Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei makes his first public appearance since the war with Is (Image: Getty)
As Iran’s government ramps up political executions, killing nearly 30 people just last week, activists say the Ayatollah is ‘fearful’ of losing power, resorting to “amputating hands and public hangings” in an attempt to intimidate dissidents in the wake of the 12-day war with Israel.
“On July 30, a 28-year-old boy named Yusuf Amiri was killed in Tabriz. Reza Salehi. He was hanged in the city of Shiraz on the same day. Abdul Zahir was killed in the city of Qom.”
“[Many] are young people within their twenties who have been executed by hanging. And in the city of Kermanshah, we saw two other executions on July 29, and on Sunday, this is last Sunday, 13 prisoners were actually sent to the gallows for execution,” Dr. Ramesh Sepehrrad, a board member of the Organisation of Iranian American Communities (OIAC), told Express US. It comes amid reports that around 116 prisoners were executed just this month.
“And of course, the high-profile execution of Behrouz Ehsani, 69, and Mehdi Hassani, 48, also took place in the early hours of last Sunday too.” They were heavily tortured and given a sham five-minute trial, confirms Amnesty International.
Since the 12-day war with Israel, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, as Iran’s government is known, has sought to tighten its grip on power. However, a “fearful” Ayatollah has gone into hiding ever since Israeli missiles took out a large part of his inner circle – between eight and 10 top IRGC generals and leaders were killed. He’s made just one public appearance since, with many taking note of his disappearance.
Droughts and unmaintained water sources have created an issue with access to drinking water in Tehran. Power cuts have become common, creating public anger and contributing to the protests.
Meanwhile, truck driver and shopkeeper strikes have sought to cripple the economy, and with it the regime – though it’s important to note that many Iranians are now extremely concerned about the lack of resources, adding fuel to the fire against the IRGC.
Horrifying moment Iranian is publicly hanged from a crane in front of a crowd (Image: X)
Yet, Iranians continue to protest, despite the terror. “The fear and the panic that the regime is facing that they cannot quite regulate,” Dr. Sepehrrad says. “The regime is now resorting back to amputating hands and executing people in public and hanging people.”
“Why would a regime, if they are strong, need to resort to such public violence and such targeted violence? It’s because they fear the public. Because they know that Achilles heel is the resistance movement that is happening inside the country that is not being intimidated, through their tactics of killings and arrests.”
According to the 2024 Annual Report, Iran executed at least 975 individuals – a 17 percent increase from the previous year. The executions disproportionately targeted women, juvenile offenders, ethnic and religious minorities, and political dissidents.
According to Amnesty International, Iran executes more people than any other country except China. Last month, the UN Human Rights Office publicly urged Iran’s leaders to stop using the death penalty, based on the “worrying surge in executions” that saw at least 612 people reportedly executed in the first half of this year.
New protests fueled by lack of water, power, and political executions erupted this weekend (Image: Hossein_Imani1/X)
Last week alone, 31 people – including one woman – were executed, with two executions carried out publicly in western Larestan. Human rights activists say the government uses executions to instill fear, humiliate society, and normalize violence.
Iran replied that it restricts its use of the death penalty to “only the most severe crimes.” Murder, rape, adultery and some drug crimes are capital offenses in Iran. The Islamic law offenses of “enmity against God” and “corruption on Earth” are also punishable by death.
“There is a saying in the Iranian resistance, and actually is spoken by Massoud Rajavi, who was leader of the MEK, a long time ago. He said, ‘it is a horror, that for generations, our children, will have to wake or get awakened to the nightmare of having seen men and women hanging from cranes as they walk to school in the morning,’” explains Dr. Majid Sadeghpour of the OIAC. (MEK stands for the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), also known as Mojahedin-e-Khalq, a dissident Iranian opposition group currently headquartered in Albania.)
“That’s the nightmare, and I think that is an actual truth in that. If you can imagine they do this in public, they do it at a time of significant traffic intentionally. It is a medieval tactic, one that I’m aware of, no one else in the globe is engaged in. It is intended to horrify the population, and this includes the children, who unfortunately inadvertently watch this,” Dr. Sadeghpour said.
With the crackdown, the Iranian people have responded by continuing to protest, sometimes from their prison cells.
Prisoners in 50 Iranian prisons staged hunger strikes on Tuesday during the 83rd week of the “No to Execution Tuesdays” campaign, with Dehdasht Prison joining the protest for the first time.
“One of the things that really impresses me, to be honest, is the resiliency of the political prisoners,” Dr. Sepehrrad says. “Like the day after Mehdi and Behroz were executed, in one prison, women, female inmates, women, female political prisoners, actually, got, rallied up and they started chanting, ‘we will stand until the death penalty is abolished until the end.’”
“And then another chant was ‘Death to the dictator,’ and then another chant was the ‘execution regime must be overthrown.’”
“So these prisoners are fully aware of the consequences of these chants, but I think these women, these political prisoners, are fully aware of the consequences that they will face when they chant these things in prison, but they’re doing it intentionally to inspire the public,” Sepehrrad explains.
“They’re doing it intentionally to tell them that they’re not going to be able to break us down,” she adds.
This past weekend has seen the resurgence of protests. Videos show that in front of the Shiraz Governor’s Office, around four to five hundred people gathered and chanted slogans about ending the regime and ‘freedom.’
“These individuals who are clapping and saying ‘freedom, freedom, freedom,’ in the middle of a large city in Shiraz, a historic city, one of the birthplaces of poetry in Iran, is an enormous indicator of just how brave these people have to be because every one of them is going to get identified,” adds Dr. Majid Sadeghpour of the OIAC.
“Every one of them is going to get summoned to the intelligence ministry, and every one of them is going to be asked, ‘who told you about this?’ and the fact that people can rhyme their songs, in absolute dictatorships, speaks to the organisational capability of these people who have gathered,” Sedeghpour continues.
“And this is every day, it’s happening every day in Iran,” assures Sadeghpour.
The most important part of the protests to keep in mind for the West, is that “an organized resistance has been fighting this,” says Dr. Sadeghpour. “That’s why you see this continuing brutality, and it has been the regime’s effort to decapitate this resistance that has failed despite the massacres and the killings and the murders,” Sadeghpour continues.
“And that is really at the core of the message, and that’s why I am proud to be a member of this resistance led by NCRI. That is an important distinction. I think the free world, since they think there is no alternative, is kind of resigned to dealing with this regime in perpetuity. I think that’s the story has to has to change.”
“I think we need to start listening to the people of Iran and listening to their resistance, and that resistance is not accidental. It has a pedigree that dates back to the early days of this regime,” argues Sadeghpour.
What Drs. Sadeghpour and Sepehrrad agree on, is that Iranians must be allowed to pursue peace without interference. House Resolution 166, which gained bipartisan support, reinforces the ten-point plan of the National Council of Resistance of Iran for a free, non-nuclear, and democratic Iran. This includes the end of the ‘appeasement’ era, which allows the Iranian government to continue to collect funds and participate in foreign affairs while committing atrocities at home.
