Post-revolution New Constitution The new constitution of the Islamic Republic was
adopted by referendum in December 1979. Although Ayatollah Khomeini was the undisputed leader of the revolution, he had many supporters who hoped the revolution would replace the Shah with a democratic republic. Consequently, the constitution combined conventional
liberal democratic mandates for an elected president and legislature, and
civil and political rights for its citizens, with theocratic elements Khomeini desired. But it was theocracy that was pre-eminent. The constitution vested sovereignty in God, mandated non-elected governing bodies/authorities to supervise the elected ones, and subordinated the civil/political rights to the laws/precepts/principles of Islam, Some of the ways that basics of law in Iran clashed with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after 1979 included: • The use of Classical Islamic law (
Sharia), such as • victimless crimes: '“insulting the prophet,” “apostasy,” adultery, same-sex relations (all potentially punishable by death), drinking of alcoholic beverages, failure (for a woman) to wear hijab, • harsh punishments: stoning to death, amputation, lashing, retribution (or
qisas, aka "
Eye for an eye") which can include blinding the offender. • unequal rights for women in several areas: a woman is not valued the same as a man in blood money (
diya), in inheritance, in court testimony (making conviction for rape of women difficult if not impossible in Iran), a woman needs her husband's permission to work outside the home or leave the country. covering of hair is compulsory. •
Trans women are viewed as prostitutes and face judgement and danger from the law due to this. • restrictions on religious freedom and equality: • Only Shia Muslims are eligible to become Supreme Leader or President. (non-Shia Muslims did not have equal rights with Shia). • Religiously based punishments include
blasphemy. • Non-Muslims are encouraged to convert to Islam, but
conversion from Islam to another religion (apostasy) is prohibited, and may be punishable by death; This is widely thought to explain
the brutal treatment of Baháʼís who descend from Iranian Shia and hold that the
Báb is the
Mahdi of Shia Islam and his revelations supersede the Quran. (The IRI insist the Bahai are traitors and subversives.) • a Muslim man committing adultery with a Muslim woman is subject to 100 lashes, a non-Muslim man death. • Others subject to religious discrimination include Protestant Christians, (at least in part because of their "readiness to accept and even seek out Muslim converts"); irreligious, and otherwise orthodox Shia charged with apostasy for questioning the IRI doctrine of
obeying the political "guardianship" of the Supreme Leader. •
Children's rights: The age of maturity and
criminal responsibility in international norms is 18 years, but mainstream Shia
Jaʽfari jurisprudence (and the Iranian Civil Code) hold that a female becomes an adult at the age of 8 years and 9 months (i.e. 9 lunar years), and a male at 14 years and 7 months (i.e. 15 lunar years); a disparity that has led to the execution in Iran of large numbers of (what international law says are) juvenile offenders. • The laws of the IRI do not follow "
sharia exactly" and some slight modifications to it have made since 1979 that slightly improve the IRI human rights record: • in 2002, authorities placed a moratorium on execution by stoning, but as of 2018, women were still being sentenced to stoning in Iran. • in 2004 blood money was made more equal. Under traditional Islamic law, "blood money" (
diya, financial compensation paid to the victim or heirs of a victim in the cases of murder, bodily harm or property damage) varies based on the gender and religion of the victim (Muslims and men being worth more). The International Religious Freedom Report reports that in 2004 the IRI parliament and Guardian Council reformed the law to equalized diya (also diyeh) between Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian men. (Baháʼí men were excluded, since according to law there is no "blood money" for Baháʼí since their blood is considered
Mobah, i.e. it can be spilled with impunity). • on 10 February 2012, Iran's parliament raised the minimum age for adulthood to 18 (solar years).
