Iran: 900 people executed in eight months, nearly all poor, ignorant, and without families.

Iran has a population of 90 million and has so far carried out its 904th execution of 2025. In July, Iran Human Rights calculated (and the figure coincides perfectly with Hands Off Cain's data), 110 people were put to death. Last year, in July, there were "only" 48 executions. According to Iranian dissident NGOs, it is clear that the so-called "12-day war" with Israel has frightened the Ayatollahs' regime, and the regime in turn wants to frighten the population (even more, if need be) lest they even think of revolting. This is a widely held theory among analysts, but it clashes with another fact.

The Iran Human Rights report cited above states that " of the 110 executions, only 8 were published in Iran's domestic media, or 7%." This certainly highlights the regime's opaqueness, but if the executions aren't reported in newspapers or on television, how can we be certain that they're being carried out to keep the population in a state of fear? Relying on simple "hearsay " or "word of mouth" ? Maybe. The work of more than one dissident NGO is exceptional: they write, find news, report arrests, and have sources in prisons from which they manage to leak information about the 93% of executions the government doesn't want to report. They truly do a tremendous job, and certainly a dangerous one. I disagree with them on one point: when, in making a "list" of the various hanged men, they divide them into " political prisoners" and "non-political prisoners ." In July, for example, 2 of those executed were political prisoners, 5 were accused of rape, 59 of drug-related crimes, and 44 of murder.

When I looked into the case of a 20-year-old man hanged for rape, a whole new world opened up: the boy had run away from home with his girlfriend, they had managed to live together for a few weeks, and when her family tracked them down, he was accused of rape, convicted, and quickly hanged. This isn't rape; it's what we would call today " an attempt to escape the ancestral laws of patriarchy ," whereby it's the girl's father who decides who she can fall in love with, not the girl herself. But I also have trouble cataloging those sentenced to death " for drug-related crimes ." There are hundreds of them every year. Unless you want to be racist, and consider that anyone born in Iran has a very low IQ, who would ever sell drugs knowing they're being sentenced to death? The only answer that comes to mind is someone who is very poor and doesn't know how to earn a living. I write “bread” because Iranian exile NGOs write in English, and use the term “breadwinner,” which literally means “the breadwinner,” when they mean that a person is the sole breadwinner for the entire family, which often ranges from elderly parents not covered by a practically non-existent pension system (especially in rural areas), to adults, and even children.

You see the photos NGOs distribute of convicted drug dealers , and every now and then you find one filmed wearing a Gucci cap or an Armani T-shirt (caps and T-shirts, not Rolexes and Porsches), but all the others are basic, poor, and don't even have a trendy haircut. Can we really equate them with our rich Western drug dealers? When someone is forced to commit crimes because their country (which easily circumvents sanctions and sells oil halfway around the world) invests entirely in armaments, repressive apparatuses, and guerrilla warfare for export, is he a criminal, or, as Hands Off Cain would have it, a " political prisoner," albeit a sui generis one?

Murderers also create some classification problems for us. Islamic law allows the convicted person to seek forgiveness from the victim's relatives by paying compensation, which is adjusted annually based on inflation. Currently, it's the equivalent of approximately 18,000 euros for a Muslim male victim and 9,000 euros for a Muslim female victim. There's no set value for non-Muslims. NGOs estimate that every year, out of five people convicted of murder, four manage to pay the "blood money" and be released. How poor, ignorant, and unconnected are the remaining murderers who can't raise 18,000 euros, with the help of family members, or even their clan, as often happens? Perhaps considering them "political prisoners" is going too far. But it's not entirely wrong, either.

FROM

Valerio Fioravanti