Iran Executed at Least 47 Women in a Year, While Protester ‘Saved’ by Trump Put on Death Row

Guards at Mashhad’s Vakilabad Prison in Iran dragged Mahboubeh Shabani out of her ward in September and into a solitary cell. Two days earlier, her lawyer had been told a Revolutionary Court sentenced her to death for “operational action” to strengthen Israel, America and opposition groups.Rights monitors say what the civil engineer, in her early 30s, actually did during the January uprising was carry wounded protesters to medical care on her own motorcycle.In April, Ms. Shabani’s photograph was one of eight that President Trump posted on Truth Social, warning the Islamic Republic was preparing to hang the women. A day later, he announced the women “will no longer be killed,” and thanked Iran’s leaders for respecting his request.Iran’s judiciary-linked Mizan news agency, however, said false reports had taken in Mr. Trump.Rights groups said at the time only one of the eight, Bita Hemmati, had actually been sentenced to death, and the Supreme Court overturned her sentence in May. Ms. Shabani’s death sentence came five months after the post.A former political prisoner, Sepideh Gholian, wrote online that guards told Ms. Shabani she would be executed because Mr. Trump had taken up her case, an account that could not be independently verified.The women’s committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an opposition group, says at least 54 women were executed between October 2025 and October 2026. At least eight of the women were mothers. The Human Rights Activists News Agency, known as HRANA, uses a narrower standard, and counted at least 47 women among 2,003 executed in the year ending Oct. 8.Oslo-based Iran Human Rights recorded 48 executions of women in 2025, the most in more than two decades. As of Nov. 4, it had logged 696 executions this year, 23 of them women.Whatever the exact number, the divide between Iran and every other country executing women is not close.“Iran carries out more documented executions of women than any other country in the world, by a very large margin,” the founder and director of Iran Human Rights, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, tells The New York Sun. “But women face an additional layer of injustice. They are victims of a system of gender apartheid, both in law and in practice.”So who is Iran sending to the gallows, and how many of the women still waiting on death row will follow them?Child Brides and Abused Wives on the GallowsMost of the women hanged in Iran are not political prisoners. They are convicted of murder under qisas, or retribution in kind, which lets a victim’s family demand execution or blood money. Other women faced drug charges.“In 2025, about two-thirds of the women executed in Iran were convicted of murder, and roughly two-thirds of those were accused of killing their husbands or fiancés,” Mr. Amiry-Moghaddam says. “In many of the cases we have investigated, we have found histories of forced marriage, prolonged domestic violence, and desperate circumstances.”Marzieh Nieri, 23, was hanged in Qazvin in August. Forced into marriage at 17, she told the court she wounded one of her husband’s business partners with a kitchen knife when he tried to assault her while drunk. Her husband was killed in the confrontation, and the court rejected her self-defense claim after the families demanded qisas.Asma Zarei, 28, was hanged in Ardabil on May 20 for killing her husband, whom she was accused of poisoning with pills. She was pregnant when she was arrested and gave birth behind bars. In a will, she asked her mother to raise her two-year-old.Six executions of women were carried out in August, the highest monthly total this year. On Oct. 9, United Nations experts called for an immediate halt to all executions in Iran, tying many women’s cases to the state’s failure to protect them from domestic violence.The odds, experts say, are stacked against women long before they reach a courtroom.“Explicit and implicit gender discrimination is deeply embedded in the Iranian legal and political system,” a clinical professor of law at Cornell University who specializes in international human rights, Sandra Babcock, tells the Sun. “One example is the age at which young people can be held legally culpable: for boys it is 15 years old, but for girls it is nine years old.”In other words, Iranian law can hold a girl criminally responsible as an adult six years before it does the same to a boy.The Women Still WaitingSeven women arrested in connection with the January protests are now on death row, while three others have had their death sentences overturned on review, a senior advocacy officer at Human Rights Activists, the group behind HRANA, Julie Heezius, tells the Sun. HRANA counts Ms. Shabani among them, along with 23-year-old accounting student Najmeh Amini, also held in Mashhad, who was sentenced over a social media post.Women convicted in older political cases face the same fate. On Oct. 14, a Kurdish activist, Varisheh Moradi, was sentenced to death a second time by the same court branch whose first verdict was thrown out. Hengaw reports the Supreme Court upheld the decision within weeks.“At least a dozen women are facing the death penalty in political and national-security-related cases,” Mr. Amiry-Moghaddam underscores. “The danger is very real. Protesters have already been executed following grossly unfair trials, torture, and forced confessions.”What Changed After the Truth Social PostMr. Trump’s April announcement came as Washington and Tehran negotiated a ceasefire and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. The hangings of women went on afterward. Iran Human Rights had recorded six by late May.The president’s post did some good, Mr. Amiry-Moghaddam concedes.“I believe it helped draw international attention to their cases and increased the potential political cost of executing them,” he explains. “We cannot conclude that eight executions were prevented. The problem is that such attention is often short-lived.”Death sentences against women normally draw heavy scrutiny abroad, Mr. Amiry-Moghaddam stresses, “but over the past year, much of that attention has been diverted to the war and other geopolitical developments, including the Strait of Hormuz.”“The authorities appear to be exploiting this lack of attention to spread fear through executions,” he continues.Ms. Babcock, who calls the American and Israeli war on Iran illegal, argues the war has strengthened the regime’s hand at home.“In many ways, the U.S. attacks have lent further legitimacy to those who hold power in Iran and have allowed them to crack down on dissent,” she observes.Mr. Amiry-Moghaddam now wants Washington to make an immediate halt to executions a central demand in any talks with Tehran, and to coordinate that pressure with European governments.“Occasional interventions may help individual cases,” he adds. “But only sustained attention and coordinated political pressure can raise the cost of executions and help prevent further state killings.”

Iran Executed at Least 47 Women in a Year, While Protester ‘Saved’ by Trump Put on Death Row

Iran Executed at Least 47 Women in a Year, While Protester ‘Saved’ by Trump Put on Death Row

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