Death counter for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic

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Timeline and the events that occurred under the shadow of Ali Khamenei's rule

  1. 1939 Birth of Ali Khamenei

    Ali Khamenei was born on April 19, 1939, in Mashhad, the son of Javad Khamenei and Khadijeh Mirdamadi, into a clerical family. After serving as president, he became Supreme Leader in 1989 and ruled Iran with near-absolute authority for 37 years. Under his command, security forces repeatedly crushed dissent, killed protesters, and imprisoned freedom-seekers. His rule left a legacy of fear, repression, and state violence.

  2. 1989 Rise to Power

    Following Khomeini's death on June 3, 1989, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani engineered Khamenei's appointment by telling the Assembly of Experts that Khomeini had privately chosen his successor: "When we asked who, he pointed to Mr. Khamenei." The claim was never independently verified. In that same closed session, Khamenei, only a mid-ranking Hojatoleslam and not an Ayatollah, delivered a remarkable self-indictment: "First of all, we must truly shed tears of blood over an Islamic society in which the mere possibility of someone like me being raised at all... I am truly not worthy of this position — and I know this, and perhaps you gentlemen know it too. The leadership would be a nominal leadership, not a real one." The constitution was amended to fit him nonetheless. Rafsanjani, his kingmaker, was eventually sidelined by the dictator he created.

  3. 1992 Mashhad Uprising

    On May 29–30, 1992, the attempted demolition of homes belonging to marginalized residents in Mashhad's Kouy-e Tollab neighborhood triggered major unrest across the city. Security forces opened fire, several people were killed, and hundreds were arrested. The judiciary sent Ebrahim Raisi to Mashhad to oversee the crackdown. Within less than two weeks, four detainees—Javad Ganjkhanlou, Gholamhossein Pourshirzad, Ali Sadeghi, and Hamid Javid—were sentenced to death and executed. Khorasan's governor, Ali Jannati, later resigned.

  4. 1998 Chain Murders

    In autumn 1998, Ministry of Intelligence operatives carried out a series of killings that became known as the 'chain murders.' The first victims were not dissidents but a child. On September 22, poet and writer Hamid Hajizadeh was stabbed 27 times in his home in Kerman. His nine-year-old son Karoun was murdered alongside him, his small body riddled with 10 knife wounds. Karoun had no politics. He was killed because he was there. Two months later, political leader Dariush Forouhar and his wife Parvaneh Eskandari were stabbed in their Tehran home. Writers Mohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh were abducted and killed in December. These were not isolated acts. At least 80 writers, translators, and dissidents had been systematically eliminated throughout the 1990s. Senior Intelligence Ministry officials were named as orchestrators but received token sentences and were quietly released.

  5. 1999 University Dormitory Raid

    In the early hours of July 9, 1999, after student protests over the closure of the reformist newspaper Salam, police and plainclothes Ansar-e Hezbollah forces raided Tehran University's student dormitory. Students were beaten, rooms were ransacked, and some were reportedly thrown from windows or down stairs. Ezzat Ebrahim-Nejad was killed, hundreds were injured, and several more people died during the unrest that followed. Human Rights Watch later listed 77 people, mostly students, as still detained or unaccounted for.

  6. 1999 Saeed Zeinali Disappearance

    Saeed Zeinali, a 22-year-old computer engineering student at the University of Tehran, was arrested near his family home on July 14, 1999, in the aftermath of the Tehran University dormitory raid. Months later, he made one brief phone call, said he was well, and asked his family to follow up on his case. He has not been seen or heard from since, and officials deny responsibility for his disappearance. His father, Hashem Zeinali, was later sentenced to 91 days in prison and 74 lashes for publicly demanding answers about his son.

  7. 2000 Press Freedom Suppressed

    In July 1999, the outgoing 5th Parliament passed a harsher press law, and the judiciary shut down the reformist newspaper Salam after it exposed Saeed Emami's letter urging tighter media controls. In April 2000, after Khamenei called reformist papers enemy bases, the judiciary closed 16 publications within days. In August 2000, when the reformist 6th Parliament tried to revise the law, Khamenei issued a hokm-e hokumati, forcing Speaker Mehdi Karroubi to stop the debate. Karroubi read the order in parliament, and the bill was removed.

  8. 2000 Mashhad Serial Killings

    Between August 2000 and July 2001, Saeed Hanaei, a Basij member in Mashhad, murdered sixteen women he identified as sex workers, strangling them with their own headscarves. He confessed to all sixteen killings and said that if not arrested he had planned to kill 150 women, describing it as a religious duty. The regime had him executed in April 2002, a spectacle that served as closure without accountability. Parts of Mashhad's hardline community called him a martyr; the conservative press asked 'who is to be judged?' His killings were the logical conclusion of a state that had already criminalized and dehumanized his victims.

  9. 2002 Kerman Vigilante Murders

    In the summer of 2002, six Basij militiamen in Kerman murdered five people they deemed morally corrupt, drowning and burning the bodies. Their method of selecting victims: they would take each captive to a pistachio orchard and perform an estekhareh with the Quran. If it came out favorable, they killed. After each killing they recited Ziarat-e Ashura over the body. In court they cited the teachings of cleric Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi directly: advise the sinner, refer them to the judiciary, and if they still do not stop, kill them. Mesbah Yazdi denied issuing a fatwa but confirmed the teaching. Iran's Supreme Court initially overturned their murder convictions, ruling that the killers genuinely believed their victims were corrupt, effectively endorsing vigilante murder as a valid religious defense. The case dragged on for 16 years. Three families accepted blood money within a couple of years; the remaining two families, of Mohammad Reza Nezhad Malayeri and Shahre Nikpour, held out until 2018, when the head of Kerman's judiciary announced all parties had agreed and the case was closed. Families who initially refused reported pressure from judiciary officials to accept and stay silent. The case was designed to close, not to deliver accountability.

