Iran Executes Political Prisoners as Regime Faces Twin Military and Internal Crises
Four opposition members killed in March signal escalating domestic repression amid US-Israel military conflict, with execution rate on track to surpass 2025's record toll.
Iran executed four political prisoners linked to opposition groups between March 30 and 31, 2026, as the Islamic Republic confronts simultaneous external military conflict and accelerating domestic instability.
The victims—Mohammad Taghavi Sangdehi (59), Akbar Daneshvarkar (60), Babak Alipour (34), and Pouya Ghobadi (33)—were all allegedly affiliated with the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), according to the National Council of Resistance of Iran. The executions occurred weeks into the ongoing US-Israeli military campaign that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on February 28 and installed a more hardline regime under his son Mojtaba.
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Iran has already executed 657 people in the first three months of 2026, putting the regime on pace to exceed last year’s total of at least 1,500 executions, per data compiled by the Iran Human Rights Society. The March 30-31 killings targeted professionals with long detention histories: Sangdehi and Daneshvarkar, an architect and civil engineer respectively, had been imprisoned since 1982, while Alipour and Ghobadi—a law graduate and electrical engineer—were arrested in 2009.
The Dual-Front Collapse
The timing exposes a regime under compound pressure. Externally, Iran faces sustained US-Israeli strikes that have eliminated key military and political leadership. Internally, the government is managing mass protests that erupted in December 2025 and resulted in thousands of deaths during the security force crackdown, according to the House of Commons Library. Economic collapse has accelerated—the rial halved in value between July 2024 and March 2025, while food price inflation exceeded 70% in 2025.
“The Iranian people are trapped between an international war and severe internal repression.”
— Shadi Sadr, co-founder of Justice for Iran
The new leadership under Mojtaba Khamenei consists of former Revolutionary Guards commanders with extensive domestic repression credentials. “When President Trump says he has changed the regime in Iran, he’s right in one sense—he’s changed it to a much more radicalized regime,” Ali Vaez, Iran Project Director at the International Crisis Group, told CNN. “All of these individuals who are now in place have been involved in domestic repression extensively in their past lives.”
Iran has maintained an internet blackout exceeding 30 days since the conflict began in late February, severely restricting information flow and independent verification of casualty figures. The communications shutdown mirrors the regime’s standard playbook during periods of instability—cutting external visibility while accelerating internal suppression.
Executions as Strategic Signaling
The four PMOI members were executed in secret, with no advance notification to families, Amnesty International documented. This pattern continued with the April 2 execution of Amirhossein Hatami, a teenage protester. At least seven other protesters and dissidents face imminent execution risk, including Vahid Bani-Amerian and Abolhassan Montazer, according to Human Rights organisations.
The Islamic Republic historically accelerates executions when facing compound threats. December 2025 protests marked the largest unrest since 1979, coinciding with currency collapse and military setbacks. The new regime’s composition—dominated by IRGC commanders with repression backgrounds—suggests structural shift toward survivalist governance rather than measured crisis management.
“What is clear is that the death penalty is being used as a tool for suppressing political opposition in wartime conditions,” Mai Sato, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran, stated in a report cited by Fox News. The execution pace suggests the regime anticipates sustained instability and is acting preemptively to eliminate organised opposition infrastructure.
Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, described the executions as reflecting “the clerical regime’s fear and desperation in the face of an enraged population and its growing support for the Resistance Units.” She added that “their principal enemy is the Iranian people and the Resistance”—framing the repression as defensive rather than offensive.
Market and Strategic Implications
The execution surge complicates assessments of regime stability that underpin energy markets and geopolitical risk pricing. A government conducting systematic political killings during wartime exhibits characteristics of a system under existential pressure rather than one managing routine conflict. This has implications for:
- Regime continuity assumptions: the new leadership’s hardline composition and immediate turn to mass executions suggests reduced capacity for negotiated de-escalation
- Oil supply disruption probability: internal instability increases risk of production interruptions independent of military damage
- Sanctions enforcement: a regime focused on domestic survival may deprioritise revenue-generating sanctions evasion infrastructure
- Regional spillover: accelerated repression could trigger refugee flows into neighbouring states already hosting US military assets
“We fear that the Islamic Republic will exploit the current wartime conditions to carry out mass executions inside prisons to instill societal fear,” Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, Director of Norway-based Iran Human Rights, warned. This pattern—leveraging external conflict to justify internal crackdowns—creates feedback loops where military pressure produces domestic repression, which in turn generates additional instability.
The absence of confirmed public appearances by Mojtaba Khamenei since assuming the Supreme Leader position adds uncertainty to governance assessments. Whether decision-making remains centralised or has fragmented among IRGC commanders directly impacts the regime’s response predictability to both military and economic pressure.
What to Watch
Monitor execution announcements in coming weeks as a proxy for regime threat perception. Acceleration beyond the current 657-in-90-days pace would signal intensified internal pressure. Track whether the government executes the seven identified at-risk protesters—a move that would demonstrate willingness to eliminate even symbolic opposition figures despite international attention.
The internet blackout duration provides another metric: prolonged restrictions indicate concern about information coordination among opposition groups, while restoration would suggest confidence in suppression effectiveness. Energy market participants should price in elevated disruption risk from internal instability independent of military targeting—a collapse in domestic order could interrupt production even without further strikes on infrastructure.
The composition of any negotiating team, should talks resume, will reveal whether the new regime retains capacity for flexibility or has structurally committed to a survival-at-any-cost posture. The answer determines whether the current crisis ends through diplomacy or regime fracture.