Iran had reportedly executed at least 1,639 people – including children – in 2025, a 68 per cent increase over 2024, and at least 48 women, the highest in over 20 years. The year before, in 2024, Iran had accounted for as much as 64 per cent of all known global executions, according to Amnesty International. Over 94 per cent of these executions are carried out in secret and never announced officially, a deliberate policy of concealment, as per the Human Rights Activists News Agency.
Its regime has for decades also jailed activists and continues to imprison Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi, who is now reportedly seriously ill in prison. She had famously declared from inside Tehran’s Evin Prison on October 6, 2023, the day she won the Nobel Peace Prize, that “Women will not give up. We are fuelled by a will to survive, whether we are inside prison or outside."
Narges has spent most of her adult life in jail for saying ‘women deserve to be free’. In Iran, that’s a CRIME. Today, the 54-year-old is fighting for her life following severe medical problems in jail, including a reported heart attack in March. However, Iran's prosecutors have blocked her medical furlough repeatedly. She has been arrested 13 times, sentenced to 31 years in prison and 154 lashes — all for advocating women's rights and opposing the death penalty.
Her lawyer called it what it is: a slow death by design.
This is not a one-off. This is Iran’s state policy.
And the question before the world – specifically before US President Donald Trump, who claimed for so long that the West Asia war was to bring about regime change to free Iranian citizens – why is so little of this appearing on the negotiating table?
Yes, Trump had demanded in April 2026 the release of eight Iranian women protestors allegedly on death row, calling positive action on it a “good start” to peace talks. But this went nowhere, with Iran not only denying Trump’s claims that they would be released but also that they were not listed for execution in the first place.
But what about the larger lists and the laws behind them? Why are these hugely documented cases, around whom there is total unanimity across the world, not being taken up with the Iranian regime? Why are ideas of freedom, democracy and human rights – the bedrock of civilisational thought and the foundation of democracies like the USA – not being reinforced even for a moral high ground wherein the narrative has been lost to control over oil and nuclear weapons?
Here are some reasons why it should. There are many more, including the chance for Trump to lift his own battered image both globally-- and especially with his MAGA support base, especially women.
Iran Is Torturing Its Own People – Gender No Bar
Source: India Latest News, Breaking News Today, Top News Headlines | Times Now
