The Fate of Political Prisoners and the Future of Judicial Repression in the Islamic Republic of Iran

Author: Jim Hamilton

October 7, 2026

A protester condemning the regime in Iran [Image credit: Taymaz Valley/Flickr]

Introduction

The conflict between the Islamic Republic of Iran, the United States (U.S.), and its allies has intensified and expanded Iran’s longstanding system of judicial repression. Since the conflict began in late February 2026, thousands of Iranians have been arrested on politically motivated charges. Judicial proceedings have accelerated, due process protections have eroded further, and the number of executions has risen sharply. These developments raise critical questions about how the war has reshaped political imprisonment and judicial repression in Iran, and what this transformation may mean for when the conflict eventually ends. Will wartime repression recede, or will the extraordinary measures adopted during the conflict become a more permanent feature of the Islamic Republic's system of political control? What will this mean for the thousands left languishing in Iranian prisons? The history of conflict-related repression in Iran, coupled with recent diplomatic signaling from both sides of the conflict, offers important insights but little reassurance. 

Current State of Political Imprisonment in Iran

Political scientist Fiona Shen-Bayh describes judicial repression as the use of courts by political elites to punish political opponents, effectively enforcing obedience and dissuading dissent. Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, which brought the Islamic Republic to power, Iranian authorities have relied extensively on methods of judicial repression, including arbitrary detention, political imprisonment, and capital punishment, in order to suppress dissent and consolidate political control.

Estimates of the number of political prisoners currently detained in Iran vary considerably, with some sources placing the figure at around 15,000. The actual number is nearly impossible to establish and is likely far higher, obscured by Iran’s restrictive information environment and the authorities’ active efforts to conceal the scale and conditions of political detention. 

The population of political prisoners in Iran encompasses numerous overlapping groups detained under different political and legal circumstances. It includes longstanding political activists, journalists, lawyers, academics, human rights defenders, and other dissidents who have spent years, and in some cases decades, in detention. They have been joined by large numbers of protesters and ordinary citizens arrested during successive waves of unrest in recent years. The 2022 “Women, Life, Freedom” movement, the June 2025 Twelve-Day War with Israel, and the nationwide protests between December 2025 and January 2026 each resulted in tens of thousands of arrests. Rather than interrupting this trajectory, the outbreak of the current conflict in February 2026 has accelerated the expansion of political imprisonment in Iran. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk noted nearly 4,000 arrests on national security-related charges in the first two months of the conflict alone.

The judiciary in Iran has long been subject to extensive political influence, with courts and judicial officials frequently serving as instruments of state repression rather than independent checks on executive or security institutions. The Islamic Revolutionary Courts serve as a special system that exists in parallel to the ordinary courts and are responsible for handling cases involving national security and political offenses. Iranian authorities rely on a range of broad, vaguely worded provisions in the Islamic Penal Code and the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran in order to prosecute anti-regime demonstrators and political opponents under the guise of safeguarding faith and national security. 

External conflicts have only exacerbated the use of judicial repression. Following the Twelve-Day War, Iran enacted the “Law on Intensifying the Punishment for Espionage and Cooperation with the Zionist Regime and Hostile States against National Security and Interests,” known informally as the Espionage Law. This law is a sweeping measure that further expands the kind of political conduct subject to severe penalties and facilitates the expedited prosecution and punishment of accused individuals. In August 2026, Iranian lawmakers voted to advance another piece of legislation, the “infiltration bill,” which, if passed, would criminalize contact with foreign journalists, various foreign embassies, and certain forms of academic cooperation. Both of these laws, in addition to Iran’s existing corpus of repressive laws and procedures, have been invaluable instruments in the current wartime crackdown on internal dissent.