Velayat-e faqih and regime self-preservation • The IRI has a number of laws and clauses in the constitution in violation of human rights provisions whose connection to classical sharia may be tenuous but that do mention protecting "principles of Islam" and have been used since 1979 to protect the government from dissent. • Restrictions on expression and media. The 1985 press law established press courts with the power to impose criminal penalties on individuals and to order closures of newspapers and periodicals, involved in "discourse harmful to the principles of Islam" and "public interest". • Restrictions on political freedom. Article 27 of the constitution limits "Public gatherings and marches" to those that "are not detrimental to the fundamental principles of Islam," and according to
Human Rights Watch, "broadly worded 'security laws'" in Iran are used "to arbitrarily suppress and punish individuals for peaceful political expression, association, and assembly, in breach of international human rights treaties to which Iran is party". For example, "connections to foreign institutions, persons, or sources of funding" are enough to bring criminal charges such as "undermining national security" against individuals. • In addition, some provisions of the constitution are believed to give the government license to go outside the constitution's
own protections of civil and political rights, (for example article 167 of the constitution gives judges the discretion "to deliver his judgment on the basis of authoritative Islamic sources and authentic
fatwa (rulings issued by qualified clerical jurists))." Under the Islamic Republic, assassinations and other killings, beatings, rapes, torture and imprisonment of dissidents by government forces without any sort of due process were often described as "extrajudicial". But former
Revolutionary Guard turned dissident
Akbar Ganji argues these were actually
not outside the penal code of the Islamic Republic since the code "authorises a citizen to assassinate another if he is judged to be 'impious'". (Historian
Ervand Abrahamian writes that the torture of prisoners and the
execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 have been reported to follow at least some form of Islamic law and legal procedures.) According to Abrahamian, in the eyes of Iranian officials, "the survival of the Islamic Republic and therefore of Islam itself justified the means used," and trumped any right of the individual. • Finally, in early 1988, shortly before his death, Imam Khomeini issued a fatwa ruling that Iran's Islamic government was "a branch of the Prophet's absolute Wilayat" and so important to Islam that it was one of "the primary (first order) rules of Islam" and that "ordinances of the law even praying, fasting and Hajj" were secondary ordinances over which Islamic government had "precedence". He wrote: "The Islamic State could prevent implementation of everything – devotional and non- devotional – that ... seems against Islam's interests". This doctrine --
velayat-e motlaqaye faqih ("the absolute authority of the jurist") -- indicated (according to Abrahamian) that "the survival of the Islamic Republic" and Islam itself were indeed tied together. It indicated to another scholar (Elizabeth Mayer) that the Islamic Republic was "freed ... to do as it chose — even if this meant violating fundamental pillars of the religion ..." (and, of course, the Iranian constitution) — and that
velayat-e motlaqaye faqih, not sharia law, explained "the prevalence of torture and punishment of political dissent" in the Islamic Republic.
First decade The vast majority of killings of political prisoners occurred in the first decade of the Islamic Republic, after which violent repression lessened. After the revolution, the new regime worked to consolidate its rule. Human rights groups estimated the number of casualties suffered by protesters and prisoners of the Islamic government to be several thousand. The first to be executed were members of the old system – senior generals, followed by over 200 senior civilian officials. Their trials were brief and lacked defense attorneys, juries, transparency or the opportunity for the accused to defend themselves. By January 1980 "at least 582 persons" had been executed. In mid-August 1979, several dozen newspapers and magazines opposing Khomeini's idea of theocratic rule by jurists were shut down. Political parties were banned (the
National Democratic Front in August 1979, the
Muslim People's Republican Party in January 1980), a purge of universities started in March 1980. Between January 1980 and June 1981 another 900 executions (at least) took place, for everything from drug and sexual offenses to "corruption on earth", from plotting counter-revolution and spying for Israel to membership in opposition groups. And in the year after that, at least 8,000 were executed. According to estimates provided by the military historian
Spencer C. Tucker, in the period of 1980 to 1985, between 25,000 and 40,000 Iranians were arrested, 15,000 Iranians were tried and 8,000 to 9,500 Iranians were executed. , leader of
Nation Party was one of the victims of
Chain murders of Iran.
