{"id":239077,"date":"2026-08-06T21:23:33","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T21:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/239077\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T21:23:33","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T21:23:33","slug":"iran-continues-executing-protesters-in-bid-to-crush-the-next-uprising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/239077\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran continues executing protesters in bid to crush the next uprising"},"content":{"rendered":"

At dawn on July 28, the Islamic Republic of Iran publicly hanged<\/a> Abolfazl Sepahi Badjani and Amirhossein Safari Hosseinabadi in Alikhani Square in Isfahan.<\/p>\n

Security forces had filled the square overnight, and videos circulating online appeared to show people gathering in an attempt to stop the executions, before they were dispersed, with several reportedly injured and arrested.<\/p>\n

The two men had been detained during January\u2019s uprising and convicted in a mass case involving clashes in the square, the deaths of security personnel, and allegations of weapons possession and property destruction.<\/p>\n

Rights groups said the convictions followed torture, forced confessions, and denial of independent legal representation. The two men were hanged at the same location where they had allegedly protested against the regime.<\/p>\n

Four days later, guards at Shahrud Prison<\/a> hanged Arvin Kheirkhahan, a young man arrested during the same uprising, without informing his family in advance. His relatives were instructed to collect his body in the early hours and bury him at 5 a.m. under security supervision. The judiciary issued no public announcement.<\/p>\n

\"PortraitsPortraits of Iranian protesters executed by the Iranian regime during protests in Iran are displayed during a demonstration at the Ergife Palace Hotel to condemn the silence of Western governments in the face of the growing wave of Iranian political executions, in Rome on July 16, 2026. (credit: Andreas SOLARO \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

One execution was conducted in a public square under the gaze of an entire city. The other was carried out before dawn, with the family denied even the opportunity to prepare for death. But both belong to the same campaign of internal repression<\/a> carried out by the Iranian regime.<\/p>\n

The Islamic Republic\u2019s response to January, when an estimated 30,000-40,000 people were massacred<\/a> in two days, did not suddenly end when gunfire emptied the streets. It continued through arrests, interrogations, forced confessions, Revolutionary Court proceedings, and executions carried out months after the uprising\u2019s immediate energy had subsided.<\/p>\n

The objective is to change what Iranians will be prepared to do the next time they confront the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, it is mostly focused on internal social engineering,\u201d Khosro Isfahani, research director at the National Union for Democracy in Iran, told The Jerusalem Post.<\/p>\n

The Iranian regime’s warning to its own people<\/p>\n

Isfahani rejected the idea that the timing of executions is primarily governed by the rise and fall of negotiations with Washington or developments surrounding the conflict with Israel and the United States.<\/p>\n

Instead, he placed the executions inside a domestic campaign aimed at a population facing economic collapse, political anger, and the memory of the January killings.<\/p>\n

The regime\u2019s warning, he said, is simple. \u201cIf you move, we are going to kill you.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you resist, if you fight back, we are going to find you, arrest you, and hang you.\u201d<\/p>\n

At least 26 people had been executed by July 28 after being convicted of offenses connected to the protests that began in late December 2025 and developed into a nationwide uprising in January. Kheirkhahan\u2019s subsequent execution raised that known number further.<\/p>\n

Amnesty International said at least 60 more protesters, including three who were children at the time of the alleged offenses, were under the death sentence and at risk.<\/p>\n

Among those killed were Saleh Mohammadi, Saeed Davodi, and Mehdi Ghasemi, executed in Qom on March 19; Amirhossein Hatami, Mohammad Amin Biglari, Shahin Vahedparast Kolor, and Ali Fahim, executed in Ghezel Hesar Prison in early April; and Mehdi Rasouli, Mohammadreza Miri, and Ebrahim Dolatabadinejad, hanged in Mashhad in May.<\/p>\n

The campaign continued in June with Ashkan Maleki, Mehrdad Mohammadinia, Fathollah Avari, Javad Zamani, and Abolfazl Saedi. Mohammad Amini Dehaghani was executed in Isfahan on July 15. Four days later, Erfan Esfandiari and Afghan national Gol Mohammad Mohammadi were secretly hanged in Dastgerd Prison. Mehdi Khanaki was executed on July 22, followed by the public hangings in Alikhani Square six days later.<\/p>\n

