Iran secretly buried first of 12 sentenced to death in protest case

Amini, a father of two, was detained during nationwide protests in January 2026.

His relatives and other sources who spoke to Iran International could not be named for fear of retribution by Iranian authorities.

Iran’s judiciary-affiliated Mizan news agency announced on July 15 that Amini had been executed after being convicted of moharebeh, or “waging war against God,” and corruption on Earth over allegations that he set fire to the governor’s office and damaged public property in Dehaghan county, Isfahan province.

His family said authorities had earlier accused him of involvement in a separate arson attack on a Bank Mellat branch in Dehaghan. They rejected the allegation, saying he was at home when the fire occurred and played no role in it.

Amini, who was from Dehaghan, was the father of 13-year-old Raha and one-year-old Mahva. His relatives described him as quiet and someone who kept out of trouble, adding that his wife and two daughters were the focus of his life.

He was executed two weeks before his 38th birthday.

Arrested after IRGC summons, denied legal representation

Amini received a telephone call on the evening of January 19 asking him to report to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to provide an explanation, his relatives said.

“We have a video of you,” officers told him, sources told Iran International.

Amini was arrested after reporting to the IRGC and never returned home.

His family hired a private lawyer, but the lawyer was not allowed to meet Amini or given full access to the case file, his relatives said.

After the death sentence was issued, the family’s lawyer said he had appealed. But when relatives contacted the Supreme Court, they found that no appeal had been registered, the family said.

When the lawyer sought an explanation, the Dehaghan prosecutor told him: “There was no need for you to be informed about this.”

The family said it believed judicial authorities deliberately concealed the death sentence to deprive them of the opportunity to appeal or pursue other legal avenues.

Tortured into false confession

Amini was severely beaten during interrogations and tortured with an electric stun device to force him to make a false confession incriminating himself, his relatives said.

The family also said that he was given insufficient food and held in unhygienic and poor prison conditions.

During the first weeks of his detention, Amini was in poor physical and psychological condition and struggled to understand what was happening around him, his relatives said.

Several days before his execution, he was transferred to solitary confinement.

‘Tell everyone I am innocent’

During their final prison visit, his relatives said they saw him in a critical condition.

He was unable to walk, and officers had to hold him under his arms to bring him into the visiting room. His body was trembling, and he appeared to have almost no strength left.

“Tell everyone I am innocent,” Amini told his family during the visit.

After the execution, Iranian authorities refused to allow his body to be buried in his hometown of Dehaghan, his family said.

He was instead buried under government supervision at Isfahan’s Behesht-e Rezvan cemetery, with only a small number of close relatives permitted to attend the funeral.

Amini remained hopeful until the final days of his life that he would be released, sources told Iran International.

He had received a certificate recognizing his good conduct and called his wife from prison every day.

Amini asked her to record videos of their younger daughter, Mahva, so that after his release he could watch the moments of her childhood that he had missed.

In the interview recorded in Paris on July 14, Pahlavi linked the military campaign to the January 8 and 9 protests, when demonstrators answered his call for nationwide action and were met with a brutal crackdown.

He said the scale of the violence showed that Iranians could not be expected to return safely to the streets while the forces responsible remained capable of crushing another uprising.

“We cannot expect people to be able to safely return to the streets to take on the final battle” without protection or the means to neutralize forces hostile to them, he said.

Pahlavi argued that US and Israeli strikes had weakened the Islamic Republic’s repressive apparatus and helped “equalize” the balance between the government and protesters.

“The campaign that started as a result of the massacre — that led to the intervention by the Israelis and the American forces to strike the regime — was an element that was perhaps a necessary step to avoid further bloodshed,” he said.

The protests began in late December after a sharp fall in the rial deepened economic and political discontent. As demonstrations spread, Pahlavi called on Iranians to take part in nationwide action on January 8 and 9 by gathering in the streets or chanting from their homes.

Millions joined the protests across Iran before security forces opened fire on demonstrators and authorities imposed sweeping internet restrictions.

Documents, medical records, field reports and testimony reviewed by Iran International indicate that at least 36,500 people were killed on January 8 and 9, making the crackdown one of the deadliest episodes of state violence against protesters in modern history.

Pahlavi said the killings demonstrated the limits of peaceful protest against a government willing to use overwhelming force against its own population.