1990s and the Chain Murders In the 1990s there were a number of unsolved murders and disappearances of intellectuals and political activists who had been critical of the Islamic Republic system in some way. In 1998 these complaints came to a head with the killing of three dissident writers (
Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh,
Mohammad Mokhtari,
Majid Sharif), a political leader (Dariush Forouhar) and his wife in the span of two months, in what became known as the "Chain murders" or 1998 Serial Murders of Iran. Altogether more than 80 writers, translators, poets, political activists, and ordinary citizens are thought to have been killed over the course of several years. and the deputy security official of the Ministry of Information,
Saeed Emami blamed for the killings died in prison, allegedly committing suicide, though many believe he was killed and that "higher level officials were responsible for the killings". With the rise of the Iranian reform movement and the election of moderate Iranian president
Mohammad Khatami in 1997, numerous moves were made to modify the Iranian civil and penal codes in order to improve the human rights situation. The predominantly reformist parliament drafted several bills allowing increased freedom of speech, gender equality, and the banning of torture. These were all dismissed or significantly watered down by the
Guardian Council and leading conservative figures in the Iranian government at the time.
Early 21st century and mass protests , winner of 2003
Nobel Peace Prize By 2007,
The Economist magazine wrote: The
Tehran spring of ten years ago has now given way to a bleak political winter. The new government continues to close down newspapers, silence dissenting voices and ban or censor books and websites. The peaceful demonstrations and protests of the
Khatami era are no longer tolerated: in January 2007 security forces attacked striking bus drivers in
Tehran and arrested hundreds of them. In March police beat hundreds of men and women who had assembled to commemorate
International Women's Day. Several major recent protest movements — the
July 1999 Iran student protests,
2009 Iranian presidential election protests,
2017–18 Iranian protests,
2019–2020 Iranian protests — have been met with violent crackdowns from the "parallel institution" of the
Basij, with mass arrests, live ammunition, show trials. "reported abuse and torture in detention", and the "greenlighting" of "these rampant abuses" by the Supreme Leader
Ali Khamenei. Estimates of the killed vary from 200 to 1500. From 2018 to 2020 human rights complaints included a high rate of executions, the targeting of "journalists, online media activists, and human rights defenders" by the "security apparatus and Iran's judiciary" in "blatant disregard of international and domestic legal standards", including "decades-long prison sentences" for human rights defenders,
2022 Mahsa Amini protests In September 2022 a new round of "nationwide" protest began that has "spread across social classes, universities, the streets [and] schools", and been called "the biggest threat" to the government of Iran since its founding with the
Islamic Revolution. The unrest began with the
Death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iranian morality Islamic police, after she was detained for allegedly wearing hijab incorrectly. At least 551 people have been killed as of 15 September 2023, according to
Iran Human Rights, including women and at least 68 minors. An estimated 18,170 have been arrested throughout 134 cities and towns, and at 132 universities. In addition to Iran's domestic security forces, some reports have indicated that
foreign militias aligned with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, such as groups from Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan, were involved in the suppression of protests.
2026 Iran massacres Since late December 2025 Iranian state security forces have engaged in massacres of dissidents during the
2025–2026 Iranian protests. The crackdown was carried out under Ali Khamenei's direct order for live fire on protesters. As of 13 January 2026, unofficial figures for death tolls had risen to 12,000 civilians. On Jan 8th, the country was faced with a surge of
internet blackouts nationwide on an unprecedented scale, affecting human rights organisation's ability to attest to new figures, as well as cover the range of human rights violations that have occurred since the protests began. Some sources also estimate the actual number casualties to sit as high as 20,000.
2026 Prison crisis Human rights organizations and families of detainees have reported worsening conditions in Iranian prisons since the beginning of the recent
war in Iran. Activists report increasing chaos within prisons, with non-political detainees being released but political prisoners, specifically those detained during protests, being denied bail. Reports indicate that the administrative order in
Evin prison has collapsed, with guards abandoning their posts leaving prisoners locked in their cells lacking food or medical care. Political prisoners have also been moved to unknown locations without notifying their families. Iran's special police unit,
NOPO, is reported to have taken control of the prison. Conditions are also worsening in other prisons. Dadban, a group of volunteer lawyers, reported deteriorating circumstances at
Qarchak women's prison, including staff shortages, water shortages, and the closure of the prison shop. At
Tehran Greater Prison, explosions damaged the facility, and reports indicate that prison guards beat inmates and fired tear gas. There have been similar incidents in other prisons, such as Mahabad, where anti-riot guards attacked prisoners protesting unsafe conditions during wartime. This move contradicts Iran's commitment to abstain from the use of children in military activities under
the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Nadali justified to move stating "Given that the age of those coming forward has dropped and they are asking to take part, we lowered the minimum age to 12". By early April, additional executions continued with cases such as
Amirhossein Hatami being executed on 2 April 2026 for involvement in protests-related events.
