The Architecture of Elimination: A Forensic History of State-Sanctioned Killing in Iran (1998–2024)
Executive Summary
The history of political violence in the Islamic Republic of Iran is frequently compartmentalized into distinct, isolated epochs: the revolutionary firing squads of 1979, the mass prison liquidations of 1988, and the street crackdowns of the modern era. However, a forensic examination of the period from 1998 to 2024 reveals not a series of disconnected events, but a continuous, evolving architecture of elimination. This report provides an exhaustive analysis of state-sanctioned killing during this twenty-six-year period, arguing that the regime has undergone a strategic metamorphosis from the covert, surgical assassinations of the "Chain Murders" era to the overt, industrialized judicial executions of the present day.
Drawing upon a vast corpus of primary source material—including leaked interrogation transcripts, judicial verdicts, autopsy reports, and witness testimonies—this study dissects the bureaucratic and legal mechanisms that facilitate this violence. It examines the pivotal role of the "Chain Murders" in 1998 as a failed experiment in shadow warfare, which necessitated a shift toward "lawfare"—the weaponization of the Islamic Penal Code to dress political purging in the garb of legality. The analysis traces the rise of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Intelligence Organization (SAS) as the supreme arbiter of life and death, eclipsing the traditional Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) and answering directly to the Office of the Supreme Leader.
Furthermore, this report documents the specific tactical adaptations of the state: the transition from potassium injections and strangulations in private homes to public hangings from construction cranes; the shift from targeting high-profile intellectuals to the mass processing of anonymous youth protesters; and the strategic use of "drug trafficking" charges to mask the ethnic cleansing of Baluch and Kurdish minorities. By mapping these trends, the report concludes that the mass executions of the Ayatollah’s tenure are not merely reactive measures to unrest, but a foundational pillar of governance designed to maintain the equilibrium of a theocratic system under perpetual siege.
Part I: The Era of Shadow Eliminations (1998–1999)
The year 1998 represents a critical inflection point in the history of the Islamic Republic’s security doctrine. To understand the violence of this period, one must first contextualize the political environment. The surprise election of Mohammad Khatami in 1997 had ushered in a fragile period of "Tehran Spring," characterized by a relaxation of social codes and a blossoming of independent press. For the hardline core of the establishment—centered around the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the intelligence apparatus—this cultural openness posed an existential threat akin to the "Velvet Revolutions" of Eastern Europe.1 The response was the activation of a specialized elimination protocol known as the "Chain Murders" (Ghatl-haye Zanjireh-i).
1.1 The Anatomy of the Chain Murders
Unlike the mass executions of 1988, which were industrial in scale and confined to prison wards, the Chain Murders were surgical, intimate, and designed to terrorize the intellectual elite in their own sanctuaries. The perpetrators were not uniformed executioners but plainclothes operatives from the Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS), utilizing methods that blended espionage tradecraft with brutal violence.
The Forouhar Double Homicide
On the evening of November 22, 1998, the campaign of terror reached its zenith with the double homicide of Dariush Forouhar and Parvaneh Eskandari. Dariush Forouhar, 70, was a veteran nationalist politician and leader of the Iran Nation Party, a vocal but peaceful critic of the clerical regime. His wife, Parvaneh, was a prominent activist in her own right. Their home in southern Tehran was under constant, overt surveillance by the MOIS; a security booth was stationed at the head of their alley, recording all comings and goings.3
The killers entered the home without forced entry, suggesting either coercion or recognition by the victims. Inside, the violence was frenzied and demonstrative. Dariush Forouhar was stabbed 11 times in the chest and back. Parvaneh Eskandari suffered an even more gruesome fate, sustaining 24 knife wounds. The intent was not merely to kill, but to mutilate—to send a visceral message to the opposition that no degree of seniority or historical standing offered protection.4 The gruesome nature of the crime, occurring in a heavily monitored zone, immediately implicated the state security services, shattering any illusion of third-party involvement.
