Iran Executed at Least 901 People in Seven Months, Rights Group Says

At least 901 people were executed in Iran in the first seven months of this year. That is the number that matters most from the mid-August accounting by the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, a rights group that tracks capital punishment in Iran, and it means the state was putting people to death at a pace of more than four a day, every day, from January through July. ^{2 3}

The same accounting says at least 56 of those executed had been sentenced in political or national-security cases, and 98 were members of ethnic minorities. ^{2 3} UA.NEWS, citing the same report, gave the same seven-month total and the same figure of at least 56 sentenced in political or national-security cases. ³

The sources do not agree on the exact toll, and the disagreement is worth stating plainly. The count cited on August 19 put the January-through-July total at 901. ^{2 3} A week earlier, on August 12, Iran International, citing an earlier Boroumand Center count, reported at least 916 executed since January, including 15 so far in August. ⁴

The earlier total is higher than the later seven-month total, even though the later report covers more time. No source in the file explains the gap. The group itself cautioned that the real number was "likely much higher because Iranian authorities withhold information about many cases." ⁴

More granular tallies that have circulated — including higher seven-month totals, larger August additions, and detailed breakdowns by drug cases, espionage and other security charges, women, and people who were minors at the time of the alleged offense — do not appear in the provided sources and cannot be confirmed here. The closest matching figures in the reporting file are 901 for January through July and 916 including 15 in August as of August 12. ^{2 3 4} The sources also do not give a year-over-year comparison or a full breakdown by ethnicity, religion, gender, age and region. ^{2 3 4}

What the reporting file does establish is the direction: drug-related and protest- and security-related cases drove the surge, and executions continued through August. ^{2 3 4} UN human rights chief Volker Türk said on August 5 that Iran had executed at least 56 people on national security-related charges since March 19, including 27 in cases linked to protests earlier in the year, with more than 100 others facing death-penalty charges. ⁶

A week earlier, on July 28, Amnesty International had called for an end to what it described as an "escalating campaign of arbitrary executions," citing the public execution of two protesters that day, at least three others the previous week, and fears for at least 60 others at risk, including three arrested as children. ⁵

The named cases in late August show how the protest crackdown carried into the execution chamber. Ghaem Hosseini, called "Arian," was executed August 20 over the January Isfahan protests — the fifth death in a case about which UN experts had raised concerns — and Iran's judiciary described him as a foreign national without naming the country. ⁷ Majid Adineh was executed at dawn after the Supreme Court upheld his sentence, with the judiciary accusing him of taking "operational action" for Israel, the United States and hostile groups, and a Karaj Revolutionary Court ordered confiscation of all his property. ⁹ NIAC reported two more men executed August 21 connected to the January 2026 protests. ¹⁰

That allegation, quoted by ABC News in its August 9 report that public executions had returned to Iran's streets as the regime "clamps down" after the war, captures the fear described by families and monitors. ⁸ Iran HRM said on August 26 that repression had moved into detention centers and Revolutionary Courts, with ongoing death sentences through "vague security" charges. ¹¹

No provided source confirms any verbatim statement from Iranian authorities confirming or contesting the overall totals. ^{2 3 4} The judiciary has spoken about individual cases, as in the descriptions of Hosseini and Adineh, but the aggregate count rests entirely on the Boroumand Center's documentation and the international bodies citing concern about it. ^{7 9}