Netanyahu says Israel resisted calls to end Gaza war to address Iran threat

The report documented an 86 percent increase in executions compared with the previous year’s 823 cases. Of those executed, eight were hanged in public, 49 were women, and three were under 18 at the time of the alleged crimes.

“This increase peaked between 2024 and 2025, with at least 1,537 executions recorded, the highest number documented in the past decade,” HRANA said.

The data were collected from a combination of judicial sources, local reports, and the agency’s network of independent observers, according to HRANA.

94.14 percent of executions, it said, were carried out secretly and never announced by official sources, a pattern it said reflected the authorities’ efforts to “omit, conceal, or restrict the collection of such data.”

Nearly half of all executions, 48.34 percent, were related to drug offenses, while 43.46 percent were for murder. Other charges included rape, moharebeh (ear against God), espionage, and corruption on earth.

The report showed the highest number of executions in Alborz province, where Ghezel Hesar Prison accounted for 183 hangings. Isfahan and Fars provinces followed, with 124 and 118 executions respectively at Dastgerd and Adelabad prisons. The data also indicated that the months of September, August, and May 2025 saw the most executions, with 191, 165, and 162 cases respectively.

A decade of reversal

Its ten-year analysis, HRANA said, revealed that after a relative decline between 2015 and 2019, executions in Iran have increased steadily since 2021. The report found that the majority of those executed came from socially and economically vulnerable groups, including defendants convicted under Iran’s strict anti-narcotics laws.

Inside prisons, resistance has grown. On October 7, prisoners across 52 facilities continued hunger strikes under the “Tuesdays No to Execution” campaign, which has been running for 89 consecutive weeks.

The death penalty was being used by the authorities as a political tool to suppress dissent amid economic crisis and public discontent, HRANA added.

Call for international response

The agency urged the United Nations and foreign governments to intervene. It called for “urgent and coordinated action by the international community to halt the ten-year wave of executions, reform domestic laws, hold perpetrators of extrajudicial executions accountable, and take unified international measures to confront the growing wave of executions in Iran.”

The Amir Kabir Dam, inaugurated in 1960 as Iran’s first multipurpose dam, is now at its lowest level in more than six decades of operation. Once vital to supplying Tehran province, it currently holds only about 14 percent of its 205 million cubic meter capacity, according to the Iran Water Resources Management Company.

“At present, nearly 86 percent of the reservoir is empty,” the agency said in its latest assessment, citing low inflows from upstream rivers and continued extractions for urban, agricultural, and environmental needs.

A year ago, the dam contained around 111 million cubic meters of water, with the long-term seasonal average closer to 120 million cubic meters. The year-on-year comparison reflects a 76 percent decline in stored volume.

Hydropower operations were suspended earlier this autumn when levels fell below 28 million cubic meters, disabling the facility’s turbines. Officials said the dam has not yet reached its “dead storage” level of 10 million cubic meters, below which the water becomes unusable.

Tehran’s main reservoirs are nearing depletion. Government figures show that 19 major dams nationwide are operating at below 20 percent capacity.

Growing alarm over nationwide shortages

In central Iran, Isfahan officials warned that the city’s water crisis has grown beyond provincial boundaries and could soon affect several regions.

Mohammad-Taghi Naghdali, head of Isfahan’s parliamentary delegation, said the situation required “a national commitment and cross-provincial coordination.” A task force known as the “water command” has been established to pursue solutions, he added.

“We have exhausted all legal and parliamentary means to stop unauthorized withdrawals,” Naghdali said. “If action is delayed, the entire country will face a grave catastrophe.”

Experts have cautioned that decades of overconsumption, mismanagement, and uneven rainfall have left Iran’s reservoirs critically depleted, threatening both electricity production and drinking water supplies nationwide.

“I’m not able to confirm that the Secretary-General would ever have said that,” UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told reporters in New York. He said Aref appeared to be referring to an August meeting in Turkmenistan and pointed to the UN readout from August 5 as the accurate record.

Aref told Iranian state media that Guterres had said “the file of overthrowing the establishment was closed after the 12-day war.” He did not say when or where the conversation took place.

Guterres has made no such remark publicly. During the June conflict, he said on X that he was “gravely alarmed” by the use of force by the United States against Iran, calling it a dangerous escalation and a threat to international peace.

The 12-day war began with Israeli strikes that killed Iranian nuclear scientists and ended with US bombings of three key nuclear sites.

Aref spoke days after US President Donald Trump warned Washington would strike Iran again if it restarted its nuclear program. Speaking at a Navy anniversary event in Virginia, Trump called the June 22 airstrikes “perfectly executed” and said Tehran had been weeks from building a nuclear weapon.