The Writers: The Strategy of Strangulation
Following the Forouhar murders, the elimination campaign targeted the Iranian Writers Association, a secular organization fighting censorship. The methodology shifted from knives to strangulation and chemical elimination, tactics designed to mimic natural causes or anonymous street crime.
Mohammad Mokhtari: A renowned poet and writer, Mokhtari left his home on December 1, 1998, to go shopping. He never returned. His body was discovered on December 3 near a cement factory on the outskirts of Tehran. Forensic evidence indicated death by strangulation, with bruising around the neck suggesting the use of a wire or ligature.3
Mohammad-Jafar Pouyandeh: A translator and sociologist, Pouyandeh disappeared on December 9. His body was found three days later in the Shahriar district. Like Mokhtari, he had been strangled. Pouyandeh had been actively translating works on human rights and civil society, making him a prime ideological target for the hardliners.3
Majid Sharif: A translator and journalist for the banned publication Iran-e-Farda, Sharif disappeared in early November. His body was found on a roadside on November 19. The official cause of death was listed as "heart failure." However, subsequent revelations and autopsy inconsistencies pointed to a lethal injection of potassium—a method favored by intelligence agencies to induce cardiac arrest without leaving obvious external marks. This technique allowed the regime to initially claim "natural causes" before the pattern of the killings made such denials untenable.3
1.2 The "Rogue Elements" Narrative and the Fall of Saeed Emami
The sheer brazenness of the killings, combined with the investigative pressure from President Khatami’s reformist government, forced the regime into an unprecedented retreat. On January 5, 1999, the Ministry of Intelligence issued a stunning statement admitting that "a few irresponsible, deviant, and rogue elements" within the ministry were responsible for the murders.2 This admission was a calculated damage control measure, designed to sever the link between the killers and the clerical leadership.
The scapegoat selected for this operation was Saeed Emami (also known as Saeed Eslami), a Deputy Minister of Intelligence and a key architect of the state’s security doctrine during the 1990s. Emami was not a "rogue" in the operational sense; he was a high-ranking ideologue who had previously managed sensitive operations, including the Mykonos restaurant assassinations in Berlin (1992) and the failed 1995 plot to push a bus carrying 21 writers off a cliff into a ravine.3
The Mystery of the "Suicide"
Emami was arrested in early 1999. In June of that year, the Judiciary announced that he had committed suicide in Evin Prison. The official account claimed that Emami drank a bottle of "depilatory compound" (a hair-removal product containing arsenic and barium sulfide) in the prison bathroom.5 This narrative was immediately met with skepticism by medical experts and political observers. Standard depilatory agents available to prisoners are chemically weak and difficult to ingest in lethal quantities without immediate vomiting. The prevailing theory among dissidents and defectors is that Emami was eliminated to prevent his testimony in open court. A trial would have likely exposed the "chain of command" leading upward to Minister of Intelligence Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi and potentially to the special office of the Supreme Leader.5
The Hierarchy of Culpability
While the official "rogue elements" narrative sought to isolate Saeed Emami and his immediate subordinates (Mostafa Kazemi and Mehrdad Alikhani) as the sole perpetrators, the operational reality was a rigid hierarchy. Intelligence Minister Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi was forced to resign, yet he faced no criminal charges, a clear indication of protection from the highest levels. Former Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian, under whose tenure Emami had risen, also remained untouched despite being implicated in German courts for the Mykonos killings. The "rogue" narrative was, in effect, a firewall constructed to protect the clerical establishment from the consequences of its own directives.
1.3 The Torture of Fahimeh Dori: Manufacturing the Narrative
The investigation into the Chain Murders took a macabre turn with the arrest of Saeed Emami’s wife, Fahimeh Dori, and other alleged co-conspirators. In a perverse twist, the regime turned its torture apparatus inward, targeting its own loyalists to fabricate a politically convenient motive for the murders.
