09 November 2025 :
November 9, 2025 - IRAN. Over 1,500 executions since the beginning of 2025
According to the database maintained by Hand Off Cain, as of 8 November, at least 1,506 executions had been carried out in Iran.
HoC regularly consults the most up-to-date websites of the main NGOs of Iranian exiles, IHR, Hrana and Hengaw, and, with regard to the executions of women, Wncri. It also periodically checks other websites, such as KHRN, Iran HRS, Iran HRM, Farda English, Iran International, IranWire, People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI/MEK), and others. All these websites report executions that they have learned about from their own sources, given that less than 10% of executions are reported by the Iranian state media. Adding up all the executions, and after checking for any reports that appear twice, or cases of homonymy (always possible, because the “real” names of those executed are written in Farsi language and characters, and each NGO has slightly different ways of transliterating them into our alphabet), Hand Off Cain is able to say that on 8 November, Iran exceeded the symbolic figure of 1,500 executions. By way of comparison, the HoC database had reached 968 executions in 2024, 878 in 2023, 646 in 2022, 377 in 2021, 284 in 2020, 298 in 2019, and 328 in 2018. Either the NGOs' “discovery” work has greatly improved, or it must be acknowledged that the Iranian regime is resorting to executions at a frenzied pace, unprecedented in its history, with the exception of 1988, when, between July and August, an estimated 6,000 to 30,000 political prisoners were executed.
Leading independent analysts believe that the Iranian regime is aware of the serious difficulties it faces and is attempting to prevent any kind of popular uprising by resorting to particularly fierce repression. The serious military setbacks Iran has suffered in its decade-long conflict with Israel, the loss of power in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Gaza, and the equally serious difficulties of its Russian ally, which, exhausted by the war of aggression against Ukraine, no longer has the resources to help Iran's proxies in the Middle East, are, according to many observers, at the root of the wave of executions.
