While The World Watches War, Tehran Hangs Its Young

The world has become transfixed by conflict. Gaza dominates the headlines. Ukraine fills the television screens. Every diplomatic summit revolves around security, sanctions and shifting alliances. Yet, behind this curtain of global crises, the Iranian regime has unleashed a campaign of political executions on a scale that should shame every democratic nation into action. The silence has become deafening.

Last week alone, the clerical dictatorship executed 26-year-old law graduate Mehdi Khanaki after accusing him of membership of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and participation in the nationwide uprising that swept Iran in January.

According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), he endured months of physical and psychological torture before a Revolutionary Court condemned him in proceedings that bore every hallmark of a predetermined verdict rather than justice. A handful of newspapers carried the story, then the world’s attention drifted elsewhere.

Yet Khanaki’s execution formed only one chapter in a rapidly expanding campaign of state terror. Within days, Tehran sentenced Isa Chari, a 37-year-old Baluch labourer and father of two, to death after seven months in solitary confinement. His alleged crime amounted to membership of the PMOI. Twenty-two-year-old accounting student Amir Hassan Akbari-Monfared received the same sentence after enduring torture designed to extract forced confessions. His family connection to an executed PMOI supporter appears to have counted more heavily than any credible evidence.

Now the horror has escalated even further. This week, the regime publicly hanged two young protesters, Amirhossein Safari and AbolfazlSepahi, in Isfahan’s Alikhani Square, precisely where demonstrations had erupted during January’s nationwide uprising.

Crowds gathered in a desperate attempt to prevent the executions, chanting “Shame on you” as security forces attacked them. Videos circulating online captured gunfire echoing through the square while terrified citizens attempted to resist yet another act of judicial murder.

Only days earlier, Erfan Esfandiari and Gol Mohammad Mohammadi, convicted in the same politically motivated case, suffered the same fate. Public execution serves one purpose alone. Terror. It represents the medieval theatre of dictatorship, designed to crush hope before resistance can gather strength. The timing carries chilling symbolism. 

These executions coincide with the thirty-eighth anniversary of the 1988 massacre, when around 30,000 political prisoners, largely PMOI supporters, vanished into mass graves after death commissions ordered their extermination. Many of today’s senior officials either participated in those atrocities or built careers within the machinery that carried them out. 

History has returned because history escaped accountability. The United Nations issued reports after the 1988 massacre. Human rights organizations documented the killings. Families still search for the burial places of their loved ones. Yet every architect of that crime enjoyed complete impunity.

Today the regime believes it can repeat the pattern. Judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei has openly warned officials about the PMOI and called for tougher security measures. His words reveal far more than official concern over public order. They expose deep fear within the ruling establishment that another nationwide uprising could erupt at any moment, guided by organized Resistance Units that continue operating across Iran despite relentless repression. 

This has become a struggle for survival. The regime fears organized opposition far more than foreign governments, military strikes or economic sanctions. It understands that revolutions emerge from determined people, courageous leadership and collapsing legitimacy. Every execution therefore seeks to eliminate those capable of transforming public anger into democratic change.

Where, then, stands the international community? The United Nations continues issuing carefully worded statements while the gallows remain busy. The European Union delivers expressions of concern yet preserves diplomatic channels with officials whose signatures appear on death warrants. Britain, France and Germany condemn individual human rights abuses while maintaining a level of engagement that Tehran interprets as weakness rather than principle.

Washington speaks frequently about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, missile program and regional proxies. Those concerns matter enormously. Yet every discussion of centrifuges and uranium enrichment seems accompanied by remarkable restraint when confronting the regime’s industrial-scale execution of political prisoners.

Strategic interests have eclipsed moral responsibility. Western governments fear jeopardizing nuclear diplomacy. They seek regional stability. They hope economic pressure may moderate the regime’s behaviour.Experience demonstrates precisely the opposite.

Appeasement has always encouraged Tehran. Every concession has strengthened the executioners. Every diplomatic opening has coincided with intensified domestic repression. Every hesitation in Western capitals has emboldened the Revolutionary Guards and the judiciary to tighten their grip upon the Iranian people.

The regime interprets silence as permission. The United Nations Human Rights Council should immediately convene an emergency session devoted exclusively to Iran’s escalating political executions. The UN Special Rapporteur on Iran requires stronger backing, greater resources and unrestricted international support. A permanent investigative mechanism should gather evidence for future prosecutions before more witnesses disappear and more documents vanish.

The European Union should impose targeted sanctions upon every judge, prosecutor, prison governor and intelligence official involved in these death sentences. Iranian ambassadors should face coordinated diplomatic isolation or outright expulsion unless the executions cease.

Britain should lead that effort rather than follow reluctantly behind others. Successive governments have spoken eloquently about defending democracy and human rights. Iran presents the perfect opportunity to match words with decisive action.

The international media also carries responsibility. Every public hanging deserves front-page coverage. Every political prisoner awaiting execution deserves a name, a face and a story. Dictators flourish in darkness. Public scrutiny remains one of the few protections available to those trapped inside Evin Prison, Ghezel Hesar and countless detention centres scattered across Iran. 

The Iranian people have shown extraordinary courage through repeated uprisings, despite bullets, torture, imprisonment and execution. They continue demanding the freedoms that citizens across democratic nations often take for granted. 

Their courage deserves something greater than sympathetic speeches. It deserves solidarity. It deserves action. Above all, it deserves an international community prepared to declare that political executions, torture and public hangings belong to humanity’s darkest past rather than its present.

If democratic governments continue averting their eyes while Tehran’s cranes haul another young protester by the neck above another public square, history will record far more than the crimes of the executioners. It will record the complicity of those who possessed every opportunity to speak, every means to act and every reason to defend freedom yet chose silence while the nooses tightened.

Struan Stevenson was a member of the European Parliament representing Scotland (1999-2014), president of the Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq (2009-14) and chairman of the Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup (2004-14). He is an author and international lecturer on the Middle East.