Leaked video footage of the interrogations, which surfaced years later, reveals a harrowing scene of state cruelty. In the tapes, interrogators are heard subjecting Dori to severe sexual humiliation, lashes, and psychological torture. They demand she confess to working for the CIA and Mossad and to engaging in lurid sexual acts with other intelligence agents.9
The Objective: The goal of this torture was to reframe the Chain Murders not as acts of excessive zealotry by hardliners, but as a foreign plot designed to infiltrate the Ministry of Intelligence and discredit the Islamic Republic. By forcing Dori to confess to "moral corruption" and "ties to Israel," the regime sought to delegitimize the "rogue elements" as foreign agents rather than obedient soldiers of the Velayat-e Faqih.
The Method: The interrogators are heard threatening to hang Dori upside down and "hurt her where it matters." The obsession with sexual details in the interrogation points to a strategy of breaking the prisoner’s moral and psychological identity, a technique that would be refined and deployed against student activists and women's rights defenders in subsequent decades.11
The Chain Murders era concluded not with justice, but with a bureaucratic reshuffling. The "rogue" operatives were purged, Emami was dead, and the masterminds remained in power. However, the exposure of the MOIS weakened the ministry significantly, creating a power vacuum that would soon be filled by a more formidable and less accountable entity: the Intelligence Organization of the Revolutionary Guards.
Part II: The Pivot to Overt Suppression (1999–2009)
The scandal of the Chain Murders forced the regime to recalibrate its apparatus of repression. With the Ministry of Intelligence compromised by the investigations, the hardline establishment began to rely more heavily on the Basij militia and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for domestic policing. This shift marked a transition from the covert assassinations of the 1990s to overt, paramilitary suppression on the streets.
2.1 The 18 Tir Tragedy (July 1999)
The first major test of this new posture came in July 1999. The trigger was the closure of the reformist newspaper Salam, which had published a classified letter by Saeed Emami advocating for stricter press controls—a direct link to the Chain Murders scandal. In response, students at Tehran University launched peaceful demonstrations.12
On the night of July 9 (18 Tir in the Persian calendar), security forces, accompanied by plainclothes vigilantes (Ansar-e Hezbollah), raided the university dormitories in the Amir Abad district. The violence was indiscriminate. Students were beaten with batons, thrown from third-story windows, and dragged from their beds. Ezzat Ebrahim-Nejad, a student, was shot and killed during the raid—the only death officially acknowledged by state media, though student groups and human rights organizations estimated the toll to be significantly higher.12
The significance of 18 Tir lies in the regime's response. It was the first massive uprising of the post-revolution generation, and it was met not with negotiation, but with a "soft coup" threat. Twenty-four senior IRGC commanders wrote a threatening letter to President Khatami, warning that if he did not crush the protests, they would take matters into their own hands. This moment signaled the rising political dominance of the IRGC, which was no longer content to remain in the barracks.
2.2 The Fate of Student Leaders and "Slow Executions"
In the aftermath of the protests, the Judiciary, controlled by hardliners, unleashed a wave of death sentences against student leaders. While many of these were eventually commuted under international pressure, the regime developed a strategy of "slow execution"—subjecting prisoners to such harsh conditions and medical neglect that they would die in custody without a formal execution order.
Ahmad Batebi: A student whose photo holding the bloody shirt of a fellow protester became an icon of the movement, Batebi was arrested and sentenced to death for "creating street unrest." During his interrogation, he was told, "With this picture, you have signed your death sentence." He was subjected to mock executions and severe torture before his sentence was commuted to 15 years, and later 10 years, following global outcry.15
Akbar Mohammadi: Another student leader sentenced to death, Mohammadi’s sentence was also commuted to 15 years. However, the regime continued to torment him. In 2006, after years of medical neglect and hunger strikes to protest his treatment, Mohammadi died in Evin Prison. His death serves as a prime example of the "slow execution" tactic—a death in custody that allows the state to deny direct responsibility while achieving the elimination of the dissident.16
Saeed Zeinali: Arrested five days after the 18 Tir protests, Zeinali was allowed one brief phone call to his family, in which he said he was well. He was never seen or heard from again. Despite decades of searching by his mother, the authorities refuse to acknowledge his arrest or fate. Zeinali’s case represents the tactic of "enforced disappearance," a tool of psychological terror used to leave families in a permanent state of limbo.13
Part III: The Judicialization of Repression (2009–2017)
The disputed 2009 presidential election and the subsequent Green Movement protests marked a definitive shift in the state’s execution strategy. The regime moved away from the covert assassinations of the 1990s and the paramilitary chaos of 1999 toward what can be termed "Show Executions"—killings processed through the Judiciary to establish a narrative of law and order against "rioters" and "foreign agents."
