Iran Holocaust FAQ

Understanding the numbers

Nearly every dispute about Iran's death tolls comes from comparing figures that measure different things. The table below separates them.

The legal machinery in plain terms

• Revolutionary Courts. A parallel court system created in 1979 for “security” offences, operating without juries and frequently in closed session.
• Capital charges. Moharebeh, efsad-e fel-arz and baghy — broad enough to convert protest into a death-penalty case.
• Approved counsel. In security cases defendants may choose only from a state-approved list of lawyers, which excludes most independent defence counsel.
• Televised confession. A statement recorded in custody, broadcast before trial, and treated as evidence — a practice the UN has repeatedly condemned as incompatible with fair trial.
• Blood money and pressure on families. Bereaved families are pressed to accept compensation, sign statements or stay silent as a condition of receiving a body.

Definitions and transliterations for these and other terms are collected in the glossary; the institutions behind them are explained in the knowledge base.

Where each answer comes from

Answers on this page are drawn from the same sources as the rest of the archive: Iran Human Rights, HRANA, Amnesty International, the Center for Human Rights in Iran, the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Iran and the Special Rapporteur's reports, alongside reporting by Reuters, the BBC, Le Monde and Time. The full list, with links, is on the sources page, and the rules governing what gets published are in Methodology.

If a question you need answered is not here, send it through the contact page. Questions that recur are added to this page with sources.

Frequently asked questions

Why is the verified death toll lower than the estimates?

Because it measures something stricter. A verified count includes only people with a name, a date, a place and at least two independent strands of evidence. Estimates draw on hospital registries, leaked documents and official sources that cannot be broken down into named cases. Both are useful: the verified count is the floor that cannot be denied, the estimates indicate the likely true scale.

What is moharebeh, and why does it appear in so many cases?

Moharebeh — “waging war against God” — is a capital charge in the Islamic Penal Code. Alongside efsad-e fel-arz (“corruption on earth”) and baghy (“armed rebellion”), it is elastic enough to cover throwing a stone, setting fire to a rubbish bin or sharing a video, which is why it recurs in protest prosecutions where no violence is proven.

How long do protest trials take?

Revolutionary Court hearings in protest cases have lasted minutes. Defendants have been denied counsel of their own choosing, tried on confessions recorded after documented torture, and sentenced to death in a single session. Appeals are often decided without a hearing, and executions have followed within days of confirmation.

What happened during the internet shutdowns?

The heaviest killing. In November 2019 and again on 8-9 January 2026, near-total national blackouts preceded or accompanied the peak casualty periods. Iran maintains a National Information Network that keeps domestic banking and state services running while cutting the global internet, which makes an extended blackout operationally possible in a way it is not in most countries.

Are women treated differently in detention?

Female detainees have reported sexual violence used as an interrogation and punishment method, documented by the UN Fact-Finding Mission, which found rape and sexual violence against protesters including children. Women also face the compulsory-hijab enforcement system that produced the case of Mahsa Amini, and the surveillance and vehicle-confiscation regime that replaced street patrols.

What is transnational repression?

The extension of the state's coercion beyond its borders: surveillance and harassment of diaspora activists, threats against relatives inside Iran to silence family abroad, plots against journalists in Europe and North America, and pressure on host-country institutions. Several European states now treat it as a distinct security offence.

Has anyone been held accountable?

Not inside Iran. Outside it, universal-jurisdiction prosecutions have begun: a former prison official was convicted in Sweden in 2022 for his role in the 1988 massacres, and further cases are under investigation in Europe. Sanctions designations against IRGC and prison officials have multiplied since 2022 without reversing the pattern.

What can an outsider realistically change?

Three things: whether a named prisoner's case is visible enough to make execution politically costly; whether their government treats Iran policy as a constituency issue; and whether the documentary record survives. All three are affected by ordinary people doing unglamorous, repeated work.