“On January 8 and 9, people went to the street still peacefully, just chanting the slogan,” he said. “When that happens, you cannot expect that by the same method of nonviolence, you can achieve the same result with the way this regime is behaving.”

The United States and Israel launched their military campaign against Iran on February 28, striking Revolutionary Guards facilities, missile and drone units, military command centers and other state targets.

Pahlavi said the attacks had weakened the institutions responsible for suppressing dissent and could help prevent another massacre.

“When you have the mechanism of repression of the regime weakened as a result of those strikes, those are added help,” he said. “Those are the kind of outside interventions that may be required.”

He said the intervention could ultimately save lives that would otherwise be lost in another confrontation between protesters and the security forces.

“It’s really a matter of trying to protect more lives from being lost under this regime that is demonstrating that it has no limit in terms of how far it’s willing to go to kill its own citizens,” he said.

Pahlavi nevertheless stressed that foreign governments should not decide who would govern Iran after the Islamic Republic.

“It is not for a foreign government to decide who or what should be the alternative for Iran,” he said. “That’s up to the Iranian people.”

He said his campaign, which began after the 1979 revolution that overthrew his father, had always centered on Iranians’ right to determine their own political future.

“I’ve never asked for any kind of endorsement from any leader or governments,” he said.

‘A bridge to destination’

Pahlavi has presented himself as the leader of a temporary transition rather than a candidate seeking to predetermine whether Iran should become a monarchy or a republic.

“My position as a transitional leader is, I’m not the destination, I’m a bridge to the destination,” he said.

He said his role would be to act as a neutral arbiter and oversee a political process in which Iranians could debate and choose the country’s future system.

“I’m not taking sides, either for a monarchy or for a republic,” he said. “My job is to make sure that there’s a healthy debate and that in the end people decide what it is that they actually would prefer to have as the final form.”

Pahlavi said his coalition included former leftists, republicans and people once affiliated with groups that opposed his father’s government.

He said former members of the three major leftist groups Tudeh Party, the Fadaiyan-e-Khalq and the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) had joined his movement, presenting that as evidence that the opposition had become more unified.

“I don’t know how far more can you stretch the tent, including those people, to prove that in fact there is much more unity than ever, certainly inside Iran,” he said.

He added, however, that there were three groups with which he would not cooperate: supporters of the Islamic Republic, the MEK as an organization and separatists.

“There are certain lines that I’m not going to cross,” he said.

Pahlavi also rejected violence, intimidation or criminal conduct by people claiming to support him.

“I believe in pluralism. I believe in tolerance. I believe in civility, in debate, in argument, in comportment, respect, and no hostility of any kind,” he said.

He said anyone who violated those principles would not be considered a supporter and should face legal consequences if their conduct was criminal.

Pahlavi also acknowledged concerns over statements made by people associated with his political team, saying stricter internal protocols were being introduced.

He said those close to him would have to exercise greater caution because their remarks could be interpreted as representing his movement.

‘A democratic culture’

Turning to Iran’s political future, Pahlavi said most Iranians wanted secular democracy, the rule of law and protection of human rights, but warned that building a democratic political culture would take time.

“What I think will take some time, and I mean that in the most honest way possible, is to bring about a democratic culture,” he said.

Pahlavi also clarified earlier statements about contacts with members of Iran’s security forces.

He said individual members of the Basij, the Revolutionary Guards and the regular military had contacted him discreetly over the years to express opposition to the Islamic Republic.

He denied, however, that he had been in direct communication with the IRGC’s senior command.

“It’s not like, in fact, talking to the IRGC command. Not at all,” he said.

Pahlavi said he had advocated for the IRGC to be designated as a terrorist organization for at least a decade because of its role in repression at home and military operations abroad.

He described the Guards as the central institution keeping the Islamic Republic in power and said increasing pressure on it remained a key part of his political strategy.

Pahlavi is the eldest son of Mohammad Reza Shah, Iran’s last monarch, who was overthrown in the 1979 revolution that brought the Islamic Republic to power. The royal family left Iran shortly before the revolution, and Pahlavi has lived in exile since then.

“All visa applicants, regardless of nationality, must meet the eligibility requirements set out in Australia’s migration legislation before a visa can be granted,” a Department of Home Affairs spokesperson told Iran International on Friday.

