Iran executed three men on Sunday morning for their part in the anti-government protests that shook the country in January, accusing them of carrying out operations on behalf of Israel and the United States.
Hassan Divband, Hamid Kazemi and Reza Zanganeh were hanged at dawn, according to Iran’s judiciary, which said the country’s Supreme Court had upheld their death sentences. The Kurdish human rights group Hengaw, which tracks executions in Iran, said the three were put to death at Ghezel Hesar Prison in Karaj, the city west of Tehran where the unrest they were convicted over took place.
The men were the first three defendants in a case tried by Branch 2 of the Karaj Revolutionary Court. The judiciary said they were found guilty of “participating in operational activities on behalf of the Israeli Zionist regime, the United States and hostile groups” during the protests of 8 and 9 January, and of moharebeh — waging war against God, a charge under Iranian law that carries the death penalty.
Prosecutors accused the three of using firearms, grenades and Molotov cocktails, setting fire to public facilities and damaging an electricity substation in Karaj, knocking out power in parts of the city. Divband, described by the judiciary as the group’s leader, was arrested on 11 January and accused of inciting people to destroy public property. The court also ordered the men’s assets confiscated. Eight other defendants in the same case received prison terms of between five and ten years.
The executions are the latest in a series Iran has carried out in recent months over the January unrest, and they land in the middle of a war. The protests began in December as demonstrations against the rising cost of living and swelled into nationwide anti-government rallies that peaked on 8 and 9 January. Iranian authorities say more than 3,000 people were killed in the unrest, which they blame on what they call terrorist acts orchestrated by Washington and Israel. Human rights groups say the death toll includes protesters shot by security forces, and they dispute the official account of who was responsible for the violence.
According to Hengaw, the three men bring the number of political and religious prisoners executed in Iran since the start of 2026 to 79, including 40 sentenced to death over the January protests. The group says the executions were carried out in secret, at dawn, without prior public notice of the date.
The United Nations’ human rights chief, Volker Türk, has urged Iran to halt executions and move towards abolishing the death penalty altogether. His office has repeatedly warned that death sentences handed down after trials in Iran’s Revolutionary Courts fall short of fair-trial standards, a criticism Tehran rejects.
The timing matters. The hangings come days after the United States carried out strikes on Iranian air defences and extended its naval blockade of Iran onto land, and a day after Tehran dropped its self-imposed 2,000-kilometre limit on ballistic missile range. Executing men convicted of working for Israel and the US while the two countries are at war with Iran sends a message to two audiences at once: to Iranians, that dissent tied to foreign powers will be treated as treason, and to Washington and Jerusalem, that Tehran is prepared to punish anyone it claims is acting on their behalf.
That is also what makes the cases hard to assess from outside. The charges rest on confessions and evidence presented in closed Revolutionary Court proceedings that independent observers were not allowed to attend, and the judiciary’s account — armed attacks on a power station, foreign direction — cannot be independently verified. What is verifiable is the pattern: Iran has repeatedly used executions of protesters accused of foreign links as a tool of deterrence, and it is doing so now, in wartime, when the stakes for both the government and its critics are at their highest.
For the families of the tens of thousands arrested in January, the message is unambiguous. Forty people have now been executed over those protests, and more death sentences are working their way through the courts. For the rest of the world, the three hangings in Karaj are a reminder that the war with Iran is not only being fought with missiles and blockades. It is also being fought inside Iran’s prisons, against Iranians accused of siding with the enemy.
Sources: Iran’s judiciary (Mizan), Hengaw Organization for Human Rights (Hengaw report on the executions), Reuters. Spelling note: some wire reports transliterate the first man’s surname as “Dioband”; the judiciary and Hengaw render it “Divband”.
