(Beirut) - Iranian authorities in 2025 carried out executions on a scale unseen since the late 1980s, carried out mass killings in response to protests across the country, conducted mass and arbitrary arrests, and ratcheted up repression under the guise of national security, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2026. 

The deadly crackdown on the protests that erupted in late December escalated sharply in early 2026, as security forces carried out mass killings of protesters and bystanders, with the death toll rising to the thousands. Human Rights Watch found evidence of a coordinated escalation in the authorities' use of unlawful and lethal force since January 8, including of protesters and bystanders killed or injured by gunshot wounds to their heads and torsos. Authorities committed massacres amid a nationwide internet shutdown and telecommunications restrictions they imposed to conceal the true scale of the atrocities.

The year 2025 was characterized by widespread and systematic violations of the right to life, including through the application of the death penalty. By the end of December, Iran's authorities had executed over 2,000 people according to the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran, the highest number of known executions since the late 1980s. Over half of the executions were for drug-related offenses, blatantly violating international law. Executions followed systematic gross fair trial violations, and women and ethnic minorities, many of whom also belong to the Sunni religious minority, were increasingly targeted by the death penalty.

"The spiral of impunity and bloodshed resulted in an execution spree unseen in decades, in 2025, and the deadliest protest crackdown that led to unprecedented mass killings of thousands of protesters and bystanders this year," said Bahar Saba, senior Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch. "The international community should urgently pursue concrete accountability measures through all available avenues, including universal jurisdiction, to hold those responsible to account."

In the 529-page World Report 2026, its 36th edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices inmore than100 countries. In his introductory essay, Executive Director Philippe Bolopion writes that breaking the authoritarian wave sweeping the world is the challenge of a generation. With the human rights system under unprecedented threat from the Trump administration and other global powers, Bolopion calls on rights-respecting democracies and civil society to build a strategic alliance to defend fundamental freedoms.

Source: Human Rights Watch