political prisoner called Saeed Masouri, now in his 25th year of incarceration,he recounted the relentless suffering and escalating executions under the Iranian regime. Masouri shared the heart-wrenching memories of lost cellmates taken to the gallows and the psychological scars of living under the constant threat of death, highlighting the human cost of a regime that executes one person every four hours on average.
Masouri’s harrowing letter was addressed to international human rights authorities, including the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Secretary General, and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in Iran. Surely now is the time for them to act. The West can no longer close its eyes to the suffering and human rights abuse that continues daily in Iran. Khamenei and his hangmen must be consigned to the dustbin of history.
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