The processing times, the spokesperson said, depend on factors including application complexity, completeness, demand, ministerial priorities and migration planning levels.

“Processing times can also be affected by application processing requirements, including verification of applicant information ... and the time taken to receive clearances from external agencies, particularly for health, character and national security assessments,” the spokesperson said.

The department did not directly address the question on whether Iranian citizens undergo broader or different security screening than applicants from other countries.

The response came after images emerged of protests by Iranian applicants outside the Australian embassy in Tehran, alongside letters, official correspondence with the Department of Home Affairs, documents related to pending cases and messages from applicants inside and outside Australia.

100%

Documents and correspondence show some applications have remained unresolved for more than two years, and in some cases more than 30 months, despite applicants completing key requirements including skills assessments, medical examinations and biometric checks.

Protests and travel restrictions

The department also did not provide a specific explanation for delays affecting Iranian skilled visa applicants who were already inside Australia when they lodged their applications.

Officials said some applicants have faced conflict-related obstacles inside Iran, including internet disruptions that hinder access to biometric appointments, medical examinations and documents such as police certificates and passports. The extensions, the department said, may be granted in such cases but applicants must still satisfy all legal visa requirements.

In recent months, groups of Iranian applicants have staged two protests outside the Australian embassy in Tehran, calling for greater transparency over prolonged processing delays and requesting decisions on their applications.

The department also referred to temporary travel restrictions affecting holders of Australian Visitor visas linked to Iranian passports. It said the Arrival Control Determination, introduced on March 26, 2026, remains in force for six months and prevents affected visa holders outside Australia from entering the country.

Any extension beyond the initial six-month period, according to the department, would require a new legal determination and a finding that continuing the restrictions serves Australia’s national interest. The government has said the measure is intended to provide time to assess conditions in Iran and associated migration risks, leaving the future of both the travel restrictions and many pending visa applications uncert

The document, titled "What Iran Wants" and obtained by IranWire, was written by Ali Rabiei, a former intelligence ministry official and government spokesman who now advises President Masoud Pezeshkian on social affairs. It is built on a survey conducted in April and May by the ARA research center and was circulated among senior officials in June.

Its timing matters. The survey was taken in the aftermath of the January protests, in which security forces killed tens of thousands of demonstrators within days, and during a war with the United States that has already claimed the life of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Through all of it, state television has filled its evenings with images of packed squares and chants of revenge.

The report is the government's private mirror, and it shows something else entirely. Given four options for the country's future, only nine percent of respondents chose keeping things as they are; the rest split between reform, deep reform, and changing the system outright.

The document discloses no methodology, and official polling in Iran is conducted among respondents who have every reason to fear giving an honest answer to a state questionnaire.

Sociologist Saeed Paivandi, who reviewed the full report for IranWire, called its findings broadly plausible despite those gaps. In practice, that means each figure below is best read as a floor, not a ceiling. Whatever the government's own instrument records, the reality is unlikely to be milder.

The angriest country ever measured

The report's starkest finding is a number without precedent. Gallup's global emotions index has never recorded a national anger rate above 47 percent, a figure that belonged to Chad. Rabiei's survey puts Iran at 63.6 percent, up twelve points since December, the month before the massacre.

The document itself acknowledges the record, placing Iran above every country Gallup has measured for both anger and grief.

Iran had appeared in those global rankings before, alongside war-scarred states like Iraq and Afghanistan. It has now left them behind.

No war, no surrender

On the confrontation with Washington, the surveyed public fits neither of the stories told about it: the nation baying for battle that state television broadcasts, or the one ready to capitulate that some in Washington count on.

Asked the best course in the current crisis, 44.3 percent chose preserving the ceasefire and continuing negotiations, roughly double the share that favored ending the talks and preparing for war.

• 

  As Tehran debates, Iran's south lives the war

Barely one in ten would accept all American conditions, and about two-thirds oppose a complete shutdown of uranium enrichment.

Yet this is not trust in the men at the table. Fewer than a third of respondents expressed high confidence in Iran's new negotiating team, and nearly half the country reports serious fear of another round of war.

What emerges is a population that rejects both another war and a capitulation, and trusts neither the diplomats nor the generals conducting either.

A society in freefall, and the myth of the rallying nation

The emotional data reads like a casualty report. Half the country reports hopelessness, up eight points since December.

