Iran has executed four prisoners this week on charges that include espionage and terrorism, according to Iranian news media, the latest in what rights groups say is a rapid escalation in the government’s use of the death penalty.
Iran has long been one of the world’s most frequent users of capital punishment. Yet the pace of sentencing and hangings appears to have surged over the last two months, amid the war with the United States and Israel, according to several Iran-focused rights groups.
In most of those cases, the groups say, the executed prisoners did not receive due process.
“Many of these executions follow extremely rapid judicial proceedings in which defendants have little or no access to legal counsel, face fundamentally unfair trials and are often convicted using forced confessions extracted under torture,” said Omid Memarian, a senior analyst at DAWN, a Washington-based think tank focused on human rights.
Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The recent spike in executions, Mr. Memarian said, reflects growing anxiety in the government over deep-seated public grievances.
In January, security forces crushed nationwide anti-government protests with deadly force, killing thousands. The discontent has only deepened since Israel and the United States attacked in late February, battering the country’s infrastructure and plunging its already severe economic crisis to new lows.
The rate of executions appears to have risen rapidly since April, when a cease-fire was reached.
“Officials fear that any spark could trigger another wave of unrest.” Mr. Memarian said. “The government is trying to project that it remains fully in control and willing to impose the harshest punishments on anyone seen as challenging the state.”
In early May, state media announced three executions in one day, all of whom were men arrested in relation to the January protests.
On Wednesday, Iranian state media reported that Mohammad Abbasi, who was arrested along with his daughter on charges of killing a police officer during the January protests, had been executed.
State television aired confessions from Mr. Abbasi and his daughter that rights groups say were forced.
“His ‘confessions’ were used as his defence,” Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of the Norway-based Iran Human Rights, wrote in a social media post about the execution. He said that Mr. Abbasi was the 15th detainee from the January protests to have been executed since mid-March.
The judiciary’s news agency, Mizan, said on Tuesday that Abdoljalil Shahbakhsh had been hanged, having been arrested in 2022 during mass protests in Iran and convicted of terrorism and “armed attacks” on police stations. Iran Human Rights described Mr. Shahbakhsh as a political prisoner.
The New York Times was unable to independently corroborate the veracity of the charges against those executed, nor was it possible to reach their family members.
Iranian authorities have also been intensifying their search and crackdown against suspected spies and saboteur cells. That started in June 2025, when Israel launched a 12-day war on Iran, briefly joined by U.S. forces.
Iranian officials have said that there are widespread networks of spies working with Israel inside the country. Yet security sweeps, in which thousands of people were arrested, have also become a way to go after the regime’s critics and opponents too, rights groups warn.
Erfan Shakourzadeh, a 29-year-old student at Iran University of Science and Technology, was executed this week, convicted of “collaborating” with the United States and Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, according to state media.
And on Wednesday, it was reported that Ehsan Afrashteh was executed after being charged with receiving training from Mossad in Nepal and then selling sensitive information to Israel.
Mr. Amiry-Moghaddam, of Iran Human Rights, urged the international community to exert greater pressure on Iran to stop the tide of executions and make that part of any future negotiations between Washington and Tehran to end the war.
“Unless the political cost of executions for the Islamic Republic increases, we will continue to witness daily executions in the weeks and months ahead,” he said.
During the January demonstrations, President Trump urged them on, posting on social media, “KEEP PROTESTING — TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS,” and “HELP IS ON ITS WAY.” He then boasted that his threats had pushed Iran to halt execution of protesters.