Conditions inside Iranian detention facilities have notably deteriorated since the beginning of the conflict. Political detainees are held primarily in facilities operated by the Ministry of Intelligence and the Intelligence Arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) rather than the ordinary civilian prison system, placing them outside the reach of what limited judicial oversight otherwise exists. These facilities have proven vulnerable to both direct military strikes and the downstream effects of conflict. On June 23, 2025, during the Twelve-Day War, Israeli airstrikes struck the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran, the primary facility for housing imprisoned political dissidents, killing at least 80 people, including prisoners, staff, and visiting family members. The attack underscored the vulnerability of political prisoners to the physical dangers of active conflict, while raising concerns that similar incidents could occur during the current war. Furthermore, the conflict has exacerbated already dire living conditions inside Iranian prisons. In several facilities, prisoners have faced disruptions to supplies of clean water and electricity. There have also been widespread reports of guards abandoning their posts, leaving prisoners trapped inside with no means of obtaining help.

Wartime pressures have compounded longstanding patterns of abuse within Iran’s prison system. Once detained, political prisoners face systematic mistreatment and widespread violations of basic human rights. Testimony from former prisoners and witnesses has documented the widespread use of physical and psychological torture, sexual assault and gender-based violence, prolonged solitary confinement, and incommunicado detention, as well as the deliberate withholding of adequate medical care and other basic necessities. As senior Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch Bahar Saba has noted, during conflict, Iranian political prisoners face dual threats, “violence at the hands of authorities who have a track record of prison massacres and U.S. and Israeli bombs.”

One of the clearest and most troubling manifestations of wartime escalation in repression is the sharp increase in executions. The Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran has reported 916 executions carried out since the start of 2026, though not all were related to political dissent. Human Rights Watch documented nearly 50 executions on national security-related charges in a four month period following the outbreak of the conflict, including several individuals who were 18 and 19 years old at the time of their deaths. UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk warned that more than 100 people remain at risk of execution on similar charges, including several cases linked to the January 2026 protests. Taken together, these figures suggest that capital punishment has become an increasingly prominent instrument of wartime deterrence. Moreover, the fact that many individuals facing execution were detained for their rather innocuous participation in public demonstrations suggests that the state has broadened the range of conduct it treats as a serious threat, while simultaneously accelerating the judicial processes through which such threats are eliminated.

How the War Has Reshaped Iran’s Repression Landscape

The U.S.-Iran War has expanded the scale and scope of Iran’s judicial repression, accelerated the processes through which dissent is punished, reduced transparency, and broadened the range of conduct that authorities deem a threat to national security. Wartime repression is therefore best understood as an intensification and adaptation of mechanisms of political control that the regime has employed, to varying degrees, for decades. 

Central to this transformation is the expansion of what Iranian authorities and legislation define as a national security threat. Before the war, political dissent could already be, and often was, prosecuted through broadly defined offenses contained in the Islamic Penal Code, Constitution, and other national security-related provisions. However, new legislation, including the Espionage Law and “infiltration bill,” has further widened the scope of conduct subject to prosecution, including contact with foreign nationals, nongovernmental organizations, and foreign media. These provisions have given authorities greater latitude to recast seemingly ordinary political, journalistic, and social activity as potential national security offenses.

The war has also altered the pace of judicial repression. Since the war began, Iranian authorities have increasingly fast-tracked judicial proceedings, including in cases carrying the death penalty. Consider the case of 19-year-old Arvin Kheirkhahan, who was executed on August 1, 2026, just months after his arrest for participating in the January 2026 demonstrations. The compression of judicial timelines is significant because it reduces the opportunity for defendants like Kheirkhahan to obtain counsel, challenge evidence, contact family members, or otherwise contest the often arbitrary charges leveled against them. Such proceedings routinely violate basic due process protections under international law. This acceleration is particularly consequential when combined with the judiciary’s longstanding lack of independence and the widespread use of coerced confessions and other forms of unreliable evidence documented in political cases.

