What's Happening to Iran's Protest Prisoners?

The nation of Iran is on the brink of revolution, but revolution always comes with a cost.

As of the time of this episode being written, the vast majority of sources agree that well over 2,000 people have been killed across Iran after the start of nationwide protests just weeks ago, and some aggregations of reports on the ground suggest a death toll of 12,000 or higher.

Hundreds of regime security forces are believed to be among the dead, as well as hundreds of children and elderly who have been slaughtered with impunity, according to the limited accounts that have made it to the international press.

As the protesters appear to take a pause, forced into their homes by police and soldiers who have been unleashed upon the public, it's not clear that Iran's protests can sustain without foreign support.

What is clear, however, is that the sheer human devastation of these protests is already greater than at any point in Iran's history since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. But as global onlookers try to figure out how many people have died, there's another group of Iranian civilians that we need to talk about.

The detained, the imprisoned, and those who may soon be sentenced to death. Even in peacetime, Iran's detention system has been among the most notorious on Earth, and now the Ayatollahs have made sure that ordinary Iranians understand what's waiting for them if they allow themselves to be taken alive into state custody.

So, as the world awaits foreign intervention that may or may not have happened by the time you see this very episode, we're going to take a closer look at Iran's prisoners.

How many there are, what they're going through today, and the regime's determination to snuff them out by any means necessary. Thousands Disappeared As the world tries to understand what's happened in Iran over the last several weeks, the focus of most observers, rather understandably, has been on the death toll.

Those numbers have proved very difficult to pin down, and while the best attempts to gather on-the-ground reports typically lead to numbers near or above 10,000, the message that some activists are receiving from their connections back in Iran is incredibly grim.

But no, based on the horror and tragedy that they've personally witnessed, the overall number couldn't possibly be that low. But if the world is having this much trouble establishing an overall count of the dead, then it should be no surprise that estimates of the arrested or disappeared will be even less precise.

As of now, the figure most commonly cited by international press is a figure maintained by the group Human Rights Activists in Iran, who estimate that well over 18,000 people have been detained thus far.

That number, however, is all but certain to be an undercount, with the only real question being just how severe that undercount really is.

Now, that's a question that we won't be able to answer in today's episode, but we can at least get some perspective on just how bad the situation might be by taking a broader look at Iran's detention apparatus as we knew it before these protests began.

If one thing has become clear after several rounds of protests and repression across the last decade, it's the fact that Iran collapsed in the 1960s, you know, and it has to be very important.

You can also see an But of course, I'm not going to be able to start. And that's one thing that I can do as if you know the advice for this challenge is not has an immense capacity to detain and hold dissidents indefinitely.

Its law enforcement at the local, provincial, and federal levels are able to detain people at scale in all sorts of jails and prisons, and while Iran's prisons are chronically overcrowded, the regime's disinterest in preserving the well-being of its prisoners means that overcrowding here takes on a rather different meaning.

Overcrowded prisons in Iran aren't necessarily seen as a problem when it becomes time to detain protesters en masse. Instead, the regime's calculus becomes focused on just how many people can be stuffed into cells before it becomes literally impossible to keep them alive long enough to be sentenced.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leverages its own detention apparatus and can commandeer state intelligence and military resources to build black sites, repurpose facilities, and otherwise expand Iran's state repression apparatus dramatically as needed.

The same is true for the besiege, volunteer militia that in its most fundamental role exists to put down protests and punish dissent. Iran's Ministry of Intelligence forms yet another layer of the Iranian detention state and is often charged with imprisoning the most ideologically troublesome prisoners that Iran has to offer.

Making matters worse, Iran does have a known, consistent method of opening up space in its prisons.

Execution. Annually, Iran is known to execute hundreds of prisoners, a figure that does not include other people who inexplicably disappear after they've been detained with their fates just never acknowledged.

In 2025, however, Iran's rate of execution more than doubled, with the humanitarian group Iran Human Rights verifying over 1,500 executions from January 2025 until the end of November.

In ordinary times, most people are executed for either murder or drug-related defenses in Iran, although after the war between Israel and Iran last year, a growing number of people have been killed as alleged Israeli or pro-Western spies.

