Skip to content
Briefings are running a touch slower this week while we rebuild the foundations.See roadmap
Iran Conflict 2026
24MAY

Reza Soleimani executed at Qom Central

3 min read
14:49UTC

Hengaw documented the execution of Reza Soleimani at Qom Central Prison on Friday 15 May and an unnamed prisoner at Karaj Central Prison the same day, extending the multi-day judicial cluster that began on 11 May.

ConflictDeveloping
Key takeaway

Hengaw documented two more 15 May executions at Qom Central and Karaj Central, extending the multi-day cluster.

Hengaw, the Norway-based Kurdish human rights organisation, reported that Reza Soleimani was executed at Qom Central Prison on Friday 15 May and an unnamed prisoner was executed at Karaj Central Prison on the same day 1. Karaj Central is the facility where aerospace researcher Erfan Shakourzadeh was secretly executed on 11 May .

The Friday killings extend the cluster Hengaw documented across 12-13 May: seven executions in a single day on 13 May , and the Shahbakhsh and Afrashteh secret executions on 12-13 May . The five-prison footprint now spans Qezel Hesar Karaj, Mashhad, Karaj Central, Qom Central, and Gorgan, mapping onto provinces with the largest Kurdish, Baluch, and protest-era detainee populations.

Counter-perspective: Iran's judiciary maintains that executions follow standard criminal procedure under Islamic Penal Code articles unrelated to the wartime emergency, and IRNA has not characterised the Hengaw figures as accurate or inaccurate. The judiciary's position is that wartime conditions do not alter due process; Hengaw's documentation is that the tempo and geographic spread have accelerated since the outbreak of conflict on 28 February.

Iran's state figure of 3,468 wartime deaths does not break out judicial executions from kinetic casualties, leaving Hengaw as the only granular source for the war-era judicial pattern. The international monitoring window narrows as Iran's nationwide internet blackout passes the 2,000-hour mark next week ; once that threshold is crossed, source networks inside Iran shift onto degraded sneakernet and intermittent satellite uplinks.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Hengaw, a Kurdish human rights group based in Norway, reported that two prisoners were executed at separate Iranian prisons on Friday 15 May: Reza Soleimani at Qom Central Prison and an unnamed person at Karaj Central Prison. Karaj Central is the same prison where an aerospace researcher named Erfan Shakourzadeh was secretly executed four days earlier. Iran's government does not publicly confirm these executions, and Hengaw is often the only source documenting them. The executions are part of a cluster spanning five prisons across Iran in a single week. Human rights groups say Iran has been accelerating executions of political detainees and minorities during the conflict, though the state frames the cases as ordinary criminal proceedings.

What could happen next?
  • Risk

    The five-prison execution cluster, spanning Qezel Hesar Karaj, Mashhad, Karaj Central, Qom Central, and Gorgan, suggests a coordinated judicial acceleration that may intensify as the internet blackout approaches 2,000 hours and international monitoring capacity contracts.

  • Consequence

    With Karaj Central featuring in both the Shakourzadeh execution on 11 May and the 15 May unnamed prisoner execution, the facility is now running as a wartime high-security processing site that Hengaw cannot directly access for identification.

First Reported In

Update #99 · Two Hormuz papers; Washington on neither

Hengaw Organisation for Human Rights· 16 May 2026
Read original
Different Perspectives
Civilians and prisoners inside Iran
Civilians and prisoners inside Iran
Mojtaba Kian was hanged in under 50 days from arrest, the fastest wartime espionage case in Hengaw's record, as Trump announced a peace deal. Amnesty places Iran's 2026 execution count above 200 at its fastest pace in 44 years; the diplomatic track has not altered the internal enforcement tempo.
China
China
Beijing accepted a Pakistani civilian briefing mission on the same day OFAC's GL V expired, keeping itself inside the deal architecture without being a named signatory. How Chinese banks respond to Monday's Hengli dollar-clearing decision is the first real-world test of whether the verbal MOU carries any institutional weight.
Pakistan
Pakistan
Islamabad split its highest-level delegation: army chief Munir to Tehran on the security track, Prime Minister Sharif and Foreign Minister Dar to Beijing before Monday's GL V-driven bank compliance decision. The architecture routes the deal's hardest problem, IRGC buy-in, through the general-officer channel that has extracted every wartime concession.
Israeli government
Israeli government
An unnamed Israeli official told the Times of Israel that Trump privately told Netanyahu the deal will dismantle Iran's nuclear programme and remove all its uranium, terms incompatible with what Tehran and a Reuters source describe. If Netanyahu believes he was promised full dismantlement and the deal delivers less, Israel holds a sabotage veto before any signature.
Iranian Foreign Ministry
Iranian Foreign Ministry
Spokesman Esmail Baghaei told state agency IRNA that nuclear issues are 'not in the current negotiations text' and the sequencing is: end the war first, then negotiate nuclear over two months. Baghaei's formulation preserves Khamenei's 21 May uranium-stay directive while letting the civilian diplomacy track continue.
Donald Trump / White House
Donald Trump / White House
Trump declared the Iran deal 'largely negotiated' on 23 May via Truth Social and signed nothing; the White House's only paper was a Memorial Day proclamation. The verbal-track method converts maximum political signalling into minimum legal exposure: no congressional notification, no Senate treaty ratification, no instrument for Iran to formally reject.