Iran executed at least 834 people in 2023, a 43 percent increase compared to 2022, according to the annual report by Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) and Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM). Some 56 percent of the executions were drug-related. Marginalized ethnic minorities, such as the Baluch of southeastern Iran, were overrepresented among those executed for drug charges. About a third of executions were for murder charges.

In its annual report, Human Rights Watch charged that Iran executed more than 700 people in 2023, a significant increase from 2022. It also engaged in mass arrests of human rights and labor activists, lawyers, journalists, students, and artists as well as family members of protestors. Security forces used torture to obtain confessions, employed “vague national security charges,” and conducted “grossly unfair” trials that often violated due process, the report claimed.

Since 2018, Iran has detained many women activists, students, lawyers and even revolutionary insiders, such as Faezeh Hashemi, the daughter of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who criticized the regime or participated in protests. It has picked up journalists, including Niloofar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi, who provided early reporting about the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini while in police custody for wearing improper hijab.

On November 15, FBI director Christopher Wray warned that the United States faced growing dangers at home from the war between Hamas and Israel thousands of miles away. Wray specifically cited Iran, “the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism,” for operations directly and indirectly through proxies that target U.S. personnel both at home and abroad. It has hired criminals to plot assassinations against high-ranking current and former U.S. officials as well as dissidents living on American soil.

On November 14, the United States and Britain sanctioned the leadership of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad as well as mechanisms used by Iran to support the militant groups. “Together with our partners we are decisively moving to degrade Hamas’s financial infrastructure, cut them off from outside funding, and block the new funding channels they seek to finance their heinous acts,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.

On November 11, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi condemned Israel for allegedly committing the “most heinous crimes” in history during its campaign against Hamas — a response to the brutal attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 Israelis on October 7.