Whether in the context of that war or in rounds of protests past, Iran's rate of executions has regularly increased when the state believes itself to be under threat or otherwise wants to project power in order to cower its adversaries into submission. Enter the protests of early 2026, and the implication is clear.

In a moment of such unrest, especially with public discontent displayed at such an incredible scale, execution of detained individuals should be regarded as an option on the table in the eyes of Iran's leaders. That expectation has been borne out, especially in the final few days before Iran's protest movement appeared to pause its street demonstrations.

On Wednesday, the 14th of January, the chief of Iran's judiciary took to state TV, indicating that at least some of Iran's demonstrators should be, quote, tried and punished as soon as possible, end quote.

In those remarks, the judiciary chief expressed that fast-tracked punishment would be focused on people who, quote, beheaded people or burned people on the streets, repeating allegations about protesters that currently appear to be false and for which the regime has produced no evidence to indicate that they're true.

But if Tehran intends to use those accusations as pre- text to punish its detainees then the result is clear acts of beheading or burning or otherwise killing another person especially a regime loyalist is an offense highly likely to result in the death penalty and any person accused of such a thing by the state is likely to face the same fate during that

State tv interview iran's judiciary chief stated that ideally trials would not only be fast but public meaning that advocates would have little to no time to argue a detained person's case and that their deaths are likely to be used as instruments of intimidation directed toward the rest of the iranian public on the same day prosecutors in tehran stated that

They would pursue capital charges against quote rioters and saboteurs who had been detained and unfortunately the regime's use of those labels thus far would suggest that anyone taken into custody during the protests could thus be charged with capital offenses as one al jazeera reporter explained it speaking in tehran quote the judicial system says it will

Rapidly conduct trials for those who killed people carried weapons or destabilize the country when it comes to peaceful protesters there is no such statement from iranian officials end quote a political instrument as the first wave of protests has subsided and the iranian regime goes about proving to its people that it remains in control it started to engage

In a few specific policies that can only be fairly interpreted as a series of death threats it's made a habit of showing the dead bodies of protesters on state tv it's showed footage of its own security forces gunning people down and it has made a point of airing interviews where iranian judicial authorities lay out the case for the death penalty under such

Broad terms that practically any participant in the protest movement could be targeted but the threat that's gotten the greatest international attention was the threat to start executions far earlier than anticipated starting with a 26 year old protester named assam sultani arrested in the city of faris sultani was given an expedited trial and sentenced to

Death with his execution scheduled for wednesday january 14th according to his family members living abroad sultani's case very quickly became the subject of media reports across the globe especially in the united states where he became emblematic of not just the iranian regime's repression but a promise that u.s president donald trump had made iran's

Protesters that if the regime were to kill demonstrators then washington would take action against tehran in response before long iranian leaders appeared to have gotten the message execute sultani and the u.s will simply have to intervene as of now america's plans to intervene still an open question both regarding the action that america would take and

Whether or not america will take action at all but killing sultani especially as the first in a wave of public executions would simply have been a bridge too far on the day following the date of sultani's scheduled hanging iranian state media explains that while sultani was charged with, quote, colluding against the country's internal security and propaganda

Activities against the regime, the death penalty didn't apply in this case because, according to Iranian media, his charges had been confirmed by a court.

Whether or not that distinction makes much sense, or whether it's at all consistent with Iran's usual treatment of political dissidence, is another question, but it's likely to be immaterial.

At least for now, Soltani's execution is functionally postponed, and according to Iran's top diplomat, Abbas Agachi, quote, there is no plan for hanging, especially not in the immediate future.

Obviously, that statement is in direct conflict with the rest of Iran's statements and actions thus far, but Tehran's political calculus appears to have made clear that hanging protesters right away, probably not a brilliant idea. That decision brings up other questions that we just can't answer right now.

If the regime does still want to execute protesters as quickly as possible, does it simply disappear some of them into the state apparatus and execute them behind closed doors before the revolution is time to restart?

The way that Iran views these detainees is absolutely essential, specifically whether it views them as political props or genuine threats to the state who could become even more dangerous if they were allowed to survive and somehow gained their freedom in the future.

