Iran executed eighteen-year-old Amirhossein Hatami and appears poised to carry out a wave of additional killings targeting protesters and political prisoners, as the regime faces mounting internal pressure and an ongoing external military conflict.
Hatami's execution came just days after four members of the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran were hanged in secret earlier this week. Amnesty International warned that seven protesters and dissidents remain at imminent risk of execution. The pace of state-sanctioned killing has alarmed human rights groups and Iranian opposition figures, who say the regime is using the hangings as a tool of political terror.
An Iranian court found Hatami guilty of entering a restricted military site in Tehran, damaging and setting fire to the facility, and attempting to seize weapons and ammunition. Amnesty International said he had been "subjected to torture and other ill-treatment in detention, before being convicted in grossly unfair trials that relied on forced confessions."
The regime hanged Pouya Ghobadi and Babak Alipour on Tuesday. A day later, Mohammad Taghavi Sangdehi and Ali Akbar Daneshvarkar were killed. Iran Human Rights said all four executions were carried out without families being notified, a pattern the group condemned as extrajudicial killing designed to suppress political dissent.
Iran Human Rights described the proceedings against the men as "grossly unfair trials, based on confessions extracted under torture and coercion."
"We consider these executions to constitute extrajudicial killings, carried out with the intent of creating terror to suppress political dissent."
That assessment tracks with a broader pattern. The regime has acknowledged more than 3,000 deaths during the unrest that swept the country, though independent monitors put the number far higher.
Mohammad Mohaddessin, chair of the National Council of Resistance of Iran's Foreign Affairs Committee, spoke at a briefing on Wednesday and framed the killings as a deliberate campaign of intimidation. He said a court in Iran has already confirmed the death sentences of fifteen additional PMOI members.
Mohaddessin told reporters:
"These executions were not only the taking of four lives, but they were also a message from the regime. Why were they executed now? During a very hard external war? Because the regime leadership is extremely concerned about the domestic situation and the possibility of another uprising."
He went further, calling the killings a possible "prelude to a massacre of political prisoners, similar to 1988, when the regime, facing the consequences of its defeat in war with Iraq, carried out mass executions in which 30,000 political prisoners were executed."
That comparison is not casual. The 1988 massacre remains one of the worst episodes of political killing in the modern Middle East. The NCRI's fear is that the current regime, now operating under Mojtaba, the son of the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, will follow the same playbook as it confronts an external military campaign and deep domestic unrest simultaneously.
Khamenei was killed in an airstrike weeks earlier, according to reporting on the conflict. His 36-year rule ended abruptly, and the transition of power to his son has not calmed the regime's posture toward its own citizens.
Amnesty International warned that four other protesters sentenced in the same case as Hatami, Mohammad Amin Biglari, Ali Fahim, Abolfazl Salehi Siavashani, and Shahin Vahedparast Kolo, will be executed soon, reportedly "one each day." Two additional dissidents, Vahid Bani Amerian and Abolhassan Montazer, were transferred to an undisclosed location on March 30 and remain at imminent risk.
The NCRI reported that by late December, the regime had already carried out more than 2,200 executions across 91 cities. The Human Rights Activists News Agency recorded more than 7,000 killings overall and said more than 220 children died. Medical professionals estimated the true toll could reach 30,000.
Those numbers dwarf the regime's own accounting. Iranian authorities acknowledged more than 3,000 deaths but attributed the violence to "terrorist acts" and dismissed the protests as "foreign-instigated riots."
The protests began in late December over the rising cost of living, then rapidly expanded into nationwide anti-government demonstrations. They peaked on January 8 and 9, when security forces launched a sweeping crackdown. In the aftermath, the regime moved to punish participants through mass trials and executions.
Last month, Iran executed three men in Qom who had been convicted of killing two police officers during the January protests. Among them was Saleh Mohammadi, a 19-year-old champion wrestler accused of killing a security agent on January 8. Mohammadi denied the accusation and said his confession was extracted under torture. Amnesty International noted he was sentenced to death in February, less than three weeks after his arrest.
Mehdi Ghasemi and Saeed Davoudi were executed alongside Mohammadi. Mizan Online, a state-linked outlet, reported that all three were found guilty of "moharebeh", "waging war against God", a capital charge under Iranian law.
The abuse allegations extend beyond the courtroom. Iran International cited a source close to a detainee who described "injections with substances of unknown composition" administered to prisoners. The full scope of mistreatment inside Iranian prisons remains difficult to verify, but the consistent pattern of forced confessions, rushed sentencing, and secret executions paints a grim picture.
Iranian dissident politician Maryam Rajavi described the executions as reflecting the regime's "fear and desperation." She said:
"Carrying out such executions amid an external war is a clear admission that the regime's principal enemy is the Iranian people and their Resistance. Although the regime seeks to exploit external war to mask its deep and unresolved internal crises, it cannot escape its inevitable overthrow by the people and the Resistance."
The timing of these executions matters. The regime is not acting from a position of strength. It is conducting these killings while simultaneously facing sustained military pressure from the United States and coping with the death of its supreme leader. Rather than consolidating power through governance, Mojtaba's regime appears to be consolidating it through the gallows.
Mohaddessin's warning, that the regime "wants these executions to intimidate, to send a warning", is consistent with decades of Iranian behavior. When the mullahs feel cornered, they do not negotiate with their people. They make examples of them.
The international response, so far, has consisted largely of condemnation from human rights organizations. Whether Western governments will take concrete steps to pressure the regime over its treatment of political prisoners remains an open question, particularly as regional security concerns continue to escalate across the Middle East.
Meanwhile, the families of the condemned wait. The regime has shown it will execute in secret, without notice, and without meaningful due process. The next names on the list are already known. Whether anyone acts before those names become obituaries is another matter entirely.
A government that hangs teenagers and hides the bodies of political prisoners is not governing. It is surviving, and it knows the difference.
