One year on, Iranian prisoners continue campaign against rising executions

It is an unprecedented move that is considered significant by human rights advocates, saying this could show disregard for Iran's human rights violations.

The UPR is an essential mechanism of the council aimed at improving the human rights situation for member states. Iran is one of 14 states reviewed by the UPR working group.

Based on log records, the United States has filed recommendations on the Islamic Republic since 2010, expect for this year.

Iran did face criticism this year from other member states including the United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland and Paraguay, denouncing the country’s treatment of women, its high rate of executions and crackdown on dissidents.

Ukraine took aim at Iran for supplying Russia’s war in Ukraine with drones and missiles. Germany condemned Tehran for committing gender discrimination and suppressing basic freedoms, urging the government to put an end to the death penalty.

Why the UPR matters

Human rights activists use the UPR to advocate for change and expose Iran’s human rights abuses on an international platform. The withdrawal of the United States from making recommendations is a blow to human rights advocacy, Nazanin Afshin-Jam an Iranian-Canadian activist told Iran International.

“I am shocked and devastated by this news,” said Afshin-Jam “We rely on Western liberal democracies, especially countries like the United States that champion human rights and freedoms, to act as moral compasses in holding regimes accountable."

Afshin-Jam, the founder of the Iranian Justice Collective (IJC), used to run an organization called Stop Child Executions, which focused on ending the execution of juveniles around the world. Part of their work included submitting findings to the UPR process, a critical tool for exposing human rights violations.

"The idea of the U.S. not submitting its findings on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s blatant and egregious human rights abuses is unprecedented. This is not the moment to pull back; it’s the moment to push forward and ensure accountability," she said.

Iran International has reached to the US State Department for a response and did not hear back in time for this report.

"Not a good sign"

Taimoor Aliassi , the UN representative of Kurdistan Human Rights Association in Geneva, told Iran Interantional he feels deceived by the US, which is breaking from its long-standing tradition of championing human rights.

“This is not a good sign for human rights,” said Aliassi, “The situation of human rights and minority rights is worsening in Iran. There’s a dramatic increase in the number of executions. It is really important for the United States to take this into consideration if they really want to deal with Iran and to make improvements or if they really intend to support the Iranian people.”

Prior to the UPR meeting in Geneva, Shadi Amin, the Director of 6rang, an Iranian Lesbian and Transgender network, lobbied member states to advocate for Iran’s LGBTQ community.

Nine member states urged Iran to not criminalize homosexuality, which is considered a crime punishable by death in Iran, but the United States, according to Amin is not a country Iranians should rely on anymore.

“The Iranian human rights community should try not to count on the US government in the future. The grassroots communities need to stand up and do something, because that's not acceptable what they [the US administration] are doing,” said Amin.

Iran’s delegation, led by Deputy Minister for International and Legal Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Kazem Gharibabadi, took to the podium Friday, saying that significant progress had been made to improve the lives of Iranians. Gharibabadi also referred to any criticism as politically motivated.

In 2024, The United Nations Fact Finding Mission said it uncovered murders, torture and rape, accusing Iran of committing crimes against humanity.

The agreement, signed during the administration of reformist President Mohammad Khatami, was never implemented.

Iran has been ordered to pay substantial damages to Crescent and has lost billions of dollars in potential revenue after gas exports under the deal, which were supposed to begin in 2008, failed to materialize.

The controversy primarily centers on allegations of corruption leveled by ultra-hardliners against former Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh and other officials aligned with the so-called reformist faction, unfavorable rulings by international arbitration courts against NIOC, and the loss of substantial revenue from the Salman oil and gas field.

Q: What is the Crescent Deal?

The Crescent gas deal was a 25-year contract to export natural gas from Iran's offshore Salman field in the Persian Gulf to the United Arab Emirates.

Under the agreement, Iran was to deliver approximately 500 million cubic feet of natural gas per day to the UAE, starting in 2008.

Crescent Gas invested approximately $300 million in infrastructure, including a gas sweetening plant and transmission facilities, while NIOC spent over $1.5 billion developing the Salman gas field and its related transport infrastructure.

Negotiations with the UAE side over pricing terms continued after the government transitioned to populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005. These talks initially broke down due to Tehran's insistence that the previously agreed price was too low compared to rising global prices at the time.

The Ahmadinejad administration later dropped its opposition to the agreement and chose to implement it. However, under political pressure, NIOC ultimately refused to begin supplying gas to CGC as agreed.

Q: Who opposed the Crescent deal and why?

Saeed Jalili, ultra-hardline politician and secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) under then-President Ahmadinejad, is known as the staunchest critic of the Crescent Deal.

Former Oil Ministry official Mahmoud Khaghani claimed in July 2024 that in early 2010, Ahmadinejad urged the Supreme National Security Council to resolve the Crescent issue in order to avoid litigation.