Right now, we simply can't say, and even if Iran doesn't intend to execute prisoners immediately, will that halt the flow of secret trials?

Or will Iran simply start building a long list of people condemned to death with the intent to make a spectacle out of them later? Then there are the forced confessions, one of the first signals sent by the regime that its treatment of protesters was about to become far more oppressive than it had been in the protestors' early days.

As of the 13th of January, Iran had already aired nearly 100 confessions from alleged protesters who were featured on Iranian state television while in handcuffs, with their faces blurred, confessing their supposed actions during the protests and expressing remorse.

As outside advocates have emphasized, those confessions are likely to be the result of physical or psychological torture and can often result in a person being punished with the death penalty, if, that is, the confessions are genuine at all.

Often, the confessions are paired with grainy security footage that supposedly depicts the detainee's crimes or homemade weapons that the person supposedly used. Those confessions have continued over the last several days, and now nearly half as many have taken place over the last few weeks as took place during the entire decade from 2010 to 2020.

As for the implications for what's likely happening behind the scenes, a 2014 report by the United Nations found that over 70% of Iranian former detainees they'd interviewed said that forced confessions or coerced information were used in hearings against them. As for how those hearings actually work, they're shams.

They're staged to give the slightest veneer of legitimacy. has the regime hands down a verdict that's really a foregone conclusion.

Trials in Iran are structured as an inquisition with regime officials not only forcing confessions but leveraging psychological abuse, physical torture, threats to a person's family and associates, and other coercive methods to extract information.

Fundamentally, the process presumes that a person who confesses a crime is as good as guilty regardless of the circumstances under which that confession was gathered. Hearings that the regime regard as sensitive or that have to do with dissidence and anti-state sentiment take place in secret.

Detainees are assigned counsel that overwhelmingly abide by the state's wishes and, as you probably expect by now, the idea of a jury of one's peers is… no, that's not a thing. Finally, we've got to discuss the physical condition of many of these detainees whose survival is far from assured while they're in state custody.

During its crackdowns, Iran is known to have detained wounded hospital patients, dragged away people who'd been shot, and otherwise take custody of injured protesters on numerous occasions.

It's not clear quite how extensive that policy was, at least not yet, but anybody who did disappear into Iran's murky detention apparatus while wounded is unlikely to be in good condition.

According to international rights groups, Iranian prisons tend to neither have the resources to take adequate care of prisoners nor any human interest in their health or their quality of care.

Diseases common within the detention system, infection is highly likely, and even people who do manage to be treated by doctors are interacting with medical personnel who almost certainly understand the urgency of remaining loyal to a larger police state.

A high proportion of wounded detainees are likely to have been partially or fully blinded in a trend that's been mirrored all across Iran, including among protesters who have not yet been taken into custody.

One ophthalmologist in Tehran, providing information in text messages that was sent to The Guardian, described that in his particular hospital over 400 people had come in with eye injuries and that gunshot wounds were predominantly concentrated on protesters' heads and especially their eyes.

That way, even if people survive their gunshot wounds, they're likely to lose at least one eye and possibly two, bestowing a lifelong punishment upon them and marking them permanently as dissidents who were punished for opposing the state.

Other doctors have attested to numerous cases of people having their eyes shot at with shotgun pellets and routinely confirmed that state security forces appeared to be targeting the eyes as well as the genitals, especially with less lethal weapons, when they've been deployed.

Altogether, it appears that the Iranian regime is treating its protesters today in the same way that Iran has treated dissidents for years as showpieces, traitors to the state who were meant to be paraded around, shamed, and forced to experience incredible pain before ultimately being disposed of.

This is far from the first time that Iran has its leverage. you any of these tactics, from forced confessions to disappearances to public hangings to international and targeted mutilation of survivors.

What we're witnessing now in Iran is the product of many decades of experience in full-scale repression with zero accountability ever likely to come from the inside.

Iran's attempt at revolution hasn't finished quite yet, but if it's allowed to collapse, then there will be nothing standing between the nation's protesters and a regime that trains for generations to get its revenge.