The conflict has simultaneously transformed the information environment in which repression occurs. The Iranian regime has repeatedly shut down or restricted internet access during periods of crisis, including recent mass protests and immediately following the outbreak of the war. These internet blackouts and restrictions have made it substantially more difficult for Iranians to document arrests, disappearances, prison conditions, or executions, while also limiting the ability of families, journalists, and human rights organizations outside Iran to verify facts in individual cases. Control over the information environment therefore serves as an important component of wartime repression, reducing the visibility of state abuses precisely when authorities are intensifying their crackdown. The resulting opacity gives Iranian authorities greater latitude to operate without immediate public scrutiny.

Taken together, these developments suggest that the war has produced a meaningful transformation in Iran’s repression landscape without fundamentally altering its underlying structure. The security apparatus, Revolutionary Courts, vague national-security laws, detention practices, and use of capital punishment all predate the current conflict. What has changed is the context in which they operate. Wartime conditions have expanded the state’s justification for deploying these mechanisms, accelerated the process through which individuals are punished, reduced the visibility of abuses, and broadened the category of individuals considered potential threats. The war has therefore functioned less as a fundamental departure from Iran’s established system of political repression than as an accelerant, one that may leave the regime with an even more expansive and normalized system of coercion when the fighting eventually ends.

What the End of the Conflict May Mean for Iran’s Political Prisoners

On June 17, 2026, the U.S. and Iran signed a 14-point memorandum of understanding (MOU) intended to establish a pathway toward the cessation of active hostilities. Its provisions addressed key geopolitical and economic sticking points, including the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, sanctions relief, and the future of Iran’s nuclear program. Notably absent, however, were provisions addressing human rights conditions inside Iran, including the detention, treatment, or potential release of political prisoners. In fact, Point 2 of the MOU explicitly commits both parties to “refrain[ing] from interfering in each other’s internal affairs,” effectively placing Iran’s domestic human rights violations outside of the scope of the agreement. 

The MOU collapsed within a month, but its failure as a durable ceasefire does not diminish what it revealed about the strategic priorities likely to shape future negotiations. The agreement modeled a diplomatic framework organized primarily around geopolitical, security, and economic concerns, treating Iran’s domestic repression as a separate internal matter. For political prisoners, this creates a potentially consequential gap between the end of hostilities and any meaningful reduction in state repression. Even if a future agreement differs substantially from the June MOU, the absence of human rights provisions in the initial framework suggests that the release or improved treatment of political prisoners is unlikely to be an automatic consequence of a ceasefire. 

Against this backdrop, the fate of Iran’s political prisoners will ultimately depend on whether wartime repression is treated as temporary emergency measures or if it becomes embedded within the regime’s long-term system of political control. Below are two potential, though not exhaustive, scenarios worth considering: 

Scenario 1: Selective Amnesty and Postwar Normalization

One potential scenario is a partial rollback of wartime repressive measures, potentially accompanied by the selective release or pardon of any number of political prisoners. Iran has previously used such measures following periods of unrest to project stability and facilitate political de-escalation. Following the 2009 post-election protests, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pardoned roughly 130 political detainees. Similarly, after the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests, Khamenei announced pardons for “tens of thousands” of individuals arrested in connection with the unrest. However, the scale of the latter releases was difficult for independent monitors to verify, reflecting the opacity of Iran’s detention system. A similar pattern could emerge following the end of the current conflict. Authorities may decide to release or pardon a certain number of political detainees as a stabilization mechanism. The extent to which the regime might otherwise roll back wartime repressive measures is also unclear. Some practices could be relaxed as the immediate security justification for them recedes, while others may be retained or applied less frequently.

Scenario 2: Post-war Hardening and Continued Repression

Another scenario is much more severe, involving the continuation or even intensification of wartime repression after the fighting ends. Iran’s history offers a particularly stark precedent in this regard. In 1988, while the United Nations was in the process of brokering a ceasefire to end the bloody Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), Iranian authorities, using security concerns as a justification, oversaw the massacre of between 4,500 and 5,000 political prisoners detained throughout Iran. While the circumstances of the current conflict are fundamentally different, the 1988 ‘prison massacre,’ along with the brutal repression in the years that followed, demonstrates that the end of hostilities does not necessarily translate into an easing of repression. For political prisoners, the postwar period could instead provide the regime with an opportunity to further consolidate control and eliminate perceived internal threats under the continued justification of national security.

