Iran has executed three men convicted of carrying out operations on behalf of Israel and the United States and taking part in armed unrest during the anti-government protests that swept the country in January, the judiciary said on Sunday. The executions, carried out after the Supreme Court upheld the death sentences, are the latest in a series Iran has handed down in recent months over the January unrest.
The three men were named as Hassan Dioband, Hamid Kazemi and Reza Zanganeh. According to the judiciary's Mizan Online website, their death sentences were carried out on Sunday morning after being upheld by the Supreme Court, and the court also ordered their assets to be confiscated.
Prosecutors accused the three of using firearms, grenades and Molotov cocktails, setting fire to public facilities and damaging an electricity substation in the city of Karaj, west of Tehran, causing power outages in some areas. Karaj, a large industrial city in Alborz province, was among the places where the January protests turned violent.
The judiciary said Dioband was arrested on 11 January, days after the protests reached their peak, after investigators identified him as a suspect in attacks on public property and incitement to violence. Ten others accused of taking part in the unrest under his supervision were subsequently arrested, and the remaining defendants in the case received prison sentences of between five and ten years.
The protest movement began in December last year over the rising cost of living, before rapidly developing into widespread anti-government demonstrations that peaked on 8 and 9 January. What started as anger over prices and the economy became the most serious challenge to the Iranian authorities in years, with crowds taking to the streets in cities across the country.
Iranian authorities reported more than 3,000 deaths in the unrest, attributing the violence to what they described as terrorist acts orchestrated by the United States and Israel. Foreign-based non-governmental organisations, however, maintain that Iranian security forces fired on protesters and that the true death toll was much higher, a claim the authorities reject.
The executions come as Iran continues to pursue a sweeping crackdown connected both to the January protests and to the war with the United States and Israel. In late February, the United States and Israel launched a joint attack against Iran, triggering a conflict in the Middle East that has since settled into an uneasy lull, with diplomacy and threats running in parallel.
Since the war began, arrests and executions in Iran have multiplied, linked both to the conflict and to the January protests. Tehran has repeatedly accused people arrested in connection with the unrest of acting on behalf of foreign powers, and the judiciary has presented a series of cases in which defendants were said to have carried out operations for Israel or the United States.
Rights groups have long criticised the scale of capital punishment in Iran. According to Amnesty International, Iran executes more people each year than any country except China. Non-governmental groups Iran Human Rights and Together Against the Death Penalty recorded at least 1,639 executions in Iran in 2025, the largest number in any year since 1989.
The latest executions are unlikely to be the last connected to the January unrest, with further cases still moving through the courts. At the same time, Tehran and Washington remain locked in a fragile diplomatic process over the war, with mediators working to keep the ceasefire alive even as both sides continue to warn of renewed strikes. Whether the crackdown eases or intensifies may depend on how that diplomacy develops in the weeks ahead.