  10. 2003 Murder of Zahra Kazemi

    On June 23, 2003, Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist, was arrested outside Evin Prison while photographing families of detainees. She died on July 11 after 18 days in custody. The official forensic cause of death was recorded as "impact of the head against a hard object or a hard object against the head," a wording that blurred beating and accident. A military doctor who later fled Iran said he had seen skull fractures, repeated beatings, and signs of sexual assault. The sole defendant was acquitted; Saeed Mortazavi, the prosecutor who ordered her arrest, was never charged.

  11. 2004 Neyshabur Train Explosion

    On February 18, 2004, an unmanned freight train carrying petrol, cotton, sulfur, and ammonium nitrate broke free near Neyshabur and rolled uncontrolled for about 20 kilometers before derailing near Khayyam station and catching fire. Hours later, after firefighters and officials gathered at the scene, the chemical cargo exploded. The blast killed 352 people, injured 469, devastated nearby villages, shattered windows kilometers away, and registered as a 3.6 Richter tremor. It remains Iran's deadliest rail disaster.

  12. 2004 Pakdasht Child Murders

    Between March and September 2004, Mohammad Bijeh, a brick-kiln worker in Pakdasht, abducted, raped, and murdered at least 21 children and three adults, most of them boys aged 8 to 15. The killings remained hidden for months partly because many victims came from poor Afghan refugee families who feared reporting missing children could lead to deportation. On March 16, 2005, Bijeh was publicly flogged 100 times and hanged before about 5,000 spectators. The execution displayed punishment, but not accountability for the silence around the crimes.

  13. 2004 Execution of Atefeh Sahaaleh

    Atefeh Rajabi Sahaaleh was publicly hanged from a crane in Neka's main square on August 15, 2004. She was 16. Her charges included zina and "crimes against chastity," legal labels used to punish girls for sex outside marriage, even when abuse was involved. A 51-year-old married man tried alongside her received 100 lashes; she was executed. Judge Haj Rezaei personally placed the noose around her neck. In court, she had removed her headscarf and asked why the men who abused her did not face equal punishment.

  14. 2004 Death of Kaveh Habibi-Nejad

    Under Article 638 of Iran's Islamic Penal Code, eating in public during Ramadan can be punished with up to 74 lashes. On November 12, 2004, Kaveh Habibi-Nejad, a 14-year-old schoolboy in Sanandaj, died after being flogged for eating during Ramadan. Reports said officers used a cable or hard object that struck his head. His death certificate recorded brain hemorrhage caused by skull fracture. A child was punished for eating in public, and the punishment became fatal.

  15. 2005 Juvenile Executions

    Iran remains one of the world's leading executioners of people sentenced for crimes committed as children. Under Iran's Islamic Penal Code, criminal responsibility has been set at nine lunar years for girls and fifteen for boys. On July 19, 2005, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, both teenagers, were publicly hanged in Mashhad on disputed charges involving same-sex conduct and alleged rape. Their execution became a symbol of Iran's use of death sentences against juvenile offenders despite international law.

  16. 2005 Bus Drivers' Strike

    In Dey 1384, Tehran bus drivers organized through the revived Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, demanding union recognition and unpaid wages. Security forces raided union leaders' homes at dawn, arrested twelve officials including Mansour Osanloo, and detained hundreds of workers in Evin Prison. A second strike on January 28, 2006, was crushed with beatings and mass arrests. Osanloo was later rearrested and imprisoned for years. The crackdown showed that independent labor organizing would not be tolerated.

  17. 2006 Emergence of the Guidance Patrol

    In 2006, Iran's morality-policing system entered a harder phase with the deployment of Guidance Patrol vans under the Law Enforcement Force, officially presented as "social security" and "guidance." The force grew out of earlier post-1979 street policing of hijab and public behavior, but under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad it became a visible, institutional patrol targeting women over clothing, makeup, and presence in public space. Its vans turned compulsory hijab from a written law into daily street coercion.

  18. 2007 Death of Zahra Bani-Yaghoub

    Dr. Zahra Bani-Yaghoub, a 27-year-old physician, was arrested in Hamedan in October 2007 after morality agents accused her of sitting with her fiancé in a park. Her fiancé was released, but Zahra was kept overnight at the local headquarters of the morality police. The next day, authorities told her family she had died and claimed suicide. Her family rejected the account and pointed to signs of strangulation and state responsibility. No official was held accountable for her death in custody.

  19. 2009 Green Movement Uprising

    Millions took to the streets after Iran's disputed June 2009 presidential election, in the largest uprising since 1979. Basij and IRGC forces answered with beatings, mass arrests, live fire, and show trials; dozens to over 100 people were killed. Survivors reported torture and sexual abuse in Evin and Kahrizak. The killing of Neda Agha-Soltan, filmed and shared worldwide, became the movement's defining image. Mir Hossein Mousavi, Zahra Rahnavard, and Mehdi Karroubi were later placed under house arrest without trial.

  20. 2009 Murder of Neda Agha-Soltan

    Neda Agha-Soltan, 26, was shot and killed on June 20, 2009, near Kargar Avenue in Tehran. She was not an organizer. A former philosophy student, she had joined the protests that afternoon out of anger at the election result. She and her music teacher had stepped away from the crowd when a bullet struck her chest. She died on the street within minutes. Multiple cameras captured the scene; the footage spread worldwide within hours, making her death one of the most widely witnessed killings of modern political protest. No one was ever charged.