Khaghani, accused Jalili of sabotaging the deal due to personal grudges against former Oil Minister Zanganeh, the architect of the deal, and insisted that the deal should never be implemented. According to Khaghani, Jalili argued that CGC would not be awarded more than $850 million in damages if the case went to court.

Proponents of the deal have also accused Jalili of attempting to create insurmountable obstacles in nuclear talks with world powers while he headed the nuclear negotiation team.

Currently a member of the Expediency Discernment Council (EDC), appointed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Jalili leads the faction within the EDC that opposes Iran's accession to the conventions of the global money laundering watchdog, the FATF.

Despite repeated challenges from Zanganeh to publicly debate the matter, Jalili has declined, stating that the issue is too complex for a debate and should instead be resolved in court.

Q: What legal steps has CGC taken against NIOC?

In 2009, Crescent Gas filed a lawsuit against NIOC with the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague. In 2014, the arbitration court ruled that NIOC had breached its contractual obligations.

In 2021, the arbitration tribunal awarded CGC $2.43 billion in damages for lost profits due to NIOC's failure to deliver gas. NIOC appealed the ruling to the Court of Appeal in London, but the appeal was rejected in July 2023.

As of January 2025, the award, including accrued interest, amounts to approximately $2.75 billion.

Separately, in September 2021, another tribunal awarded Dana Gas, an affiliate of Crescent Petroleum, $607.5 million for NIOC’s failure to supply gas under the same agreement. This award only covers the first 8.5 years of the 25-year contract.

Additional arbitration claims could raise the total damages sought from NIOC to as much as $18 billion.

Q: Has NIOC paid the sums awarded to the UAE side?

To date, NIOC has not fulfilled its payment obligations. However, Crescent Petroleum has successfully obtained orders to seize NIOC assets abroad in order to enforce the arbitration awards.

In April 2024, a UK court ordered the transfer of the NIOC House in London to CGC as partial settlement of the damages. More recently, another NIOC-owned building in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, was seized for the same purpose.

Several Iranian human rights organizations, internet freedom programs and activists engaged in media and civil society work have received notices that their funds will be suspended for three months, Iran International has learned.

Trump signed an executive order on January 20, his first day in office, suspending foreign development assistance for 90 days to allow for a review of its efficiency and alignment with his America First policy stance.

Following the move, the State Department has halted most ongoing foreign aid programs and paused the initiation of new assistance, according to an internal memo distributed to officials and US embassies abroad.

Official government figures show Washington is the world's biggest donor of international aid, spending $39 billion in the 2024 fiscal year, out of which $65 million was allocated to funding State Department-administered Near East Regional Democracy (NERD).

The body is the main foreign assistance channel through which the United States has supported civil society and human rights in Iran since 2009, according to the Congressional Research Service.

“We have been told in writing that we must stop all work on the program and not incur any new costs after January 24th and cancel as many obligations as possible,” said one State Department grantee.

“It doesn’t look like anyone has given thought to the implications of this decision... The lack of clarity of the notice we received is just absurd. It is unclear how long this process will take,” the person added.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Supporting internet freedom

Among the grantees are Persian media outlets that publish uncensored news for Iranian citizens, as well as human rights organizations that document abuses in Iran, which is instrumental in keeping the Islamic Republic accountable.

A part of the US funds also covers the expenses of Virtual Private Network (VPN) services which ordinary Iranians used to circumvent the Islamic Republic’s censorship. Many of these services will have to stop their operation following the aid cut.

“It is a very dangerous move, because the issue of internet freedom is very vital, both to the people of Iran and the allies of Iranian people in the West,” a cyber security expert based in Silicon Valley told Iran International on condition of anonymity.

Trump’s order, an internet activist told Iran International, deprives 20 million Iranians, or a fifth of the population, of US-supported VPNs they use to bypass Tehran’s internet curbs.

At their peak during the “Woman Life Freedom” protests in 2022, VPN usage in Iran hit two-third of the population. “In today’s Iran, the internet has no meaning without VPNs,” writes internet activist Soroush Ahmadi in an article for Peace Line journal, which is published by the Virginia-based NGO “Human Rights Activists in Iran”.

The VPNs commercially available in the Iranian market are believed to be controlled by the Islamic Republic and even sold by entities affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards who profit from the needs of Iranians to gain unfettered access to the internet.

During Trump’s first term in office in 2020, US government-funded technology companies recorded an increase in the use of circumvention software in Iran after boosting efforts to help Iranian antigovernment protesters thwart internet censorship and use secure mobile messaging.

Since the 2018 protests in Iran, Washington had accelerated efforts to provide Iranians more options on how they communicate with each other and the outside world.

