Rights groups say the internet clampdown and a record death toll are limiting scrutiny as new protest-related cases move through Iran’s courts.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s sweeping internet blackout and a sharp rise in executions have fueled new warnings from rights groups that authorities are using isolation, fear and fast-moving court cases to tighten control after months of unrest and war.
Those concerns sharpened this week after a joint annual report by Iran Human Rights and Together Against the Death Penalty said Iranian authorities executed at least 1,639 people in 2025, the highest documented total since 1989. The report came as Amnesty International and other groups warned that protesters and dissidents remain at risk of imminent execution in 2026, and as the country’s communications shutdown has made it harder for families, lawyers, journalists and outside monitors to confirm arrests, prison transfers and deaths in real time.
The current blackout dates to Jan. 8, when internet monitoring groups and news agencies reported a nationwide shutdown as protests over worsening economic conditions spread across Iran. The disruption hit Tehran and other cities and cut ordinary users off from the wider internet. In the days that followed, connectivity data showed traffic from Iran collapsing to near zero, turning what had begun as scattered digital restrictions into a national communications freeze. Human Rights Watch later said the shutdown appeared to be part of a broader effort to hide a deadly crackdown, while state authorities pressed ahead with arrests and prosecutions. By mid-April, NetBlocks said the outage had stretched into its seventh week for the general public. Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of Iran Human Rights, said in the annual report that authorities had sought to rule through fear by carrying out an average of four to five executions a day in 2025.
The annual report offered the clearest broad count of the scale. It said the 1,639 executions recorded in 2025 were up 68% from 975 in 2024. The groups said at least 795 were for drug-related offenses, a figure they described as especially alarming because such cases often move through Revolutionary Courts that rights advocates say do not meet fair-trial standards. The report also said at least 48 women were executed, the highest number documented in at least two decades, and that 11 executions were carried out in public. It said at least 84 Afghan nationals, three Iraqis and one prisoner identified only as a foreign national were also put to death. Rights groups say such figures almost certainly understate the human toll because many executions in Iran are not publicly announced. What remains unclear is how many additional death sentences have been handed down since the start of the 2026 protest wave and how many cases are moving through appeals behind closed doors.
That uncertainty has become a central part of the story. Amnesty International said on March 31, in an update later expanded on April 2, that four dissidents had been arbitrarily executed in secret within 24 hours and that at least seven other protesters and dissidents were at risk of imminent execution. The group named teenage protester Amirhossein Hatami as having been executed on April 2 at Ghezel Hesar prison and said prosecution officials had warned that four other protesters in the same case could be put to death one by one. Amnesty also said two dissidents, Vahid Bani Amerian and Abolhassan Montazer, remained at immediate risk after being transferred to an undisclosed location. The organization said the authorities did not provide prisoners, families or lawyers advance notice in the cases it documented. In a separate report on April 4, Iranian state media said two men linked to the opposition PMOI, also known as the MEK, had been executed after their death sentences were upheld in late 2025.
The blackout has widened the gap between events inside Iran and what the outside world can verify. Human Rights Watch said in January that Iranian authorities had intensified a lethal crackdown after Jan. 8 and that the communications shutdown was concealing atrocities at a critical moment. In March, the group said the restrictions were still placing civilians at greater risk by blocking access to information during ongoing conflict and making it harder for people to contact relatives, seek help or document abuses. Cloudflare said traffic from Iran effectively dropped to zero after the Jan. 8 shutdown, a pattern consistent with a complete disconnection from the global internet. NetBlocks later described the restrictions as one of the longest nationwide outages on record. For families of prisoners, that digital darkness has practical consequences: transfers can happen without warning, prison visits become harder to arrange, and news of executions often reaches relatives only after the fact or through unofficial channels.
The rise in executions also fits a broader pattern in Iran’s recent history, in which the death penalty has been used not only in murder and narcotics cases but also in politically charged prosecutions. The 2025 report said 57 people were executed on charges such as “waging war against God” and “corruption on Earth,” accusations long criticized by international monitors as vague and open to abuse. The groups behind the report said many of those sentenced to death came from poor and marginalized communities. They also said foreign nationals and ethnic minorities were hit especially hard. In October 2025, the U.N. Fact-Finding Mission voiced alarm over the spike in executions and warned that, if the use of capital punishment formed part of a widespread and systematic attack on civilians, those responsible could face scrutiny for possible crimes against humanity. Iranian authorities have long defended the death penalty as a legal response to serious crimes and threats to national security, but rights advocates say the pace and opacity of the recent cases point to a campaign of intimidation.
What comes next is likely to unfold in fragments. Rights groups say hundreds of detained protesters remain at risk of death sentences or execution following trials they describe as grossly unfair and based in some cases on confessions obtained under torture. The April annual report said the crisis worsened in early 2026, when authorities began carrying out executions tied to the January protest movement. Amnesty has called for an immediate halt to planned executions in the cases it is tracking, while Iran Human Rights and ECPM have urged foreign governments and the United Nations to put the death penalty at the center of any engagement with Tehran. No comprehensive public accounting has yet emerged from Iranian authorities detailing how many protest-related capital cases are now active, how many appeals are pending, or when the next executions may be scheduled. With the internet still heavily restricted, each new case is emerging slowly, often only after transfers, final visits or burials have already taken place.
Even through the information gaps, a picture of life under the shutdown has come through in pieces: relatives waiting for word from prisons, lawyers struggling to confirm where clients are being held, and activists outside the country trying to match names to court files, death notices and hurried phone calls. Rights groups say the isolation serves a purpose by raising the cost of dissent and lowering the chance of immediate scrutiny. At the same time, opposition to executions has not disappeared. The annual report said the “No Death Penalty Tuesdays” movement has spread to 56 prisons, showing that prisoners and activists continue to push back even as the state tightens pressure. For now, though, the balance of power rests with institutions that can move a prisoner, seal a courtroom, cut a network and deliver a sentence before the outside world has a clear view of what happened.
The immediate picture remains one of partial visibility: a record execution count for 2025, fresh 2026 death-penalty cases tied to unrest, and a blackout that continues to limit scrutiny. The next milestone is whether Iranian authorities restore broader internet access or move ahead with more protest-related executions in the coming days.
Author note: Last updated April 16, 2026.