Crowd at a 2022 Mahsa Amini solidarity protest in Cologne holding signs supporting the Iranian people against the IRGC-backed government

Photo: Elke Wetzig, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Iran’s People vs. the IRGC: Executions, Apostasy Law and the Pahlavi Question

HRANA recorded at least 2,063 executions in Iran in 2025. Polls, protests and death-row voices show many Iranians reject the IRGC-backed system.

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Iran’s people have spent the past four years telling the world, in polls, in the streets and in voice notes from death row, that they want a different government. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its Basij militia have been at the center of the state’s response. Iran executed at least 2,063 people in 2025, the highest annual total in at least 11 years, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), and at least 2,003 in the 12 months from Oct. 10, 2025 to Oct. 8, 2026, about one every 4.35 hours. This analysis looks at what the evidence shows about repression in Iran, how minor many capital charges are, and what Iranians say they want instead.

For the military picture, see our Iran War Tracker. For how the uprisings have echoed in Massachusetts, see our timeline of Iran protests and Boston’s Iranian community.

What Iranians Say They Want: Polls and Protest Chants

Independent polling inside Iran is difficult, and the best-known source, the Netherlands-based research group GAMAAN, surveys people online, reaching many respondents through the anti-censorship tool Psiphon, then weights results by age, gender, education, province and urban or rural residence. Its results reflect literate adults who can reach the survey, and should be read with that limit in mind.

In GAMAAN’s early-2024 survey, 74.6% of respondents said they would vote “No” in a free referendum on the Islamic Republic, against 16.5% “Yes” and 8.9% unsure. Those results do not single out the IRGC, but the Guard exists to protect that system. The U.S. State Department lists the IRGC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, a designation first announced on April 8, 2019, the first time Washington applied the label to part of another country’s government.

The streets have said something similar. In the uprising that began Dec. 28, 2025 over inflation, Reuters reported that protests “quickly turn[ed] political with protesters demanding an end to clerical rule.” By late January, the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) had confirmed at least 6,221 deaths in the crackdown, AP reported, while Iranian authorities put the toll at 3,117. Witnesses told the BBC that members of the IRGC’s Basij militia fired live ammunition at protesters in Fardis, west of Tehran. “In war, both sides have weapons. Here, people only chant and get killed,” a young woman from Tehran told the BBC.

Reza Pahlavi: Real Support, but Not a Consensus

Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last shah, is the most popular opposition figure in GAMAAN’s data. In its June 2024 survey of 77,216 people inside Iran, 31% chose him as a first or second preferred political figure, far ahead of rapper Toomaj Salehi (6%) and Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi (5%). GAMAAN noted his support had dipped slightly from past years, and that it varies widely: 42% in Gilan province but 15% in Kurdistan.

During January’s protests, many people joined after calls from Pahlavi, the BBC reported, and chants of “This is the final battle; Pahlavi will return” spread widely. Yet other protesters rejected both camps; students at Allameh Tabataba’i University chanted “Neither Pahlavi nor the Supreme Leader, freedom and equality.” The fair reading is that Pahlavi commands a large, passionate following and is the opposition’s best-known face, while a substantial share of Iranians favor a republic or other leaders. TBR covered his recent Freedom Prize from Germany’s Naumann Foundation.

Born Muslim by Law, and the Apostasy Risk

Iran’s legal system ties religion to birth. According to the State Department’s 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom, “Under the law, a child born to a Muslim father is Muslim,” and “the law prohibits Muslims from changing or renouncing their religious beliefs.” The only recognized conversions are to Islam. This applies to all Iranians born to Muslim fathers, whatever their ethnicity.

Apostasy itself is not written into Iran’s penal code. Instead, Article 167 of the Constitution and Article 220 of the Islamic Penal Code direct judges to rely on “authoritative Islamic sources” where codified law is silent, which lets courts treat leaving Islam as a crime that can carry death. The State Department says judges can also reach a death sentence through other charges such as “enmity against God” or “corruption on earth.” It adds that the only known execution of an Iranian Christian specifically for apostasy took place in 1990, so the main effect today is the threat it holds over converts and nonbelievers.

Executions at Dawn, by the Numbers

Bar chart of executions in Iran recorded by HRANA per calendar year, 2021 to 2025, rising to 2,063 in 2025
Source: HRANA. Minimum counts; the 2023 report covers Jan. 1 to Dec. 20. Chart: The Boston Report.

“In Iran, the authorities carry out executions by hanging. They carry them out at dawn,” Nassim Papayianni of Amnesty International told the BBC in May 2026. Dawn hangings are documented across many cases; rights groups have not established that every execution is timed to the morning prayer.

HRANA, a U.S.-based group that relies on a volunteer network inside Iran, recorded at least 299 executions in 2021, 565 in 2022, 746 in 2023 (through Dec. 20) and 930 in 2024, before the 2025 jump to 2,063, a 119% rise. HRANA says 95% of 2025 executions were carried out in secret or without public announcement, and 11 were carried out in public. Other monitors, including Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) and Amnesty International, use different methods and report different totals.

Much of the toll involves crimes that do not meet the international-law threshold of intentional killing:

  • Drugs: 44.93% of those executed in 2025 were convicted of drug offenses, HRANA found, after 56.43% in 2023 and 52.69% in 2024. In HRANA’s Oct. 2025 to Oct. 2026 report, the share was 36.25%.
  • Women: at least 61 women were executed in 2025, and 47 in the latest 12-month period.
  • Protesters and political cases: HRANA documented 69 executions on political and security charges from Oct. 10, 2025 to Oct. 8, 2026, up from 43 a year earlier. Of those, 35 were linked to the January 2026 protests.
  • Juveniles and public hangings: four people executed in that period were under 18 at the time of their alleged offenses, and nine were hanged in public.

Named cases show how little it can take. Sasan Azadvar, a 21-year-old karate champion from Isfahan, was hanged in April 2026 for “moharebeh” after confessing on state TV to breaking a police car window with a stick; the BBC noted he was not accused of any lethal offense. Mohsen Shekari, 23, the first person executed over the 2022 protests, was convicted of blocking a Tehran street and wounding a Basij member, after what Amnesty International called a “grossly unfair sham trial.”

Voices Few Hear

The hardest part of Iran’s story may be getting anyone to hear it. “You are hearing my voice from Oromiyeh Central Prison, and this may be the last time you hear it,” Mehrab Abdollahzadeh, a 29-year-old Kurdish shop owner, said in a voice note before he was hanged in May 2026. Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) notes that most of those executed have names and faces “unknown to the wider public, and the majority of their executions receive little or no attention.” Eyewitnesses told BBC Persian the reality inside Iran is hard for the outside world to imagine.

Iran’s government rejects this criticism. Authorities have accused the United States and Israel of fomenting the unrest, and judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei said in April that his courts would not be swayed by international criticism of death sentences.

My assessment: the numbers above are minimums compiled by people working from outside a closed country, and they are still the highest in a generation. The polling, the chants and the voice notes point the same way. The question for Washington and Europe is no longer whether Iranians are speaking, but whether anyone is listening.

Sources

Additional sources

Featured photo: Mahsa Amini solidarity protest in Cologne, Germany, Sept. 24, 2022. Photo by Elke Wetzig, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped.

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