These included providing apps, servers and other technology to help people communicate, visit banned websites, install anti-tracking software and navigate data shutdowns, The Financial Times reported in 2020 citing a Trump administration state department official.

The second Trump administration also seemed to be pursuing the same approach toward the Iranian people before the inauguration.

Maximum pressure on people or government?

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in his Senate confirmation hearing earlier this month that “anything that we do with Iran needs to be clear eyed about who that regime is, but also who those people of Iran really are, because they're not their leaders.”

However, an internet expert told Iran International that the new decision “stands in contrast to the Trump administration’s stated position of supporting the Iranian people against the Islamic republic.”

“In reality, this policy will exert maximum pressure on the Iranian people rather than the government. It will trap Iranian citizens behind a digital wall and assist the government in building its national internet, effectively isolating the nation from the rest of the world,” the expert said.

‘Worst form of punishment’

The Silicon Valley-based cyber security expert says the contradiction between Rubio’s words and the executive order “will raise serious questions in the minds of many Iranians, because this is the worst form of punishment for the people of Iran.”

“With the relentless censorship and oppression by the Islamic Republic, if the current form of support for internet freedom outside Iran disappears, it would in a way be the greatest gift from the Trump administration to the tyrants in Tehran,” the expert added.

“With a stroke of the pen, Trump’s executive order and Rubio’s memo implementing it have done what the Iranian regime could not do after spending billions of dollars on their national Internet: cut off the last channel to the global internet that Iranians had,” said the Iranian internet activist.

The decision not only undermines the free flow of information and access to free internet for Iranian people, it also “disrupts many civil society activities, including secure communication with one another, which strengthens civil society and is essential for safe organization,” according to Ahmad Ahmadian, head of California-based tech non-profit.

“Moreover, it allows the Iranian government to dominate the public narrative by silencing people's voices through cutting off their access to information tools and censored social media in Iran,” added Ahmadian whose company Holistic Resilience aims to advance internet freedom and privacy by developing and researching censorship circumvention.

Big Tech

Last September, the White House convened a meeting with representatives of Amazon, Alphabet's Google, Microsoft, Cloudflare and civil society activists in a bid to encourage US tech giants to offer more digital bandwidth for government-funded internet censorship evasion tools.

The tools, supported by the US-backed Open Technology Fund (OTF), have seen a surge of usage in Iran and other authoritarian states that heavily censor the internet, Reuters reported at the time.

However, Big Tech may not be willing or able to continue their support for providing anti-censorship tools without the US government’s funds.

“The leadership of the US government has been crucial in urging big tech companies to provide public services,” says Ahmadian. “Without the encouragement of the US government, these companies wouldn't take the initiative on their own.”

After the nationwide 2022 protests began in Iran, the Iranian government severely restricted internet access for its citizens.

In response to the restrictions, which included complete and periodic internet shutdowns and slowing down of internet speeds, the US government lifted some curbs on exporting internet services to Iran, allowing Elon Musk’s SpaceX to provide satellite internet services.

By the end of 2024, the number of Starlink satellite internet users in Iran surpassed 100,000, a senior industry official in Iran said earlier this month, underscoring the keenness of Iranians to defy curbs on their access to the outside world.

Impact on human rights projects

However, the consequences of Trump’s executive order will not remain limited to internet censorship circumvention tools, activists say.

The pause in US foreign aid, a human rights activist told Iran International, “(will) impose restrictions on projects that address human rights violations or investigate governmental and military corruption which have impacted Iran's economy and social conditions in favor of foreign terrorist activities and money laundering.”

"This decision by the Trump administration would be a reciprocal gift to the Islamic Republic and its corrupt officials, the Revolutionary Guard, and money-laundering networks in the West," the activist, speaking on condition of anonymity, added.

The activist said several non-Iranian American institutions have been using these funds to investigate corruption and money laundering by the Islamic Republic in environmental and construction sectors. “These organizations will be forced to halt their activities,” he added.

Several activists speaking to Iran International believe that if the projects related to promotion of human rights and internet freedom in Iran do not receive an exemption within the next month, they will either collapse entirely or be deeply curtailed.

“The impact of this freeze might not be immediately noticeable, but its severe implications will become evident over time,” a second human rights activist said.

Internet experts warned that even if US aid starts again in three months, the damage is irreversible since many people had migrated to vulnerable domestic VPNs and might never fully return to using US-backed secure services.

“This issue jeopardizes both the freedom of information and the security of individuals," said the Silicon Valley expert.

Ardeshir Geravand told the Didban Iran website in Tehran, "When legitimate paths to power and wealth remain open, members of the middle class can maintain their status. However, when these avenues are blocked, it can lead to social unrest and, ultimately, revolution."

