Human Rights

A leading pharmaceutical industry figure warned that Iran faces inevitable production disruptions and severe drug shortages by March, as renewed UN sanctions under the snapback mechanism tighten access to foreign currency and strain supply chains.

Iran’s Supreme Court has overturned death sentences issued against five Kurdish men from Boukan who were arrested during the Woman, Life, Freedom protests in 2022, ordering a retrial in a local revolutionary court, according to rights organizations.

Zahra Shahbaz Tabari, a 67-year-old Iranian political prisoner, has been sentenced to death by a revolutionary court on charges of collaboration with groups fighting the Islamic Republic, a US-based human rights group said on Saturday.

Iran’s hardline daily Kayhan, run by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s representative, blamed government bodies for lax enforcement of hijab rules and called for stronger promotion of compulsory veiling in a commentary published on Saturday.

Eight hundred Iranian activists including political prisoners on Friday condemned as a "tool of repression" a steep uptick in Tehran's use of the death penalty after rights groups reported 280 hangings in Iran in October alone.

Iran's Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence of Manouchehr Fallah, a 42-year-old laborer from northern Iran who now faces imminent execution for allegedly detonating a small sound bomb outside a local courthouse.

A US court will hold a sentencing hearing next week for two men convicted over an alleged Tehran-backed plot to kill Iranian dissident and journalist Masih Alinejad, she said on X on Thursday.

On paper, Iran’s law still mandates the compulsory hijab. But the streets tell a more complicated truth.

Iran has carried out at least 88 public executions between 2011 and 2023, according to a review published by the daily Shargh, which said the practice -- often witnessed by crowds including children -- has failed to reduce violent crime despite declining in recent years.

An Iranian nuclear engineer employed at the Natanz nuclear facilities was executed in Qom last week after being convicted of spying for Israel, according to the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights.

Hooshmand Ramezanipour spoke softly from a refugee camp in Serbia, his voice low and cautious. “There are smugglers here,” he said. “To be honest, I have died and been resurrected many times — both inside Iran and here.”

A hardline commentator on Iranian state television alleged that the Baha'i minority in Iran holds secret allegiance to Israel, in comments which appear to reinforce official enmity toward the group as state persecution continues.

Calls are growing across Iran’s film industry to end state censorship, with thirteen trade unions joining directors and screenwriters in demanding the abolition of film production permits and pre-production controls imposed by government bodies.

Many Iranian journalists and activists abroad have begun to treat state intimidation and harassment as part of daily life, UN Special Rapporteur on Iran Mai Sato said on Tuesday, criticizing the persistence of what she called Iran's transnational repression.

A six-year-old boy was killed in southwest Iran after police fired on a family car and abandoned the wounded at the scene, local sources told Iran International, suggesting that officers’ failure to take him to hospital and leaving his family by the roadside led to his death.

Iran’s government spokesperson said on Tuesday that the administration does not believe coercion can restore compliance with Iran’s hijab laws, amid renewed debate over enforcement and the deployment of tens of thousands of volunteers in Tehran.

Iranian national Mahdieh Esfandiari has been put forward in a prisoner exchange arrangement with France, Deputy Foreign Minister Vahid Jalalzadeh said on Tuesday.

An Iranian protester shot during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising is living in constant pain with more than 80 lead pellets lodged in his body — and now fears deportation from Turkey to Iran, where he could face severe punishment.