Iran says it does not seek confrontation but will respond if attacked. Aref said the conflict showed US forces “could not achieve their objectives.”

The remarks came as Britain, France and Germany moved to reimpose UN sanctions lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal.

Mojtaba Zonouri, a member of parliament from Qom, said on Friday the measure on joining the UN Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) remains suspended in parliament, and that a “triple-urgency motion” submitted by Tehran lawmaker Malek Shariati is under review to prevent it from taking effect.

“As long as we are forced to bypass sanctions to meet the country’s needs, joining the CFT is like putting a rope around our own necks,” Zonouri said, according to Iranian media. He added that Iran could join the convention only “when sanctions are fully lifted.”

His remarks come after Iran’s Expediency Council — the body overseen by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that resolves disputes between parliament and the Guardian Council — conditionally approved the country’s accession to the UN convention earlier this month, after years of delay.

The CFT, one of the 49 measures linked to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards, requires countries to track and report financial transactions to combat money laundering and terror financing. Hardliners argue that joining would expose Iran’s financial channels used to evade sanctions and support allied armed groups across the Middle East.

The conditional approval followed the reimposition of UN sanctions on Iran on September 28 under the nuclear deal’s snapback mechanism. In April, over 150 lawmakers had urged the Council to reject the convention until “the risk of renewed sanctions is entirely eliminated.”

The United States has long accused Tehran of using its regional allies to fund and coordinate attacks across the region, labeling Iran the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism for 39 consecutive years.

In the 1975 conversation with celebrated Egyptian journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, then editor of Al-Ahram, the Shah boasted about Iran’s military buildup, including air defenses capable of striking targets a few hundred kilometers beyond Iranian airspace.

“We wish to be powerful in the region where we live,” he told Heikal, adding that “no government would base its defensive policy” on appearing weak—a line that now echoes in the rhetoric of Iran’s current leadership.

The interview was republished by the Khabar Online news outlet, which is close to Ali Larijani, a veteran political insider, Iranian security chief and confidante of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Tehran has stepped up visual references to Iran's mythical and pre-Islamic past since a punishing June war with Israel in the United States, in a move once unthinkable for the imagery's association with the ousted monarchy.

Likely a bid to bolster popular support, the strategy had previously stopped short of outright references to the royal family.

“The military force we are building is meant to confront those who threaten us,” the Shah, who was dethroned in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, said.

“I do not want Iran to have a nuclear bomb for two reasons,” he continued. “One is the cost, and the other is that we do not have the means—such as ships or missiles—to carry the bomb to its target.”

Yet he added pointedly: “If someone comes out of the bush and wants to have a nuclear bomb in this region, Iran should undoubtedly have one of those bombs too.”

Curious timing

Khabar Online said the remarks were part of a broader exchange reflecting Iran’s growing self-assertion during the oil-boom years.

Like other encounters between the late Shah and media figures such as Mike Wallace, Oriana Fallaci and Barbara Walters, Heikal’s questioning was probing—and the Shah relished the opportunity to rebut his interviewer.

At one point, he scolded Heikal for misnaming the Persian Gulf and “misstating facts” about Iran, a scene that captured his combative, self-assured style.

“The Shahanshah was very serious in his statements and he believed in what he said,” Heikal later recalled, deploying a term meaning king of kings. “I did not expect that, and I did not have an answer to convince him.”

The Shah, aware of Heikal’s ties to Egypt’s late president Gamal Abdel Nasser and his sympathy for Iran’s ousted premier Mohammad Mossadegh, used the interview to frame Iran as a regional power surrounded by covetous rivals.

“We wish to have good ties with the Arab world,” he told Heikal, comparing Iran’s armed forces to “a lock on a door” and describing deterrence as “an opportunity for our friends and anyone else who wishes to help us.”

On Israel and Iran’s future

In another passage that might resonate in Tehran today, the Shah dismissed Israeli criticism while cautioning its leaders against overreach.

“The Israeli press are the only ones that heavily attack us,” he said. “But we are not bothered by that. We have told Israeli leaders they cannot occupy the entire Arab world … but the Israelis do not take any advice.”

In the West, the interview is remembered less for its atomic undertones than for the Shah’s sweeping ambition.

“I want the standard of living in Iran in ten years’ time to be exactly on a level with that in Europe today,” he said. “In twenty years’ time we shall be ahead of the United States.”

Half a century later, its selective resurrection serves as a reminder that Tehran’s language of power transcends time—and the ruler’s outfit.