Iran: Surge of political prisoners amid US-Israel war

"We've been observing the human rights situation in Iran with great concern," Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam tells DW.

The Norwegian-Iranian neuroscientist is the founder of the NGO Iran Human Rights.

"The near-daily executions of political prisoners, protesters and people accused of espionage are particularly alarming," he adds.

In 2025, his organization found that Iran had executed at least 1,639 people, marking a 68% increase compared to the previous year and averaging in four to five executions per day. 

Since the latest US-Israel war with Iran began in February, the Middle Eastern nation has become a focal point of global politics. Most attention is directed at geopolitical concerns, and especially at the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a quarter of the world's crude oil and oil products were shipped before the blockade. Meanwhile, however, Iran's internal affairs have been going widely unnoticed.

"In a situation in which the international community is paying little attention to human rights violations in Iran, the Islamic Republic is taking advantage of the added leeway to execute prisoners while keeping political costs as low as possible," Amir-Moghaddam says. 

The number of executions recorded in 2025 was the highest in 35 years, and was a continuation of a surge that began in 2022 after the nationwide "Woman, Life, Freedom" protests. People now speak of a climate of fear. 

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Thousands of citizens arrested in Iran

Since the beginning of the US-Israel war with Iran, UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk says more than 4,000 individuals have been arrested in Iran on national-security related charges. Of these, at least 21 have been executed.

"I hardly dare imagine what the successive executions in the past days have done with the climate in the prison's political wards," the X-user Sayed Ziaddin Nabavi, also known as Zia Nabavi, wrote. The popular human rights activist is one of the few still sporadically active on social media despite severe limitations. 

Since late February, internet access has been considerably disrupted, as the government takes increased action against VPN connections and satellite terminals that would enable the circumvention of state censorship. This has made communication within the country, as well as from within the country abroad, far more difficult. 

"Through cooperation with colleagues in Iran — and contacting them is very difficult — we have learned that court cases of political prisoners are being accelerated while also becoming less transparent," the human rights lawyer Saeid Dahghan tells DW. "This means death sentences can be handed down and carried out sooner."

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Dehghan, who lives in Canada, is the founder of the legal professional collective 1Kalameh Legal Network where he and fellow Iranian human rights lawyers work to document human rights violations.

He says there are a number of independent solicitors who have been campaigning for political issues and were arrested or subpoenaed. The security authorities were, according to accounts, systematically intimidating them and working to shut down dissidents and protesters. 

"Pressure on political prisoners with an illness has increased," he says. "One example is Narges Mohammadi, who recently suffered a heart attack."

Mohammadi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was recently transferred to a clinic in Tehran after being granted a prison sentence suspension on bail. Reports describe her health condition as critical.

Other political prisoners in poor health, Dehghan argues, should also be entitled to medical furlough or conditional release for health or humanitarian reasons. 

'Base negotiations on human rights'

Dehghan and other human rights advocates are warning that Iran's government could repeat the pattern of mass executions on the heels of political instability. Shortly after the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), for example, thousands of political prisoners were executed.

Now, hundreds of protesters arrested during the nationwide protesters earlier in the year are facing charges that could lead to death sentences. 

"It's crucial that the international community gives a significantly higher priority to Iran and the state of its people. They need to make this a topic in negotiations with the Islamic Republic," Amiry-Moghaddam says.

Putting an end to the executions and releasing political prisoners should be a core condition for talks, he argues. 

"Ultimately," he says, "the people in Iran will be the ones to carve out fundamental change."

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This article was translated from German.