Conclusion

The future of Iran’s political prisoners will ultimately depend on whether the end of the conflict produces genuine de-escalation or simply a transition from wartime to postwar repression. The conflict has expanded the scale of political detention, accelerated judicial proceedings, broadened the state’s conception of national-security threats, and intensified the use of capital punishment. Whether these developments recede or become more deeply entrenched will depend on several uncertain factors, including the priorities of Iran’s new leadership under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the persistence of domestic unrest, the regime’s perception of its own political security, and the degree of international pressure placed on Tehran to address political imprisonment and other human rights abuses. The treatment of political prisoners and the trajectory of judicial repression will therefore serve as important indicators of whether the postwar period represents a return to the regime’s previously established model of political control or the consolidation of a more expansive and deeply entrenched system of repression. Thus, for the thousands of Iranians currently behind bars, the end of the war may mark the beginning of a period of uncertainty rather than freedom.

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Glossary

• Arbitrary: Based on random choice, personal whim, or individual discretion rather than any system, rule, or reason.

• Capital Punishment: A form of criminal punishment in which a convicted criminal is put to death by the State as a penalty for a crime.

• Corpus (juris): The sum total of active laws within a country, state, or court system.

• Deterrence: The action or the fact of deterring people from doing something.

• Dissident: A person who publicly disagrees with and criticizes their government.

• Dissuade: To persuade or advise someone not to take a specific course of action.

• Due Process: A fundamental principle that protects individuals from arbitrary governmental actions and ensures fairness in legal proceedings.

• Entrenched: Firmly established and hard to change.

• Evin Prison: Tehran's most notorious detention facility and the primary site historically used to hold political dissidents.

• Exacerbate: To make something bad or unpleasant worse.

• Expedited: Made to happen faster, accelerated, or dealt with with high priority.

• Geopolitical: Describes anything relating to the study of how geography, economics, and demographics affect politics and international relations between countries.

• Incommunicado Detention: Situation of detention in which an individual is denied access to family members, an attorney, or an independent physician.

• Information Environment: The aggregate of individuals, organizations, and systems that collect, process, disseminate, or act on information.

• Innocuous: Completely harmless.

• Islamic Penal Code: The codified national criminal law of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

• Islamic Revolutionary Courts: A parallel judicial system in Iran with jurisdiction over national security, espionage, and offenses against the state.

• Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC): A multi-service primary force of the Iranian Armed Forces.

• Judicial Repression: The use of courts by political elites to punish political opponents, enforcing obedience and dissuading dissent.

• Judiciary: The system of courts and all the judges in a country.

• Languish: To grow weak, lose energy, or suffer by being stuck in an unpleasant situation or neglected place for a long time. 

• Latitude: The freedom to act, think, or choose without strict rules or limits.

• Memorandum of Understanding (MOU): A formal, yet non-binding agreement that outlines the present intentions, roles, and objectives of the parties involved in a collaboration.

• Notorious: Famous for something bad.

• Obscure: To hide from view, make difficult to see, or render unclear and hard to understand.

• Opacity: The quality of being difficult to understand or explain.

• Pardon: A government decision to allow a person to be relieved of some or all of the legal consequences resulting from a criminal conviction.

• Political Prisoner: An individual arrested because of their perceived or real active involvement or supporting role in political movements.

• Prosecute: To officially charge someone with a crime and try to prove their guilt in a court of law.

• Provisions: A specific, binding rule, clause, or requirement within a legal document, statute, or constitution that sets out rights, duties, or procedures. 

• Regime: A system of government, a specific administration in power, or a regulated plan and method of management.

• State Repression: State repression is a government's use of coercive force (arrests, surveillance, violence, bans) to suppress political opposition, dissent, or groups formed around social cleavages.