Perspective of the Islamic Republic In 1984, Iran's representative to the United Nations, Sai Rajaie-Khorassani, declared the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to be representing a "secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition", which did not "accord with the system of values recognized by the Islamic Republic of Iran" and whose provisions the IRI would "not hesitate to violate". Officials of the Islamic Republic have responded to criticism by stating that Iran has "the best human rights record" in the Muslim world (2012); that it is not obliged to follow "the West's interpretation" of human rights (2008); and that the Islamic Republic is a victim of "biased propaganda of enemies" which is "part of a greater plan against the
world of Islam" (2008). While in 2004 reformist president Mohammad Khatami stated that Iran certainly has "people who are in prison for their ideas." In general Iranian officials have denied Iran has political prisoners (Judiciary chief Ayatollah
Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi in 2004), or claimed that Iran's human rights record is better than that of countries that criticize it (President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2007 and 2008), or better than Israel's. Explanations for why this is include the importance of "debate and discussion" among clerics in
Shiite Islam that has spilled over into the Iranian public (journalist
Elaine Sciolino), and that "notions of democracy and human rights" now have much deeper roots among Iranians than under the Shah (Akbar Ganji, Arzoo Osanloo,
Hooman Majd), in fact are "almost hegemonic" (Arzoo Osanloo), so that it is much harder to spread fear among them, even to the point that if Iranian intelligence services "were to arrest anyone who speaks ill of the government in private, they simply couldn't build cells fast enough to hold their prisoners" (journalist Hooman Majd).
Comparison The Islamic revolution is thought to have a significantly worse human rights record than the Pahlavi dynasty it overthrew. According to political historian Ervand Abrahamian, "whereas less than 100
political prisoners had been executed between 1971 and 1979, more than 7900 were executed between 1981 and 1985. ... the prison system was centralized and drastically expanded ... Prison life was drastically worse under the Islamic Republic than under the Pahlavis. One who survived both writes that four months under [Islamic Republic warden]
Ladjevardi took the toll of four years under SAVAK. In the prison literature of the Pahlavi era, the recurring words had been ‘boredom’ and ‘monotony’. In that of the Islamic Republic, they were ‘fear’, ‘death’, ‘terror’, ‘horror’, and most frequent of all ‘nightmare’ (‘kabos’)." According to the Norwegian-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) group, the number of executions in 2025 was more than double the number in 2024.
Human rights bodies and sources of information Since the founding of the Islamic Republic, human rights violations have been the subject of resolutions and decisions by the United Nations and its human rights bodies, and by the
Council of Europe,
European Parliament and
United States Congress. In early 1980 Iran became one of the few countries (where conditions were bad enough) to ever be investigated by a UN country rapporteur under the UN Special Procedures section. Four years later the
United Nations Commission on Human Rights appointed a Special Representative on Iran to study its human rights situation and as of 2001 three men have filled that role. In addition to the UN Commission, more information on human rights violations has been provided by Human Rights NGOs and memoires by political prisoners who were released and which became available in the 1990s. According to
The Minority Rights Group, in 1985 Iran became "the fourth country ever in the history of the United Nations" to be placed on the agenda of the General Assembly because of "the severity and the extent of this human rights record". In response, not only has the Islamic Republic not implement recommendations to improve conditions (according to the UNCHR), but it has retaliated "against witnesses who testified to the experts." The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) has repeatedly passed resolutions criticizing human rights violations against Iran's religious minorities—especially the
Baháʼís and the situation of a hunger striker (
Farhad Meysami). In addition, non-governmental human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the
Center for Human Rights in Iran, have issued reports and expressed concern over issues such as the treatment of religious minorities, prison conditions, medical conditions of prisoners, mass arrests of anti-government demonstrators. Iran has a track record of treating Afghan refugees and migrants poorly, with Human Rights Watch documenting violations including physical abuse, detention in unsanitary and inhumane conditions, forced payment for transportation and accommodation in deportation camps, forced labor, and forced separation of families. == See also ==