  21. 2009 Murder of Taraneh Mousavi

    In the summer of 2009, during the post-election crackdown, reports emerged that Taraneh Mousavi had been detained by security forces. Rights groups reported that she was taken to a detention site, repeatedly raped, and left with severe internal injuries. She was reportedly transferred to a hospital under guard, while her family was denied access. Later reports said her burned body had been found outside the city. The state denied the case, blocked independent inquiry, and the truth was buried under intimidation and silence.

  22. 2009 Suspicious Death of Ramin Pourandarjani

    Dr. Ramin Pourandarjani, a 26-year-old physician, had worked at Kahrizak detention center after the 2009 protests and reportedly examined prisoners who showed signs of torture. He was pressured not to speak about what he had seen. On November 10, 2009, his body was found in a health center at Tehran police headquarters. Officials first suggested a heart attack, then poisoning and suicide. Rights groups demanded an independent investigation. No transparent accountability followed for his death or for Kahrizak's crimes.

  23. 2010 Execution of Farzad Kamangar

    Farzad Kamangar, a Kurdish teacher and social worker from Kamyaran, spent twelve years teaching children in poor areas of Kurdistan and was active in teachers' and civil society groups. He was arrested in 2006 and sentenced to death in 2008 on security charges after a trial rights groups called grossly unfair and based on no credible evidence. He said he was tortured in custody. On May 9, 2010, he was secretly executed in Evin Prison with four other political prisoners, without prior notice to his family or lawyers.

  24. 2011 Iran's Intervention in Syria

    From 2011, Khamenei authorized Qasem Soleimani and the IRGC Quds Force to deploy tens of thousands of troops and Iranian-commanded militias, including Hezbollah and the Fatemiyoun Brigade, to rescue Assad's collapsing regime. Iranian forces were central to 'starve or surrender' sieges, the recapture of Aleppo in 2016, and the systematic destruction of opposition areas. Assad's forces and Iran-aligned militias were responsible for 91% of civilian deaths; over 500,000 Syrians were killed and 14 million displaced. Assad fell in December 2024. Khamenei sacrificed Syrian and Iranian lives for a fellow dictator and lost anyway.

  25. 2011 Amir-Khosravi Bank Fraud

    In September 2011, Mahafarid Amir-Khosravi's Aria Investment company was found to have used forged letters of credit to extract $2.6 billion from seven banks, running directly through Iran's corrupted privatization program. The bank's CEO, Mahmoud Reza Khavari, resigned citing illness days after the scandal broke and fled to Canada, where he lived freely without extradition. Amir-Khosravi was executed in 2014, absorbing the criminal liability for a fraud that implicated ministers, central bank officials, and MPs, all of whom continued their careers without interruption.

  26. 2012 Gold Coin Ponzi Scheme

    As US sanctions collapsed the rial in 2012, the Ahmadinejad government collected funds from roughly 7.6 million gold coin pre-orders through Bank Melli. Separately, state banks held foreign currency accounts for millions of Iranians. When depositors tried to withdraw during the crisis, the Central Bank directed banks to pay out only in rials at the official exchange rate, roughly half the real market rate, meaning depositors lost approximately half the value of their savings. The Central Bank, under direct government control, was used as an instrument to transfer private savings to the state.

  27. 2012 Murder of Sattar Beheshti

    In November 2012, Sattar Beheshti, a blogger who criticized the government on Facebook, was arrested by Iran's cyber police on charges of 'threatening national security.' He died in custody within days. Fellow prisoners reported visible torture marks; his family documented broken fingers and internal bleeding. An autopsy attributed death to 'shock from trauma to sensitive body areas.' The one officer convicted received three years in prison and 74 lashes, a sentence Beheshti's family called a mockery. The case exposed Iran's systematic use of lethal violence against online dissent.

  28. 2012 Shin-Abad School Fire

    On December 6, 2012, a faulty oil heater exploded in a classroom at the girls' primary school in Shin-Abad, a remote village in West Azerbaijan. Of 37 students present, 29 were burned; two girls died from their injuries. Three others had fingers amputated when burn grafts failed. The Education Ministry declared all safety measures had been in place; no individual was held accountable. A decade later the survivors were still living with the consequences: one had attempted suicide 18 times, treatment had been abandoned, and nearly all suffered depression, memory loss, and impaired vision.

  29. 2013 Murder of Ataollah Rezvani

    On 5 Shahrivar 1392, the Baha'i Persecution Archive preserved a Rooz Online interview with the family of Ataollah Rezvani, a 54-year-old Bahai from Bandar Abbas. His body was found on an abandoned road outside the city after he left home the previous night. His family said he had been shot from behind, while his car and belongings were left untouched except for his phone. They said he had no personal enemies, had faced repeated pressure from Intelligence officials, and believed the murder was organized and religiously motivated.

  30. 2014 Isfahan Acid Attacks

    Beginning in late September 2014, motorcycle-riding attackers threw acid at women's faces on the streets of Isfahan, targeting those they deemed insufficiently veiled. At least eight women were attacked; several suffered permanent disfigurement or blindness. As the attacks unfolded, Parliament was simultaneously debating a bill granting legal immunity to vigilantes who physically confronted women over their dress. Hardline MPs and clerics publicly blamed the victims. The attacks were the direct product of a state that had criminalized women's dress for over three decades and cultivated a culture in which women's bodies were treated as requiring correction by any available means.

  31. 2014 Execution of Reyhaneh Jabbari

    Reyhaneh Jabbari was 19 when she stabbed Morteza Sarbandi, an Intelligence Ministry-linked doctor, in a Tehran apartment in 2007, saying he had drugged her drink and attempted rape. The judiciary never investigated her account of sexual assault. She was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to death. Under qisas, the sentence required the victim's family's consent to commute; Sarbandi's son refused across seven years of international pressure. On October 25, 2014, she was hanged at Gohardasht Prison, aged 26. Prison authorities refused to honor her organ donation request. She was executed for surviving.