Nearly 48 percent report sadness and depression, 45 percent chronic fear and anxiety. Despair runs highest among the young and the educated, the very people a state would need to rebuild anything.

• 

  Hardline rallies turn Iran’s streets into pressure front against US talks

The same pages quietly dismantle the leadership's central wartime claim: that the nation has closed ranks behind it.

By the government's own count, 47 percent of Iranians never attended a single one of the nightly wartime rallies that state television presents as proof of unity. In Tehran, 61 percent stayed away.

Rabiei concedes that a much-promoted volunteer registration drive for national defense underperformed, and attributes the reluctance to people's fear of being judged.

It is an official admission that even gestures of patriotism have become politically fraught. The report's own data explains why: Iranians overwhelmingly separate defending their country, which a majority say they would do if attacked again, from defending the Islamic Republic.

• 

  Iran faces region’s harshest mix of wartime contraction and inflation

Proud, secular, and packing

The most quietly radical section concerns who Iranians say they are. National pride is rising. More than 85 percent express pride in being Iranian, and the share who identify first as "Iranian" rather than "Iranian Muslim" has grown since the war, most sharply among the young.

Religious observance, the Islamic Republic's ideological foundation, is collapsing under the same roof.

In 1975, four years before the revolution, 79 percent of Iranians said they fasted through Ramadan. By 2023 it was 42 percent. This year it is roughly 30.

And the pride does not translate into staying. A third of Iranians say they would emigrate if they could, including nearly half of everyone under thirty and half of the university-educated. People are not leaving Iran, the report effectively concludes; they are leaving its future.

A manual for management

What makes the document remarkable is less its data than its purpose. Rabiei's recommendations to the leadership contain no political change at all.

Officials should do a better job convincing people that sanctions, not mismanagement, caused their misery; state television should show a more inclusive face; the ration cards should continue. This, even as the report's own respondents name official incompetence, ahead of sanctions, as the main cause of their problems.

One recommendation stands out: state bodies should avoid policies that put them in confrontation with society.

That instruction has a visible form on Iran's streets, where enforcement of the small rules of daily life has gone relatively quiet. Many Iranians read the leniency less as tolerance than as triage, a state conserving its strength for a collision it can see coming.

Independent surveys suggest the private picture is, if anything, generous. The Netherlands-based GAMAAN institute, polling Iranians beyond the reach of official questionnaires, has found large majorities opposed to the Islamic Republic's continuation altogether.

Rabiei reaches for an older vocabulary to describe what his numbers show: a society trapped in the present, unable to desire its past or picture its future. The term he borrows, "presentism," was coined by an Iranian scholar to describe the national mood in 1975.

Four years later, that society produced a revolution.

Craig Foreman and his wife, Lindsay, were arrested in January last year while traveling through Iran by motorcycle on a journey from Europe to Australia. Both deny the espionage charges. They were each sentenced to 10 years in prison in February.

Joe Bennett, Lindsay Foreman's son and the family's spokesperson, said Craig Foreman was told he was being taken to see his lawyer but was instead brought before a judge and informed of the additional sentence.

“He was allowed no lawyer, no translator and no opportunity to defend himself,” Bennett said, adding that the family was “absolutely flabbergasted” by the decision.

The couple have been on hunger strike since May after prison authorities prevented them from calling their families. HRANA, a US-based human rights group, said last week that Craig Foreman had lost about 16 kilograms while Lindsay Foreman was suffering from dizziness and body tremors.

“My mum and Craig are 18 months into an ordeal they should never have known,” Bennett said. “They are weak, they are hungry, and now Craig is being punished simply for being heard. To add two more years to an innocent man's sentence, in secret and with no chance to defend himself, is a flagrant abuse of the most basic rights any person is owed.”

Last month, UN special rapporteurs Alice Edwards and Mai Sato called for the couple's release, saying they appeared to have been wrongfully detained and sentenced after proceedings that “failed to meet basic fair trial guarantees.”

Britain has advised against all travel to Iran since 2022, warning that British nationals may be detained because of their nationality or links to the UK. The Foreign Office has said it is working to secure the couple's release and that their welfare remains a priority. The family also welcomed the appointment this week of former Middle East minister Alistair Burt as Britain's first envoy for nationals detained abroad in complex cases.