Iran executed at least 1,639 people in 2025 — roughly five per day — marking the highest number of recorded executions in the Islamic Republic since 1989, according to a joint annual report by two human rights organisations: Iran Human Rights (IHR), a Norway-based NGO, and Ensemble contre la peine de mort (ECPM), a Paris-based abolitionist group. The figure represents a 68% increase compared to 2024, when 975 people were put to death, and has prompted experts and campaigners to warn that the death penalty has become a systematic tool of mass political repression.

The vast majority of those executed were convicted of drug-related offences (795 people, a 58% rise on the previous year) or murder (747, a 79% increase). At least 57 were executed on security-related charges, including protesters and six members of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), an exiled opposition movement. One person was executed for allegedly spying for Israel. At least 48 women were hanged — the highest number in more than two decades and a 55% increase year-on-year. Ethnic minorities and other marginalised communities were disproportionately represented among those executed, and just over half of all sentences had been handed down by Revolutionary Courts following what the NGOs describe as