The 15 questions people search most about Iran, each with a short answer drawn from this archive's sourced pages. For all 286 questions, see the full questions page.
Answer: Mahsa (Jina) Amini (1999–2022) was a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman who died in police custody on 16 September 2022 after being detained by Iran's Guidance Patrol. Her death triggered the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' uprising.
Answer: HRANA's verified named list closed on 23 February 2026 at 7,007 confirmed deaths — 6,488 adult protesters, 236 minors and 207 security personnel — with 11,744 further cases still under review. Iran's government acknowledged 3,117 deaths on 1 February 2026, while senior officials cited by Iran International put the toll above 30,000 and some estimates exceed 42,000. The verified named count is the floor, not the ceiling.
Answer: Most of the Crimson Winter dead were killed in the 48 hours of 8 and 9 January 2026. HRANA documented at least 392 killed in Rasht alone, the vast majority after an internet blackout. Time reported a registry of 30,304 protest-related deaths recorded in civilian hospitals for those two days.
Answer: At least 551 protesters, including 68 children; more than 22,000 arrested. Sources: Amnesty International, Iran Human Rights (IHR), HRANA.
Answer: Iran Human Rights recorded at least 975 executions in 2024 and more than 1,500 in 2025. Iran executes more people per head of population than any other country and is second only to China in absolute numbers.
Answer: Iran Human Rights has documented at least 10 protest-related executions tied to the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising and a sharply rising number connected to the 2025–2026 Crimson Winter uprising.
Answer: Moharebeh — 'waging war against God' — is a capital offence under Article 279 of Iran's Penal Code, routinely applied to protesters on the basis of confessions obtained under torture.
Answer: Yes. Article 638 of the Islamic Penal Code remains in force and enforcement continues through the Noor Plan launched in April 2024. The stricter Hijab and Chastity Bill was suspended in December 2024 but has not been repealed.
Answer: Under Article 638, 10 days to 2 months in prison or a fine. The 2023–24 Chastity & Hijab Bill escalates this to fines up to ~US$8,500, up to 10 years in prison, vehicle confiscation, travel bans, and business closures.
Answer: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (Sepah) is a parallel military and economic power answering to the Supreme Leader. The Basij is a mass volunteer militia subordinate to the IRGC, used for street-level suppression and neighbourhood surveillance. The police (FARAJA) is the ordinary law-enforcement body, which also housed the Gasht-e Ershad morality patrols. In crackdowns the three operate together, which is precisely what makes attributing a killing to a specific force so difficult.
Answer: The summary execution of thousands of political prisoners in summer 1988, ordered by a panel known as the 'Death Commission'. Documented by Amnesty International, the UN Special Rapporteur, and the Boroumand Center.
Answer: Internet blackouts, forced night burials, pressure on families to record deaths as accidents, and the seizure of bodies from hospitals all suppress the count. Named, verified lists (HRANA, Iran Human Rights) are conservative floors; hospital registries and official leaks are higher; the state's own figure is the lowest.
Answer: An independent international fact-finding mission established by the UN Human Rights Council in November 2022 to investigate alleged violations connected to the protests that began in September 2022, particularly those against women and children. Its reports concluded that Iranian security forces committed crimes against humanity, including murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and enforced disappearance.
Answer: Credible estimates put the Iranian diaspora at roughly four to eight million people worldwide. The wide range exists because national statistics count different things: some record country of birth only, others include second-generation citizens of Iranian descent, and none capture undocumented migrants. A working figure of about five million is the most commonly cited conservative estimate.
Answer: A clay cylinder inscribed in 539 BCE under Cyrus the Great, widely described as the world's first charter of human rights. It proclaims religious freedom, the abolition of slavery for deported peoples, and the right of return.
A casualty answer needs more than a number. It should name the source, the date of the report, the period covered and whether the figure is an estimate, an official acknowledgement or a list of documented cases. Omitting those qualifiers can turn an accurate source summary into a misleading claim.
The date is especially important when quoting a continuing investigation. A dated count describes what a publisher had established then, not necessarily everything that happened. The casualty page explains why different reports cannot always be compared directly. Short answers are an entry point to that record, not a replacement for the definitions and caveats behind it.
Read the full casualty answer and sources
The hijab-law page distinguishes a penal provision, proposed or approved additional legislation, and an enforcement campaign. A bill's approval is not the same as its entry into force. Suspending additional legislation does not by itself repeal an existing penal provision or end reported enforcement practices.
Gasht-e Ershad refers to the Guidance Patrol. FARAJA refers to the police command, while the Noor Plan names an enforcement programme. Keeping those terms separate helps explain why changes to one patrol's visible presence do not necessarily describe the whole enforcement system. A historical patrol photograph documents the people and encounter shown, not the current legal status of every enforcement mechanism.
Read the Guidance Patrol explainer
The UN Fact-Finding Mission, a Special Rapporteur, a court and a monitoring organisation perform different roles. Their publications need to be attributed to the body that issued them. A speech to an international institution is not automatically a finding of that institution, and a monitoring report is not automatically a criminal conviction.
Likewise, the legal classification of a pattern of violations and the criminal responsibility of an individual are separate questions. Quoting the relevant body's exact conclusion, mandate and date is more useful than replacing them with a broad legal label. The sources and methodology pages explain where the archive's evidence comes from and how different kinds of records are handled.
The Cyrus Cylinder is a Babylonian royal inscription. Its historical context and its modern symbolic importance should be distinguished from claims that it states modern human-rights guarantees. It is not a direct textual record naming the Jewish return from exile; the biblical books of Ezra and Isaiah are different sources for that tradition.
The Iran-and-Holocaust page brings together ancient texts, community history and modern refugee records. Those sources should not be treated as interchangeable. An archaeological object can illuminate its own period without proving every later historical narrative. The expanded history explains these distinctions alongside the relationship between Iranian Jewish communities, wartime refuge and the policies of the Islamic Republic.