  32. 2016 Khamenei's Rulings Against Bahais

    In Ordibehesht 1395, the Baha'i Persecution Archive republished Khamenei's official religious rulings on Bahais. In the rulings, Bahais are described as "misguided," "unclean," and "enemies" of believers' faith. Muslims are told to oppose the "plots and corruption" of the Baha'i community, prevent others from joining it, and avoid any social association with them. These rulings gave religious language to social exclusion and helped normalize state-backed discrimination against Bahai citizens.

  33. 2017 Plasco Building Collapse

    Tehran's Plasco Building, Iran's first high-rise built in 1962, caught fire on January 19, 2017, and collapsed while firefighters were inside. Twenty-two people died, including sixteen firefighters trapped when the structure fell without warning. A government report confirmed the Mostazafan Foundation had repeatedly ignored safety warnings and that multiple ministries had failed to enforce 22 building regulations. No individual was held accountable.

  34. 2017 Zemestan-Yurt Mine Explosion

    On May 3, 2017, a methane gas explosion tore through the Zemestan-Yurt coal mine near Azadshahr, Golestan, killing 42 miners and injuring at least 75. The blast ignited when workers changed a battery in a methane-saturated tunnel. Twenty-one of the dead were miners who rushed in after the first explosion without protective equipment. Ownership documents revealed three of the five shareholders in the operating company were affiliated with the Basij-linked Mehr Eghtesad Financial Group. The miners died because a politically connected operator ran the mine without adequate safety controls.

  35. 2017 "Fire at Will" Doctrine

    In Khordad 1396, Khamenei used the military phrase "fire at will" before students, telling loyal forces to act independently when central institutions fell into disarray. Critics warned that the phrase could license vigilante violence. In the years that followed, self-appointed enforcers attacked women resisting compulsory hijab and citizens accused of disrespecting state symbols. In Bahman 1402, Elias Mohammadi, a 19-year-old Afghan worker, was reportedly thrown from Tehran's Niayesh bridge after being accused of insulting state flags.

  36. 2017 Dey 1396 Protests

    Protests sparked by economic hardship and corruption began in Mashhad on December 28, 2017, and spread across Iran within days, becoming the most widespread unrest since 2009. Security forces killed dozens of protesters and arrested thousands. Several detainees died in custody under suspicious circumstances, while others reported torture and ill-treatment. Some arrested protesters were later sentenced to death or executed after grossly unfair trials.

  37. 2018 Sanchi Tanker Disaster

    On January 6, 2018, the Iranian-owned oil tanker Sanchi collided with a cargo ship 160 nautical miles off Shanghai and immediately caught fire. After burning and drifting for eight days it sank on January 14, killing all 32 crew members: 30 Iranians and 2 Bangladeshis. Families reported government indifference to rescue efforts. The disaster is considered one of the worst oil tanker accidents in decades.

  38. 2018 Murder of Kavous Seyed-Emami

    Kavous Seyed-Emami, a 63-year-old Iranian-Canadian sociology professor and co-founder of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, was arrested on January 24, 2018, with other environmentalists, accused of using wildlife camera traps as espionage cover. On February 9, Evin Prison officials told his family he had hanged himself. His family rejected the account; no independent investigation was allowed. His wife Maryam Mombeini was banned from leaving Iran until October 2019, and other activists received long prison sentences.

  39. 2018 Gonabadi Dervishes Crackdown

    On February 19–20, 2018, security forces violently attacked Gonabadi Dervishes gathered on Golestan-e Haftom Street in Tehran to protect their spiritual leader, Noor Ali Tabandeh, and protest arrests. More than 300 were detained; Mohammad Raji later died in custody after reported beatings. Mohammad Salas, accused of killing three police officers with a bus, said he had confessed under torture; his confession was broadcast before trial. He maintained his innocence and was executed on June 18, 2018. More than 200 Dervishes later received prison sentences totaling about 1,080 years.

  40. 2018 Caspian Sea Treaty

    On August 12, 2018, Iran signed the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea in Aktau, replacing Soviet-era bilateral treaties that had given Iran and the USSR equal rights over the sea. The new five-state framework left Iran, which has the shortest coastline, facing roughly 11% of any future seabed division. Parliament member Mahmoud Sadeghi publicly compared the concession to the 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay, when Iran ceded vast territories to Tsarist Russia. The comparison went viral. Iran's parliament refused to ratify the treaty.

  41. 2018 Chinese Fishing License Deal

    From 2018, Iran's Fisheries Organization granted Chinese industrial trawlers exclusive long-term licenses to fish in the Sea of Oman and the Persian Gulf. Local fishermen in Hormozgan reported that catches dropped sharply, that the trawlers used bottom-trawling that destroyed the seabed ecosystem, and that Iranian boats were driven from traditional grounds by high-pressure water hoses. Bycatch included dolphins and whales, killed and discarded. Thousands of fishing families lost their livelihoods. The deal was widely attributed to corruption, with politically connected intermediaries collecting licensing revenue.

  42. 2018 Sultan of Coins Execution

    As Iran's economy collapsed under US sanctions in 2018, the regime publicly hanged Vahid Mazloumin, a gold coin trader dubbed the 'Sultan of Coins', on charges of 'corruption on earth.' The execution was a deliberate spectacle to redirect public fury onto individual traders rather than state mismanagement. Meanwhile Babak Zanjani, the regime's 'Sultan of Oil', who embezzled $2.7 billion in oil revenues, received a death sentence in 2016, had it quietly commuted in 2024 after returning part of the funds, and was awarded an $800 million government railway contract by early 2025.