‘When you kill a single person, the whole network around them collapses’<\/p>\n

Many were convicted under broadly formulated charges, including moharebeh, or \u201cenmity against Allah,\u201d and efsad-e fel-arz, \u201cspreading corruption on Earth.\u201d Amnesty documented cases in which the alleged conduct included arson, damaging property, blocking roads, and disturbing public order \u2013 acts that, even if proven, would not meet international standards restricting capital punishment to the \u201cmost serious crimes\u201d involving intentional killing.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Courts have operated amid allegations of enforced disappearance, denial of lawyers, torture, and the use of forced confessions. It has been documented by human rights groups that January detainees were held in unidentified buildings and warehouse-like sites, threatened with sexual violence, and subjected to staged executions to force them to incriminate themselves and others.<\/p>\n

Yet the individual court files are only one part of the message.<\/p>\n

January’s protests and the subsequent state crackdown produced a significant change in how protesters responded to repression compared to previous years.<\/p>\n

The protests were among the largest Iran had ever witnessed and appeared to mark a shift in the willingness of some demonstrators to confront the security forces rather than retreat in the face of violence.<\/p>\n

The authorities\u2019 subsequent response can be seen as an effort to impose a lasting deterrent. By demonstrating the potential consequences of resisting the security apparatus, the regime is seeking to contain public anger and reduce the level of personal risk Iranians may be willing to accept in any future attempt to challenge the Islamic Republic.<\/p>\n

The massacres of January were intended to crush an uprising already in motion. The executions that follow months later extend that threat into the future. A protester who survives the streets may still be identified in footage, arrested after the crowds have dispersed, prosecuted behind closed doors, and killed once international attention has moved elsewhere.<\/p>\n

By then, the psychological setting has changed. During an uprising, people draw strength from numbers, urgency and a sense of shared purpose. A prison execution months later reaches families, friends, colleagues and fellow protesters individually, after that collective momentum has faded.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you kill a single person, the whole network around them collapses,\u201d Isfahani said.<\/p>\n

The death of one prisoner therefore reverberates far beyond the victim. It disrupts the wider circle around them, weakens activist networks, and reminds those who remain that the state\u2019s reach extends well beyond the day of protest.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith executions, it has a ripple effect because it happens during a period of calm,\u201d Isfahani said. The shock, he argued, reduces the willingness of those around the victim to expose themselves to the same risk.<\/p>\n

The person hanged is the immediate victim, but the intended target is the network surrounding them.<\/p>\n

The Contrast between public and secret executions is therefore significant, although no single formula determines which method the authorities use.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt depends on the case and what\u2019s the message that the regime wants to convey to the population,\u201d Isfahani said.<\/p>\n

Public hangings were once used more frequently in Iranian cities, including for ordinary criminal offenses, he said. They are now more commonly reserved for particular cases carrying a security or political message.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe regime wants to convey a message of violence and fear in these cases,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Alikhani Square hangings required witnesses, whereas Kheirkhahan\u2019s execution was handled differently. There was no advance notice, no judiciary statement, and a burial was arranged before dawn. Maleki and Mohammadinia were likewise secretly executed, in Ghezel Hesar Prison on June 1, without their families or lawyers being notified beforehand.<\/p>\n

Secrecy, espionage charges, and the Iranian machinery of repression<\/p>\n

Secrecy limits the possibility of relatives gathering outside a prison, of supporters intervening before the sentence is carried out, or of a funeral becoming a political event. Families in political cases have reported state surveillance, restrictions on mourning, and pressure not to publicize what happened.<\/p>\n

Uncertainty itself can also become weaponized by the regime, used to psychologically torment the population.<\/p>\n

Isfahani said relatives may sometimes be summoned for what appears to be a final visit, only for the execution to be postponed. Warnings that a prisoner faces imminent death can be repeated multiple times.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like inoculating the society about the news,\u201d he said. By the time the sentence is finally carried out, the initial urgency may have faded, and the public may be less prepared to mobilize.<\/p>\n

Any charge, or combination of charges, eventually imposed on a protester may depend on what interrogators find, or claim to find, after arrest. Evidence presented in Revolutionary Courts often rests on coerced confessions, intelligence reports, and material extracted from detainees\u2019 phones, with defendants given little meaningful opportunity to challenge how it was obtained or interpreted.<\/p>\n

A video sent to an overseas broadcaster may be recast as cooperation with hostile media, or publicly available information may be claimed as the transfer of sensitive intelligence. Physical resistance to security forces can become moharebeh, while the same file may also be used to support accusations of espionage or collaboration with an enemy state.<\/p>\n

