Iran executions hit 35-year high with 1,500 killed in 2025, rights group says
Drug offenses fuel ‘unprecedented’ surge as Tehran uses capital punishment to ‘create fear’, says rights activist
Iran executed at least 1,500 people last year, the Norway-based Iran Human Rights group said on Thursday, in what it called an “unprecedented” hike in the use of capital punishment.
“It is very alarming,” the group’s director, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, said of the provisional toll.
“It is unprecedented in the last 35 years. As long as Iran Human Rights has existed, we have never had such numbers.”
In 2024, Iran executed at least 975 people, according to IHR and the French group Together Against the Death Penalty.
While IHR has yet to release its final tally for 2025, it said it had verified at least 1,500 people killed, of whom more than 700 were executed for drug-related offences.