  43. 2018 Haft Tappeh Workers' Strike

    In November 2018, workers at the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Company in Shush, who had gone months without pay following a corrupt privatization, launched an extended strike. Security forces arrested union spokesman Esmail Bakhshi, labor journalist Sepideh Gholian, and other organizers on 'national security' charges. Bakhshi was hospitalized with internal bleeding from torture. When he publicly challenged the Intelligence Minister to a televised debate on prisoner torture, both were rearrested in retaliation. A Revolutionary Court sentenced Bakhshi to 14 years and Gholian to 18; an appeals court later reduced both to five years. Amnesty International declared both prisoners of conscience.

  44. 2019 Murder of Mitra Ostad

    Mitra Ostad was shot and killed by her husband, Mohammad Ali Najafi, in their Tehran home in May 2019. Najafi was one of Iran's most prominent reformist politicians: former Minister of Education, former Minister of Science, and until 2018 the mayor of Tehran. He confessed and was sentenced under qisas. After years of pressure, Mitra's family eventually accepted blood money. Khamenei personally pardoned him. Najafi walked free in early 2023 and by April 2025 was attending Planning and Budget Organization sessions as if nothing had happened. His case drew wide attention because he was precisely the educated, liberal-presenting reformist whose supporters claimed Iran's problem was its hardliners, not its men.

  45. 2019 Death of the Blue Girl

    Sahar Khodayari, a devoted Esteghlal FC fan, was arrested in March 2019 for attempting to enter Azadi Stadium disguised as a man; women have been banned from football stadiums since 1981. On September 2, at a court hearing, she was told she could face six months in prison for attending a football match. No formal verdict had been issued that day. She poured petrol on herself and set herself on fire outside the courthouse immediately after. She died seven days later from burns covering 90% of her body. She became known as the Blue Girl. Her father tried to frame her act as a symptom of mental illness, a claim widely seen as an attempt to strip it of its political meaning. Her death sparked global outrage and forced the regime to partially lift the stadium ban for the first time in 40 years, a concession extracted only by her sacrifice.

  46. 2019 Bloody November Massacre

    A sudden 50–200% fuel price hike on November 15, 2019, triggered nationwide protests that security forces crushed with overwhelming lethal force within five days. Amnesty International documented at least 321 deaths; other estimates reach 1,500 to 3,000. Khamenei personally ordered the use of deadly weapons. Iran imposed a near-total internet blackout to conceal the massacre. Nearly 20,000 people were arrested.

  47. 2019 Redefining the term 'Mostazaf' [the oppressed]

    In December 2019, Ali Khamenei redefined the traditional meaning of "Mostazaf" (the oppressed), claiming the term does not refer to the poor or vulnerable, but rather to the Quranic concept of "potential leaders and inheritors of the Earth," thereby crowning his own Basij militia as the true "Mostazafan." Conversely, critics and opposition figures slammed the speech as a cynical piece of political sophistry and semantic gaslighting, delivered right after the bloody crackdown on the November 2019 economic protests to absolve the regime of responsibility for rampant poverty and inflation. From the opposition's perspective, the regime twisted the dictionary to flip the script, rebranding a heavily armed, repressive state apparatus as the "true, divinely ordained victims" while completely erasing the grievances of the starving public.

  48. 2020 Downing of Flight PS752

    Hours after Iran launched missile strikes on US bases in Iraq, IRGC operators fired two surface-to-air missiles at Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 minutes after takeoff from Tehran on January 8, 2020. All 176 passengers and crew were killed, including 55 Canadian citizens. Iran denied responsibility for three days before admitting the strike. A subsequent military trial issued only token sentences. No senior official was held accountable.

  49. 2020 Honor Killing of Romina Ashrafi

    Romina Ashrafi was 14 when her father killed her with a sickle as she slept in Gilan province on May 21, 2020. She had run away with a man she wanted to marry; police located her and returned her to her father despite her reported pleas not to be sent back. Her father received nine years in prison. Article 301 of Iran's Islamic Penal Code explicitly exempts fathers who kill their own children from qisas, making the murder of a child by their father a lesser crime under Iranian law than the murder of a stranger. The police officers who returned her faced no consequences. The law passed afterward preserved this exemption.

  50. 2020 Execution of Navid Afkari

    Navid Afkari, a 27-year-old wrestler from Shiraz, was arrested after the 2018 protests and accused of killing a security guard. He said his confession had been forced under torture, and rights groups said his trial was grossly unfair. In a prison recording, he said: "There is not one shred of evidence... they are looking for a neck for their rope." Despite global appeals from athletes, rights groups, and governments, he was secretly executed in Adelabad Prison on September 12, 2020. His brothers Vahid and Habib were also imprisoned.

  51. 2020 Execution of Ruhollah Zam

    Ruhollah Zam, founder of AmadNews, a Telegram channel with over 1.5 million subscribers exposing government corruption, was deceived into traveling from Paris to Iraq in October 2019. IRGC intelligence used the name of Grand Ayatollah Sistani as bait, fabricating an invitation for a meeting in Najaf. Sistani's office publicly condemned the use of his name in the deception. Zam was seized in Iraq and transferred to Iran. He was held in solitary confinement in IRGC intelligence detention facility 2-Alef, denied family visits and a lawyer of his choosing. State television broadcast a forced interrogation of him under the program name 'Bedoun-e Tarrof' (Without Reservation). Reporters Without Borders called the broadcast itself an act of torture. In one exchange the interviewer pushed him to call the 2017 protests 'riots', using the regime's word. Zam replied: 'You call them riots. We call them protests.' The line spread across the internet. Charged with 'corruption on earth,' espionage, and inciting unrest, he was tried in a closed court and hanged at Rajaei Shahr Prison on December 12, 2020. He was a journalist. He was killed for running a Telegram channel.

