09 September 2025 :
September 8, 2025 - IRAN. With 14 executions recorded on 7 September, Iran has exceeded 1,000 hangings since the beginning of 2025, reaching a total of 1,008. In the first week of September alone, there have already been 45, and there were 171 in August. Although Iran has been the country with the highest number of executions per capita for many years, the current figures represent a sharp increase even compared to this “tradition”.
In 2024, the number of executions recorded by NGOs (and by Hands off Cain) was 996, 878 in 2023, and 646 in 2022.
There are still 115 days to go until the end of 2025. If Iran maintains this rate of executions, by 31 December the death toll could reach 1,472, a 50% increase on the previous year.
Observers link this increase in repression to the negative outcomes of the “proxy” wars that Iran is waging against Israel, which in recent months have seen the fall of the pro-Iranian regime in Syria, the great difficulties of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and the Houthis in Yemen. Independent analysts believe that the Iranian population, which in recent years has already staged several popular uprisings, some of them large-scale (the most recent being the Women-Life-Freedom uprising), could be encouraged by the regime's obvious international difficulties and launch a new season of anti-government demonstrations. This would explain the particularly brutal repression taking place in Iranian prisons.
