When a 19-year-old wrestler and two other men were hanged in the holy city of Qom on Thursday, Iran’s theocratic regime was sending a message to both dissenters inside the country and opponents abroad, analysts say.
The three men, who were all linked to January’s nationwide anti-regime protests, were executed with the approval of Iran’s Supreme Court and “in the presence of a group of people,” said the judiciary-affiliated news agency Mizan.
Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, described the trials as a sham involving forced confessions and fast-tracked proceedings. Amnesty, in a statement on Friday, accused Iranian authorities of carrying out “arbitrary executions” to intimidate the public “among an already traumatized population, under bombardment from Israel and the US.”
Before the war, US President Donald Trump had warned Iran against executing protesters, later saying he had received assurances that Tehran had no plans to do so. Thursday’s hangings are thought to be the first carried out in relation to the protests.
The three men — whom Mizan identified as Mehdi Qasemi, Saleh Mohammadi and Saeed Davoudi — were convicted for their role in the killing of two law enforcement officers at a police station. According to Mizan, they used swords, knives and machetes in separate assaults on the two officers.
The United States has previously said it was “deeply concerned” by reports about Mohammadi’s conviction, describing him as a wrestling champion. In a post on X in January, the US called on Tehran “to halt the execution of Saleh Mohammadi and all individuals who have been sentenced to death for seeking to attain their fundamental rights.”
The timing of the executions, in the midst of the US-Israeli war with Iran, was itself a signal, Behnam Ben Taleblu, Iran program senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) in Washington, DC, told CNN on Friday.
“Even amid an ongoing war, the regime’s prioritizing of limited government time, attention and resources for executing political prisoners and protesters tells you all you need to know,” he said, adding that Tehran is “equally at war with its own people.”
The United States and Israel are into the third week of their war, launched with the stated goals of destroying Iran’s nuclear ambitions and missile capabilities
Taleblu said the hangings appeared designed to project continuity at home while the country is under attack. “There is yet another Khamenei at the helm and the regime is trying to signal that nothing has changed in the home front,” he said, referring to Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who held the position for nearly four decades until his death in US-Israeli air strikes.
Equally, the executions were intended to suppress potential dissent. “Make no mistake, these executions aim to instil fear and terror into the hearts of protesting and dissenting Iranians,” Taleblu said.
The anti-government protests that erupted across Iran in early January were fueled by economic turmoil, a collapsing currency and broader anger at clerical rule and were described as the most significant in decades. Thousands of people were killed in the bloody crackdown that followed.
The hangings were also a sign of Tehran acting in defiance of Washington, Taleblu said. “Tehran transgressed Trump’s redline of protester executions overtly in a bid of defiance against a West it is at war with,” he said, adding that Iran is also trying to signal it remains “impervious to pressure, be it foreign or domestic.”
It was not just those associated with the protests facing execution this week. On Wednesday, Mizan announced the execution of Kourosh Keyvani, a dual Iranian-Swedish national whom it described as “a spy for the Israeli regime” accused of providing images and information about sensitive locations in Iran to Mossad officers.
CNN has reached out to the Israeli government for comment on this claim.
Sweden’s Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said on Wednesday that a Swedish citizen had been executed in Iran earlier that day, calling the death penalty “inhuman, cruel and irreversible.” She said Sweden had repeatedly raised the case with Iranian representatives since the citizen’s arrest in June 2025, urging that the person be granted a fair hearing and not sentenced to death.
A deterrent message aimed at US and Israel
Mehrdad Farahmand, a commentator on Middle Eastern affairs, said the timing and nature of the executions were closely linked to wartime messaging from Washington and Israel that has explicitly encouraged Iranians to “rise up” against the Islamic Republic.
Since the war began, there have been state media reports of strikes on Iranian police bases and headquarters associated with other military units such as the Basij, the paramilitary force that was used to suppress the demonstrations in January.
Farahmand said the hangings are also intended to counter a growing perception — inside Iran and among opponents abroad — that sustained attacks on the police and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) could eventually fracture the state’s coercive power.
“The regime, by executing these three individuals, wants to demonstrate that it still maintains full control over the situation,” he said.
Iranian authorities — who have long accused the United States and Israel of fueling unrest inside the country — said the three men were convicted of moharebeh, often translated as “enmity against God,” a charge tied to alleged acts of violence during the protests. Tehran’s calculus may have shifted because earlier US warnings about executions have lost deterrent value, according to Farahmand.
“Now that the United States has already attacked, the regime no longer has any reason to hesitate in carrying out death sentences,” he said.
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