  52. 2020 Imprisonment of Ali Younesi

    Ali Younesi, an award-winning astronomy Olympiad medalist and computer engineering student at Sharif University, was violently arrested in April 2020 with fellow student Amirhossein Moradi. Human Rights Watch said they were held for weeks in solitary confinement, and Amnesty International called them prisoners of conscience. In 2022, both were sentenced to 16 years in prison after a grossly unfair trial based on confessions they said were extracted under torture. Their case became a symbol of the regime's fear of gifted youth.

  53. 2021 Vaccine Import Ban

    On January 8, 2021, Khamenei announced a blanket ban on importing American and British vaccines, declaring 'our people will not be a testing device for vaccine manufacturing companies.' The decree immediately killed a plan to receive 150,000 donated Pfizer doses. As Iran blocked international vaccine access for months, daily deaths surpassed 500. The ban was quietly reversed in August 2021 after mounting public pressure. Researchers estimated 50,000–75,000 preventable deaths resulted from the delay. No official was held accountable.

  54. 2022 Metropol Building Collapse

    On May 23, 2022, the 10-story Metropol building under construction in Abadan collapsed, killing at least 43 people. Engineers had formally warned of structural failures a full year before the disaster, but officials ignored the reports. Protests erupted across Khuzestan as Iranians blamed state corruption and systemic negligence.

  55. 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom Uprising

    The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in morality police custody on September 16, 2022, ignited the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' uprising, the most sustained challenge to the Islamic Republic in decades. Security forces killed hundreds of protesters including children, and arrested more than 15,000. Dozens were sentenced to death; several were executed, including individuals who were minors at the time of arrest.

  56. 2022 Murder of Ghazaleh Chalavi

    Ghazaleh Chalavi, a young woman from Amol, was reportedly shot in the head and killed during the first days of the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising in September 2022. Reports said she had filmed the protests before she was killed. Her chehelom memorial in Amol turned into another protest, with mourners chanting against Khamenei and security forces using tear gas to disperse them. Her death became part of the record of women killed outside Tehran, in cities that carried the uprising into every region of Iran.

  57. 2022 Murder of Nika Shakarami

    Nika Shakarami, a 16-year-old protester, disappeared in Tehran on September 20, 2022, after telling a friend that security forces were chasing her. Authorities claimed she had fallen from a building. A 322-page security file leaked to the BBC in 2024 said she had been seized in an undercover van, sexually assaulted, fought back, and beaten to death with batons. Authorities seized her body and buried it remotely. Her aunt and uncle were arrested and forced into televised denial, with a voice off-camera directing their words.

  58. 2022 Murder of Minoo Majidi

    Minoo Majidi, a 62-year-old Kurdish-Yarsani mother from Kermanshah, was shot and killed during the Woman, Life, Freedom protests on September 20, 2022. Her daughter said an autopsy showed more than 167 metal pellets in her body, fired from behind at close range. Before going out, she reportedly told her family: "If I don't go out and protest, who else will?" Her daughter Roya's shaved-head photo beside her grave became one of the uprising's most powerful images of mourning and defiance.

  59. 2022 Murder of Hadis Najafi

    Hadis Najafi, a young protester from Karaj, was shot and killed on September 21, 2022, during the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising. Her mother said she was hit by multiple bullets in the heart, neck, and abdomen. Hadis became widely known after videos and images of her appeared online, and her grave later became a site of public mourning. Authorities tried to control the narrative and the memorials, but her name remained one of the symbols of the generation that rose after Mahsa Jina Amini's death.

  60. 2022 Murder of Sarina Esmailzadeh

    Sarina Esmailzadeh, a 16-year-old YouTuber and gifted-school student from Karaj, was beaten to death with a baton on September 23, 2022, during the Woman, Life, Freedom protests. Amnesty International and Iran Human Rights confirmed she was struck repeatedly on the head and bled to death before medical help arrived. Authorities claimed suicide. After her death, regime agents edited her Telegram posts to fabricate a suicidal persona and replaced her Instagram with 13 counterfeit accounts. Over 50 security agents attended her funeral to prevent filming. Her final Telegram post showed her singing and saying: 'My homeland feels like being in exile.'

  61. 2022 Bloody Friday in Zahedan

    On September 30, 2022, after Friday prayers in Zahedan, security forces opened fire on protesters, worshippers, and bystanders near the Makki mosque and a nearby police station. Amnesty International said at least 66 people, including children, were killed that day, and later reporting raised the Baluchistan death toll to at least 82. Hundreds were injured by live ammunition, pellets, and tear gas. Bloody Friday became the deadliest single day of the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising and a defining wound for Iran's Baluch minority.

  62. 2022 Killing of Khodanur Lajai

    Khodanur Lajai, a 27-year-old Baluch man from Zahedan, was shot during the Bloody Friday crackdown and died on October 2, 2022. Before his death, a photo of him tied to a flagpole, with a cup of water placed just beyond his reach, became a symbol of humiliation and state cruelty against Baluch citizens. Authorities tried to criminalize him after death, but protesters remembered him as a face of poverty, discrimination, and defiance. His name was chanted across Iran during the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising.

  63. 2022 Evin Prison Fire

    On October 15, 2022, as nationwide protests continued, fire, explosions, gunfire, and tear gas erupted inside Evin Prison in Tehran. Families outside the prison heard shots and explosions while prisoners called for help. Officials blamed a prison workshop fight, but rights groups demanded an independent investigation into unlawful force, possible killings, torture, and denial of medical care. At least eight prisoners died and dozens were injured. The fire exposed again how unsafe and opaque Iran's political-prison system had become.