3.1 The "Show Trials" and the "Moharebeh" Charge
In the wake of the 2009 unrest, the Judiciary, led by hardliners, began to aggressively apply the charge of Moharebeh (Enmity against God) against protesters. This charge, derived from Islamic jurisprudence, mandates the death penalty for those who "draw weapons to cause fear." The regime expanded this definition to include political dissent, effectively categorizing peaceful protest as an act of war against God.19
The Execution of Arash Rahmanipour and Mohammad Reza Ali-Zamani
On January 28, 2010, the state hanged two young men, Arash Rahmanipour (19 years old) and Mohammad Reza Ali-Zamani. The Judiciary announced that they were executed for their role in the post-election "sedition" and for plotting to overthrow the regime.21
Forensic Discrepancy: This narrative was a fabrication. Both men had been arrested months before the June 2009 election. They were members of a fringe monarchist group (the Kingdom Assembly of Iran), but their files were repurposed by the security apparatus. The regime used their executions as a warning to the Green Movement protesters on the streets. By linking pre-election detainees to post-election unrest, the state manufactured a connection between the protesters and "armed terrorist groups," justifying lethal force.
Rahmanipour’s lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, revealed that he had been coerced into confessing with promises of leniency. He was told that if he confessed to the charges on camera, he would be released. Instead, he was executed without his family or lawyer being notified—a violation of Iranian law that requires 48 hours' notice to the family before an execution.22
3.2 The Atrocities of Kahrizak
The crackdown also saw the use of the Kahrizak Detention Center, a facility previously used for drug offenders, to house political detainees. Conditions at Kahrizak were catastrophic. Detainees were packed into small cells, beaten, and sexually assaulted. At least three protesters—Mohsen Rouholamini, Mohammad Kamrani, and Amir Javadifar—died from torture and neglect at the facility.24 The death of Rouholamini, the son of a prominent conservative figure, forced a rare parliamentary inquiry, leading to the temporary closure of the facility but no significant accountability for the high-ranking officials involved, such as Prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi.
3.3 The Expansion of the IRGC Intelligence Organization
It was during the post-2009 period that the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC-IO) rose to supreme prominence, eclipsing the Ministry of Intelligence. Under the leadership of Hossein Taeb, the IRGC-IO became the primary agency for arresting dual nationals, activists, and "soft war" agents. This structural shift is critical: unlike the MOIS, which answers nominally to the President and is subject to some parliamentary oversight, the IRGC-IO answers directly to the Supreme Leader. Its ascendancy signaled a militarization of justice, where intelligence officers effectively dictated verdicts to Revolutionary Court judges, bypassing even the limited checks and balances of the traditional judicial system.26
Part IV: Maximum Violence – The Age of "Chain Executions" (2017–2024)
The protests of December 2017, November 2019 ("Bloody Aban"), and 2022 ("Woman, Life, Freedom") introduced a new phase of state violence. If the Chain Murders were surgical and 2009 was judicial, the post-2017 era is defined by massacre and acceleration. The regime no longer seeks to hide bodies; it kills publicly and rapidly to re-establish deterrence.
4.1 "Bloody Aban" (November 2019)
The November 2019 protests, triggered by a sudden spike in fuel prices, were met with immediate lethal force. The Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, reportedly told his security officials, "Do whatever it takes to end it." The result was a military-style crackdown.
The Blackout and the Massacre: The government shut down the internet for several days, creating an information void in which security forces could operate with impunity. Amnesty International documented at least 321 deaths, while Reuters reported a toll as high as 1,500.28 This was not an execution by rope, but by bullet—an extrajudicial mass execution carried out on the streets.