This enables prosecutors to move between several overlapping categories of crimes.<\/p>\n

Maleki and Mohammadinia were convicted of moharebeh over allegations that they set fire to a mosque and seminary in Tehran, but they were also sentenced under Iran\u2019s intensified espionage law.<\/p>\n

Khanaki, arrested in connection with the January protests, was accused of possessing weapons and conducting \u201coperational activities\u201d for Israel, the United States, and hostile groups.<\/p>\n

Mohammad Amini Dehaghani\u2019s alleged offenses included seeking contact with online accounts connected to opposition groups.<\/p>\n

The Espionage Law allows protected activities, including sharing information about protests or human rights violations with foreign media, to be treated as intelligence activity, when the authorities deem them to be contrary to national security.<\/p>\n

Iran undoubtedly faces genuine foreign intelligence operations, but the claim is often made that when the regime announces an execution on charges of espionage, it is more than likely for show.<\/p>\n

When the state catches someone involved in serious clandestine activity, he said, publicizing the operational details may reveal where Iran\u2019s security apparatus was vulnerable.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe regime doesn\u2019t want to reveal where it was vulnerable and hit,\u201d Isfahani explained.<\/p>\n

Executions near Iran are also preceded by a deliberate propaganda cycle, including state media reports of confessions, footage of protesters allegedly attacking security personnel, and amplified interviews with relatives of state security officers killed during unrest.<\/p>\n

\u201cUsually before the executions happen, you see a wave of propaganda around the case,\u201d Isfahani said.<\/p>\n

\"NazNaz Gharai, from Tehran, is covered in red paint as protesters call on the United Nations to take action against the treatment of women in Iran, following the death of Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the morality police, during a demonstration near UN headquarters in New York City on November 19 (credit: YUKI IWAMURA\/AFP via Getty Images)Iran casts protesters as foreign agents to justify repression<\/p>\n

The state presents those on the streets as violent seditionists, then attributes their actions to Israel and the United States.<\/p>\n

The executions offer an alternative account of January. Economic collapse, public anger, and opposition to the Islamic Republic recede from view, and in their place is an \u201cAmerican-Zionist terrorist conspiracy,\u201d the phrase used repeatedly in official messaging. Protesters become \u201cenemy operatives under the guise of protesters,\u201d rather than citizens acting out of their own convictions.<\/p>\n

Executions are the most extreme element of a wider campaign. Thousands of people arrested during and after January may never face the gallows, but many are receiving lengthy prison terms. Amnesty reported that more than 6,000 people were arrested after the US-Israel-Iran war began on February 28, as officials ordered accelerated prosecutions under \u201cwartime conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Journalists, lawyers, activists, protesters, students, and members of ethnic and religious minorities were among those targeted.<\/p>\n

Isfahani also pointed to increased hijab enforcement and the closure of caf\u00e9s and other businesses accused of violating Islamic regulations, in contrast to the months before and during the protests, when the government saw more lenient enforcement as a way to regain control. Fewer morality police were seen on the streets enforcing the hijab, for example.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a multipronged campaign,\u201d he told the Post. \u201cIt\u2019s a multipronged social campaign by the regime to reestablish its control over the society.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Iran emerges from a security crisis, the authorities use executions to communicate that the state remains willing and able to kill.<\/p>\n

Most members of the public do not study every charge or court file, but they repeatedly encounter the same news \u2013 more prisoners hanged in another prison.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t distinguish immediately in your brain who the person was, whether the charges were political or not,\u201d Isfahani said. \u201cYou just absorb that message of terror. It\u2019s psychological warfare.\u201d<\/p>\n

January revealed how much danger many Iranians were prepared to confront, and it led to the deaths of thousands. Now, the regime is trying to erase any defiance that may have survived.<\/p>\n

But the scale of the repression betrays the fear behind it. It is the Islamic Republic, in trying to regain control of a disintegrating society through executions and repression, that is revealing its true fears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At dawn on July 28, the Islamic Republic of Iran publicly hanged Abolfazl Sepahi Badjani and Amirhossein Safari…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[34,19501,11363,11346,424,393,49,4308,69],"class_list":["post-239077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-iran","tag-iranian-economy","tag-iranian-protests","tag-iranian-revolutionary-guards","tag-irgc","tag-islamic-republic","tag-middle-east","tag-protests","tag-tehran"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117050671633037101","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}