  64. 2022 Killing of Parisa Bahmani

    Parisa Bahmani, a 52-year-old general surgeon from Rasht, was killed during a doctors' protest outside the Medical Council in Tehran on October 26, 2022. The gathering condemned state violence and the insecurity of hospitals for wounded protesters. Tehran's prosecutor claimed she had died in a car accident the day before, but colleagues said they saw her at the rally when security forces confronted the crowd. Her family was pressured to accept the official script. A doctor joined a protest for the wounded and did not return alive.

  65. 2022 Murder of Kian Pirfalak

    On November 16, 2022, nine-year-old Kian Pirfalak was shot through the lung and killed by security forces while sitting in his parents' car in Izeh, Khuzestan. His father was critically wounded in the same burst of fire. Seven people died in Izeh that night, including two teenagers shot in the head. State agencies immediately blamed ISIS with a statement BBC Monitoring confirmed was fabricated. At his funeral, Kian's mother told mourners directly that it was not terrorists, then read poetry criticizing Khamenei by name. In June 2023, a relative was shot dead by security agents at Kian's graveside memorial.

  66. 2022 Murder of Aylar Haghi

    Aylar Haghi, a 23-year-old medical student from Tabriz, disappeared during the Woman, Life, Freedom protests on November 16, 2022. Her family said she was killed by direct fire from security forces, while state media claimed she had fallen from a height or into a construction pit. Security forces reportedly pressured her family to accept the official story and restricted the funeral. Her burial in Tabriz turned into a protest, and mourners chanted that Aylar's blood would not be forgotten.

  67. 2022 Execution of Mohsen Shekari

    Mohsen Shekari, a 23-year-old protester, was executed on December 8, 2022, the first known execution directly linked to the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising. He was accused of blocking a street and wounding a Basij member, then convicted of moharebeh in proceedings Amnesty said bore no resemblance to a real trial. His family was not properly informed, and his body was withheld. The execution announced that the state would answer street protest with judicial killing.

  68. 2022 Murder of Aida Rostami

    Aida Rostami, a 36-year-old physician at Tehran's Chamran Hospital, secretly treated wounded protesters in Ekbatan and western Tehran during the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising. On December 12, 2022, she called her mother from work and then disappeared. Police later told the family she had died after a fall or accident, but her body reportedly showed signs of torture, including a broken hand and severe facial injuries. Her relatives refused to repeat the state narrative on television and came under pressure. She was killed for healing.

  69. 2022 Execution of Majidreza Rahnavard

    Majidreza Rahnavard, a 23-year-old protester from Mashhad, was publicly hanged from a crane on December 12, 2022, only 23 days after his arrest. He was accused of killing two Basij members and convicted of moharebeh after what Amnesty called a sham and unfair trial. State media broadcast forced-looking confessions before execution. His public hanging was designed as a warning: the gallows would be brought into the street to terrify the uprising.

  70. 2022 Systematic Blinding of Protesters

    During the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, security forces repeatedly fired pellets and rubber bullets at protesters' faces and eyes. Iranian ophthalmologists reported hundreds of severe eye injuries, and later human rights investigations described the pattern as systematic. Survivors such as Kowsar Eftekhari and Mersedeh Shahinkar lost sight after being shot at close range. The policy did not only disperse crowds; it marked bodies, futures, and faces with permanent punishment for seeing and demanding freedom.

  71. 2023 Schoolgirl Poisoning Campaign

    Beginning in November 2022, thousands of schoolgirls across Iran began falling sick with nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath, and numbness after smelling a fruit-like odor. By March 2023, approximately 7,000 students across 103 schools in 28 provinces had been affected. IRGC agents were deployed to hospitals to confiscate test results and threaten medical staff into silence. Khamenei publicly condemned the attacks; two months later the Intelligence Ministry declared no poisoning had occurred, attributing episodes to 'mass hysteria.' The UN called it deliberate poisoning. No one was held accountable. The attacks stopped as suddenly as they began.

  72. 2023 Execution of Mohammad Mehdi Karami and Seyed Mohammad Hosseini

    Mohammad Mehdi Karami, a young karate champion, and Seyed Mohammad Hosseini, a volunteer children's coach, were executed on January 7, 2023, over the death of Basij member Ruhollah Ajamian during protests near Karaj. Amnesty said their convictions followed grossly unfair trials relying on torture-tainted forced confessions. Karami was denied a final call with his family. Hosseini said he had been beaten and tortured. Their executions continued the state's campaign to turn protest cases into death sentences.

  73. 2023 Murder of Armita Geravand

    On October 1, 2023, Armita Geravand, a 17-year-old art student and Taekwondo athlete, boarded the Tehran Metro without a headscarf. Security footage shows her being carried out unconscious moments after morality police approached her; authorities claimed low blood pressure. She was admitted to a military hospital with traumatic brain injury and kept isolated under guard. Amnesty International found the CCTV footage had been deliberately sped up with a gap of over three minutes, clear evidence of tampering. Her mother was arrested. Armita died on October 28, twenty-seven days after the assault. No one was held accountable.

  74. 2023 Imprisonment of Bereaved Parents

    After killing a protester, the Islamic Republic arrests the parents who dare to speak about it. Manouchehr Bakhtiari's son Pouya was shot in the head during the 2019 fuel protests; Bakhtiari was imprisoned in 2021 and sentenced to 18 years and 74 lashes for seeking justice. Mashaallah Karami's son Mohammad Mehdi, 22, was executed on January 7, 2023 after a trial lasting less than a week on a confession extracted under torture. Karami was arrested in 2023; security forces built a 1,200-page fabricated case against him, froze his bank accounts, and displaced his family. Both men were imprisoned for the same act: refusing silence about what the state did to their children.