Iran has endured approximately 40% annual inflation over the past five years, with its currency losing 95% of its value since 2018. This crisis has not only left ordinary workers struggling to afford basic necessities but has also pushed many middle-class citizens into poverty.

"Injustice, special privileges for a well-connected few, bureaucratic obstacles, and the obscure political relations push people toward revolt and violence," Geravand said. He added, "Revolutions begin when legitimate pathways to a normal life are not accessible to everyone."

Using the recent killing of two notorious judges in Tehran as a case study, Geravand argued, "Poverty alone does not necessarily lead to violence unless it is coupled with conditions that make living a normal, ordinary life impossible."

Didban Iran columnist Parisa Hashemi noted that former President Ebrahim Raisi had pledged to eradicate poverty in Iran by 2021 or 2022, a promise that was clearly unfulfilled. She added that poverty has become deeply entrenched in Iran due to the poor performance of the ruling system, which has pushed millions of Iranians below the official poverty line and left many breadwinners humiliated in front of their families.

Hashemi further remarked, "In recent years, soaring prices have left many Iranian families unable to make ends meet. Faced with this harsh reality, many breadwinners have either abandoned their families or tragically taken their own lives."

Hassan Mousavi Chalak, chairman of the Iranian Social Workers' Association, highlighting a rise in breadwinners abandoning their families due to the economic crisis, warned that some may turn to criminal gangs.

Geravand explained that such individuals may justify turning to violence as a means of restoring justice. However, he emphasized, "Violence arises when a person concludes that changing their circumstances and escaping poverty is impossible."

Addressing the shifting dynamics of Iran's middle class, Geravand observed, "Many who once led affluent lives have now fallen into poverty. When a middle-class individual becomes impoverished, especially if they find no support within society, they may rebel out of sheer frustration."

The ongoing issue of Iran's political and economic deadlock was the focus of a recent debate between reformist political scientist Hatam Ghaderi and conservative philosophy professor Saeed Zibakalam on a YouTube channel not subject to direct censorship.

Professor Zibakalam rejected the notion of a deadlock in Iranian society, arguing that "it is a psychological trait of Iranians to traditionally submit to the conditions imposed by the government and accept their own inferiority." However, he acknowledged that this mindset must change.

Dr. Ghaderi, in contrast, asserted, "We are in a state of political impasse. The government blocks any possibility for change, and if this continues, it will only perpetuate backwardness." He further noted, "The transitions from the Qajar period to the Pahlavi era in 1925 and the 1979 revolution were both outcomes of political deadlock. Today, we are once again facing the same situation."

"In Iran, nobody would be detained due to his professional activities, like the media, like the civil society," Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy minister for international and legal affairs at the ministry of foreign affairs told the 48th session of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on Friday.

He also dismissed UN Special Rapporteur’s reports on Iran, arguing that they fail to reflect the realities of human rights in the country and rely on incorrect information and unreliable sources with a biased approach and political motivations.

Gharibabadi did not clarify which sources or organizations Iran considers credible, adding only that Iran views the appointment of a UN Special Rapporteur on the country as "an act based on continuous political mobilization against Iran", orchestrated by certain member states of the Human Rights Council.

Over the past year, many independent non-governmental organizations have expressed concern over its rights abuses including its ongoing crackdown on journalists.

Iran’s press freedom ranking remains among the worst globally, with Reporters Without Borders placing the country 176th out of 180 in its 2024 World Press Freedom Index.

Earlier this month, Defending Free Flow of Information (DeFFI), a non-profit which monitors and documents press freedom in Iran said in its annual report it documented 385 judicial and security actions targeting at least 256 journalists and media outlets in 2024.

Among these, 36 journalists and media activists were arrested, and 11 served prison sentences totaling 69 years and 10 months. Penalties included flogging with 110 lashes and fines.

The report outlined a deliberate pattern of repression, correlating significant waves of arrests and prosecutions with major political events, including the death of former president Ebrahim Raisi, the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria and tensions between Iran and Israel.

DeFFI said Iran’s judicial and security bodies systematically used charges such as “dissemination of falsehoods aimed at disturbing public opinion” to stifle dissent and enforce self-censorship among journalists.

The repression disproportionately impacted female journalists, with 40 women facing judicial and security actions, including arrests, prison sentences, and professional bans. Three female journalists received five-year prison terms, among the harshest sentences issued in 2024.

While Gharibabadi denied the existence of ethnic minorities in Iran on Friday, DeFFI’s report said the Islamic Republic also intensified media suppression outside Tehran, particularly in provinces with significant ethnic minority populations, such as Khuzestan, Sistan and Baluchestan, and Kurdistan.

DeFFI reported that judicial action against journalists in these areas contributed to a growing “news desert” depriving citizens of reliable, independent information.