The world is once again confronted with the horrifying reality of Iran’s increasing use of executions as a tool of state control. On 29 August 2025, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued a stark warning to Iran, urging the country to halt its escalating executions and impose a moratorium on the death penalty.
According to the OHCHR, Iranian authorities have executed at least 841 people in 2025 alone, with 110 people executed in July more than double the number during the same month last year. Since President Masoud Pezeshkian took office in August 2024, the regime has executed nearly 1,600 people in just 12 months, including women, juvenile offenders, and political prisoners. In the past 30 days alone, at least 162 people were hanged, many in public. Yet only around 4% of these executions have been officially acknowledged, underscoring what observers say is a deliberate strategy of secrecy and fear.
Coercion and bias in action
The UN has expressed alarm at this surge, urging Iran to halt executions immediately and to impose a moratorium on the death penalty. OHCHR officials emphasised that executions in Iran often follow unfair trials, coerced confessions, and charges such as “spreading corruption on earth”, disproportionately targeting ethnic minorities and migrants. The death penalty, according to rights monitors, has become a systematic instrument of intimidation.
British peer Lord Alton of Liverpool said Iran’s theocracy “has blood on its hands”, reflecting wider concern that the international community risks repeating the mistakes of appeasement by failing to hold Tehran accountable.
Meanwhile, Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), drew attention to the wider dangers posed by the regime. She reiterated that the authorities will not abandon their pursuit of nuclear weapons. The recent collapse of talks in Geneva underscored the regime’s intransigence, making the activation of the UN snapback mechanism and enforcement of Security Council resolutions more urgent, she said. Rajavi has long argued that the only viable solution lies in “regime change by the Iranian people and their organised Resistance”.
Australia takes action
Rajavi also welcomed the expulsion of Iran’s ambassador from Australia, stressing that Iranian embassies abroad function not as diplomatic missions but as centres of espionage and terrorism. The 2018 case of Asadollah Assadi, the diplomat convicted in Belgium for attempting to bomb an NCRI gathering in Paris, highlighted this issue. Europe has long been a threat for Tehran’s extraterritorial repression, with assassination attempts and terrorist plots targeting NCRI and MEK members, as well as political figures such as Dr Alejo Vidal-Quadras, the former Vice President of the European Parliament.
An intelligence and security committee of parliament report released in July 2025 corroborated these concerns, stating that the Iranian Intelligence Services have demonstrated a willingness to carry out assassinations and kidnappings within the UK. The report noted that there have been at least 15 attempts on UK soil since early 2022, marking this as “the greatest level of threat we currently face from Iran”.
Iranians and supporters to march
These concerns will be spotlighted on 6 September, when tens of thousands of Iranians and supporters of the NCRI are expected to gather in Brussels for the Free Iran Rally. Organisers describe the event as a moral imperative and a demand for Europe and the wider world to stand with the victims rather than the executioners. The rally will call attention to the scale of executions in Iran and urge governments to adopt stronger measures against Tehran.
The Iranian government, critics argue, has made it clear through its actions whether mass executions, nuclear brinkmanship, or terrorist operations abroad that it relies on repression and secrecy. Yet, the persistence of the Iranian Resistance and growing international scrutiny indicate that momentum is building.
The Free Iran Rally in Brussels in September will serve as a test of how far international governments are prepared to go in addressing the crisis. As calls mount for Europe to close Iranian embassies and designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist entity, advocates stress that silence or inaction would only embolden Tehran further.
For those facing execution in Iran, campaigners say, silence is complicity.