  75. 2023 Debsh Tea Scandal

    Between 2019 and 2022, Debsh Tea Company received $3.37 billion in government foreign currency at heavily subsidized rates, ostensibly for tea and machinery imports. It sold approximately $1.4 billion of those dollars on the open market, pocketing the difference. It imported cheap Kenyan tea labeled as premium Indian tea, and re-imported Iranian tea labeled as foreign product. The scheme required sustained cooperation from four government bodies. Described as the largest financial corruption case in the history of the Islamic Republic, it exposed the preferential exchange rate system not as an accidental vulnerability but as a permanent arbitrage machine for politically connected importers.

  76. 2024 Execution of Mohammad Ghobadlou

    Mohammad Ghobadlou, a 23-year-old protester arrested during the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, was executed at dawn on January 23, 2024. He had been accused of running over police officers with a car, but rights groups said his trial was grossly unfair and ignored his serious mental health condition. His death sentence had been challenged, yet the judiciary rushed the execution with little notice. His case became a symbol of how the state used the gallows to continue punishing the 2022 uprising.

  77. 2024 Arrest of Hossein Shanbehzadeh

    Hossein Shanbehzadeh, a writer known for sharp social media criticism of the regime, was previously imprisoned in Evin from 2019 to 2023. He was arrested again on June 4, 2024, in Ardabil. The trigger was a single period posted in reply to a Khamenei tweet, a response that went viral and received more likes than Khamenei's original post. Security agents beat him severely at arrest. During interrogation, an officer threatened to have his six-year-old niece killed if he refused to record a televised confession. He was sentenced to 12 years: 5 for 'pro-Israel propaganda,' 4 for 'insulting Islamic sanctities,' and 2 for 'spreading falsehoods,' with 5 years enforceable.

  78. 2024 Tabas Mine Explosion

    On September 21, 2024, a methane gas explosion tore through Block C of the Parvadeh 5 coal mine near Tabas, killing 52 miners and injuring more than 20. Workers had reported the smell of methane to management the day before and were ordered to keep working. The mine had no functional methane monitoring system, no safe shelter, and only a single ventilator. Wages were roughly $250 a month, four times below Iran's official poverty line. The safety officer simultaneously worked as a labor contractor for the same mine, a conflict of interest state inspectors had left unaddressed for years. The workers who died had reported the hazard. Management ignored it.

  79. 2024 Death of Kianoush Sanjari

    Kianoush Sanjari was first arrested at 17 for the 1999 student protests and spent two years in Evin. After further imprisonments he fled to the US in 2006, then returned in 2016 to care for his mother and was arrested within days, sentenced to 11 years. In 2019 he was transferred to Aminabad Psychiatric Hospital, reporting he was chained to beds and subjected to electric shocks. About 20 hours before his death on November 13, 2024, he posted on X demanding the release of four political prisoners and stating he would end his life if they were not freed. He died after falling from a Tehran building, aged 42. Reporters Without Borders held Iranian authorities directly responsible.

  80. 2025 Bandar Abbas Port Explosion

    On April 26, 2025, containers at the Port of Shahid Rajaee in Bandar Abbas exploded, killing at least 57 people and injuring over 1,000. Evidence pointed to improperly stored ammonium perchlorate, a rocket fuel oxidizer, as the cause. Opposition groups reported the actual death toll was closer to 250. The blast was widely seen as a symptom of the regime's decades-long institutional negligence over critical infrastructure.

  81. 2025 Ayandeh Bank Collapse

    Ayandeh Bank collapsed into state custody in October 2025 after accumulating $5.1 billion in losses and a negative 600% capital adequacy ratio, affecting seven million depositors. It attracted deposits by paying interest six to seven points above market rates, then channeled them through related-party loans into entities controlled by founder Ali Ansari, chiefly Iran Mall, financed by ordinary depositors' savings. Reported connections to Mojtaba Khamenei and senior political figure Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel were cited as the reason the bank survived regulatory scrutiny for so long. The cost was transferred entirely to the Iranian public. Those who built the structure paid nothing.

  82. 2025 Suspicious Death of Khosrow Alikordi

    Khosrow Alikordi, a Mashhad-based human-rights lawyer and former political prisoner, represented jailed protesters and families seeking justice, including relatives of people killed in the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising. In December 2025, his body was found in his office. Officials quickly cited a heart attack, but lawyers and rights groups called the death suspicious and demanded transparency. His memorial became a protest, and security forces arrested and beat mourners, including Narges Mohammadi.

  83. 2026 The Uprising of January 8th and 9th - The Lion and Sun Revolution

    An economic collapse driven by currency freefall and mass shortages ignited nationwide protests across more than 200 cities starting December 28, 2025. On January 8–9, 2026, Khamenei personally ordered security forces to open fire; more than 40,000 Iranians were killed in what became the deadliest two-day crackdown on protesters in recorded history. The massacre is considered a direct catalyst for the fall of the Islamic Republic.

  84. 2026 Death of Maryam Zardasht

    Maryam Zardasht, a 45-year-old physician from Shiraz, reportedly went to Marvdasht in early 2026 to help wounded protesters and medical staff during the January uprising. According to reports received by Iran International, she was attacked by security forces inside a hospital and died after about a week in intensive care. The case reflected the regime's campaign against doctors who treated the injured when hospitals had become extensions of repression. Her death was reported as punishment for fulfilling a doctor's oath.

  85. 2026 Death of Ali Khamenei

    Ali Khamenei was killed at 09:40 IRST on February 28, 2026, aged 86, in a joint US-Israeli airstrike targeting his compound in Tehran. His death was confirmed by the Iranian government the following day. After 37 years of absolute rule, his reign ended the same way it was sustained: by violence.