The Mahshahr Massacre: In the city of Mahshahr, security forces used heavy machine guns against protesters who had fled into the marshlands. This incident stands as one of the single deadliest events of the crackdown, with reports of tanks being used to suppress the unrest.29
The Judicial Aftermath: The Execution of Mostafa Salehi
The violence did not end when the streets were cleared. The Judiciary began a campaign of retroactive retribution. Mostafa Salehi, a worker arrested during the 2017-2018 protests, was executed in August 2020. He was accused of killing a Basij member, a charge he vehemently denied. Reports indicate he was tortured in the Isfahan Police Department to confess, yet he refused. His execution, carried out years after his arrest, was a signal to the 2019 protesters: the state has a long memory, and participation in unrest carries a deferred death sentence.31
4.2 The Navid Afkari Case: A Case Study in Judicial Murder
The execution of 27-year-old wrestling champion Navid Afkari in September 2020 stands as a definitive example of the "Chain Execution" phenomenon—where the judicial process itself becomes the murder weapon.
The Charge: Afkari was accused of stabbing a security guard, Hassan Torkman, during protests in Shiraz in August 2018.
The Evidence: The prosecution produced no forensic evidence linking Afkari to the crime. No DNA, no fingerprints, and the CCTV footage used in court was reportedly taken an hour before the incident and did not show the stabbing. The conviction relied almost exclusively on a confession.
The Torture: In audio recordings leaked from prison, Afkari detailed the torture he endured: "They covered my head with a plastic bag... they beat me with batons on my arms, legs, abdomen, and back." He stated, "I am looking for a neck for their rope," implying the state needed a scapegoat to intimidate the protesting public.34
The Execution: Despite a global campaign involving the International Olympic Committee, FIFA, and world leaders, Afkari was executed in secret on September 12, 2020. He was denied the legally required final visit with his family. His execution was not just a miscarriage of justice; it was a calculated act of dominance. By killing a national sports hero, the regime demonstrated that public sympathy and international fame offer no protection against the will of the state.
4.3 The 2022-2024 Surge: "War on Women" and Accelerated Hanging
The death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022 sparked the "Woman, Life, Freedom" uprising, the most widespread challenge to the clerical regime to date. The state's response has been a dramatic acceleration of capital punishment, creating a "killing machine" dynamic.
Speed of Execution: Mohsen Shekari was executed in December 2022, less than three months after his arrest for blocking a street and wounding a Basij member. This speed is unprecedented in the Iranian judicial system, which typically moves slowly. It indicates a "fast-track" directive from the Supreme Leader to terrorize the public immediately.37
Public Hangings: The execution of Majidreza Rahnavard was carried out publicly in Mashhad, with his body suspended from a crane for all to see. This marked a return to the grisly public spectacles of the early 1980s, designed to traumatize the local population into submission.
The 2023-2024 Statistics: The number of executions has skyrocketed. At least 834 people were executed in 2023, and the figure reached 975 in 2024.38
The "Drug War" Camouflage: A significant portion of these executions (over 50%) are officially for drug-related offenses. However, human rights analysts argue that the regime uses "drug executions" to inflate the death toll and create a general climate of fear without incurring the international cost of "political executions." This tactic disproportionately targets ethnic minorities. The Baluch minority, which makes up only 2-6% of the population, accounted for 20% of all executions in 2023, often on drug charges.41
Part V: The Legal and Institutional Machinery of Death
To understand how these mass executions are perpetuated, one must dissect the legal and bureaucratic structures that enable them. It is not merely the whim of a dictator, but the function of a complex system designed to strip the accused of all rights and process them efficiently toward the scaffold.
5.1 The Weaponization of the Penal Code
The Islamic Penal Code of Iran contains several vaguely defined crimes that serve as catch-all categories for dissent. These charges allow judges to issue death sentences without needing to prove murder or violent conduct.
