Tehran executes seven linked to deadly Khuzestan bombings

Iran executes over 1,000 people in 2025, highest annual figure in at least 15 years

Iran on Saturday executed seven men convicted of killing security personnel and a cleric several years ago, the judiciary’s news agency Mizan reported.

Six of the men were ethnic Arab separatists accused of carrying out armed attacks and bombings in Khorramshahr, in the southwestern province of Khuzestan, which killed four security personnel.

The seventh, Saman Mohammadi Khiyareh, a Kurd, was convicted over the 2009 assassination of Mamousta Sheikh al-Islam, a pro-government Sunni cleric in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj.

Read: Iran decries 'unjustifiable' return of UN sanctions

Mizan reported that the men had links to Israel, a charge rights groups say Tehran routinely uses against ethnic minorities to portray dissent as foreign-backed rather than homegrown.

Activists have also questioned Mohammadi Khiyareh’s case, noting he was only 15 or 16 at the time of the assassination, arrested at 19, and held for more than a decade before his execution.

They said his conviction relied on confessions extracted under torture — a practice activists accuse Iranian courts of using regularly.

According to Amnesty International, Iranian authorities have executed more than 1,000 people so far in 2025, the highest annual figure recorded by the group in at least 15 years.