Moharebeh (Enmity against God): Originally intended for armed banditry, Article 279 of the Penal Code defines a Mohareb as anyone who "draws a weapon to cause fear." The Judiciary has interpreted "weapon" broadly—sometimes to include a stone or a blocked street—and "fear" as any disruption of public order or traffic. This allows the state to execute protesters who have not killed anyone.19
Efsad-fil-Arz (Corruption on Earth): Article 286 allows for the death penalty for crimes that "severely disrupt public order," "cause extensive damage," or "spread corruption." This charge is frequently used against environmentalists, activists, and leaders of protests who cannot be accused of violence but are deemed existentially threatening to the Islamic system.20
Baqi (Armed Rebellion): This charge is specifically used against members of opposition groups that take up arms against the state. It is frequently applied to Kurdish and Baluch dissidents, regardless of whether they were personally involved in armed combat.44
5.2 The Revolutionary Courts: A Parallel Justice System
Unlike the General Courts, which handle civil and ordinary criminal matters, the Revolutionary Courts (Dadgah-e Enghelab) operate with minimal transparency and exclusive jurisdiction over security crimes.
Speed and Secrecy: Trials in these courts are notoriously brief, often lasting less than 15 minutes. They are frequently held behind closed doors, with no media or family members present.
The "Note 48" Lawyer Restriction: Under Article 48 of the Criminal Procedure Code, defendants in security cases are not allowed to choose their own lawyer during the investigation phase. They must select from a list of attorneys approved by the Judiciary Chief. This effectively forces political prisoners to be represented by state collaborators who often work against their clients' interests.45
Reliance on Confessions: The primary form of evidence in Revolutionary Courts is the confession. As seen in the cases of Fahimeh Dori, Navid Afkari, and countless others, these confessions are systematically extracted through physical and psychological torture during pre-trial detention in solitary confinement.37
5.3 The Role of the Supreme Leader
While execution orders are signed by judges, the entire architecture of death is maintained and directed by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Absolute Authority: Under Article 57 of the Constitution, the Judiciary functions under the supervision of the Supreme Leader. Khamenei directly appoints the Head of the Judiciary (currently Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, a hardline cleric and former Intelligence Minister with a dark human rights record).47
Amnesty as a Mechanism of Control: The Supreme Leader uses his power of "Amnesty" (Pardon) strategically. For example, in February 2023, Khamenei "pardoned" tens of thousands of prisoners arrested during the "Woman, Life, Freedom" protests. This was widely misinterpreted as an act of leniency. In reality, it was a bureaucratic processing maneuver. It cleared overcrowded prisons of low-level detainees to make room for new arrests, while keeping high-value political targets (those charged with Moharebeh) locked up. Furthermore, the pardon was conditional: prisoners were required to sign "letters of repentance," effectively forcing them to admit guilt and validating the state's narrative of them as criminals.50
Conclusion: The Normalization of State Terror
From the shadow assassinations of the Chain Murders to the public hangings of the 2022 uprising, the trajectory of the Islamic Republic’s use of capital punishment reveals a regime that has normalized state terror as a primary tool of governance. The "mass executions" of the post-1998 era are not a single event but a process—a slow-motion massacre dispersed over decades, punctuated by spasms of extreme violence.
The evolution from the localized, covert violence of Saeed Emami’s death squads to the industrialized, bureaucratic machinery of the Revolutionary Courts demonstrates a disturbing adaptability. The regime has learned that "legalized" murder, veneered with the language of Islamic jurisprudence and national security, is more sustainable than shadow assassinations. It allows the state to project an image of law and order while achieving the same goal: the total elimination of dissent.
As of 2024, the "Chain Murders" have not ended; they have merely been institutionalized. The scaffold has replaced the knife, and the live-streamed confession has replaced the midnight disappearance. The message, however, remains identical to the one sent to the Forouhars in 1998: opposition is a capital offense. The execution machine, oiled by the blood of protesters and fueled by the legal codes of the state, continues to operate with ruthless efficiency, ensuring that the silence of the graveyard remains the ultimate guarantor of the Ayatollah's rule.
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