1OCT

Iran hangs two men over Mashhad unrest

4 min read

19:22UTC

Iran hanged Ali Hemmati, 21, and Majid Nikandish, 25, in Mashhad on the morning of 30 September and announced it through Mizan, the judiciary's own news outlet. The Supreme Court had confirmed both death sentences first.

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Key takeaway

Iran announced these two hangings itself, having kept most of August's executions unpublicised.

Iran hanged Ali Hemmati and Majid Nikandish in Mashhad on the morning of Wednesday 30 September 2026 and announced it through Mizan, the judiciary's own news outlet⁠¹. The Supreme Court of Iran had confirmed both death sentences first⁠². Hemmati was 21 and Nikandish 25⁠³.

The state says both men took part in the unrest of 8 January 2026 in the Tabarsi district of Mashhad, in which four security personnel died, and it sentenced Nikandish for moharebeh, waging war against God⁠⁴. moharebeh carries death on conviction and turns a public-order prosecution into a capital one without any requirement to prove a killing. No independent body has tested the state's account of what either man did. Iran Human Rights Monitor and the National Council of Resistance of Iran, both aligned with the Iranian opposition, reported the hangings first⁠⁵.

Iran's judiciary rarely announces a hanging at all. Hengaw, a Norway-based Kurdish rights monitor outside that network, counted at least 89 executions across Iran in August against 67 in July, and recorded that official Iranian sources announced only eight of the 89⁠⁶. Mizan announced these two. Publicity is therefore a choice the judiciary makes case by case, and a confirmed sentence reported through the state's own channel carries a deterrent purpose a silent hanging does not.

The two sets of figures around these men measure different things and should not be added together. Iran Human Rights Monitor published a list of 166 protesters on 29 September and says all 166 are under death sentence, awaiting Supreme Court confirmation, or at imminent risk of execution; neither Iran's judiciary nor any United Nations body has confirmed that figure⁠⁷. Human Rights Watch, documenting cases individually with the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, recorded at least 59 men executed on politically motivated national security charges between 18 March and the end of August 2026, 29 of them arrested over the December 2025 and January 2026 protests⁠⁸. In 16 of those 29 cases the charges carried no allegation of killing at all, citing damage to public property, stone-throwing or entering government buildings⁠⁹. One count documents executions that happened; the other forecasts ones that have not. Hemmati and Nikandish were sentenced over a protest rather than the war, on a track that has been running since the winter and that nothing said in New York has interrupted. Arvin Kheirkhahan, 20, arrested in the same January 2026 protest wave, was hanged at Shahrud Central Prison in Semnan Province on 1 August on the same moharebeh charge, his family given no warning and told to collect his body the next day.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Iran executed two men by hanging in the city of Mashhad on the morning of 30 September 2026: Ali Hemmati, who was 21, and Majid Nikandish, who was 25. The state announced it through Mizan, the news outlet run by Iran's own judiciary, after the country's Supreme Court confirmed both death sentences. Iran says the two took part in unrest in the Tabarsi district of Mashhad on 8 January 2026, during which four members of the security forces died. Nikandish was convicted of a charge called moharebeh, which in Iranian law means taking up arms against the state and carries the death penalty. No court or investigator outside Iran has examined the evidence, and the case files are not public. The ages come from two opposition-linked monitoring groups rather than from Iran. Iran's judiciary has now confirmed the hangings themselves. Those are two different kinds of information, and it is worth keeping them apart. Separately, Human Rights Watch found that in 16 of 29 protest-related executions it documented earlier in 2026, the authorities did not allege that the person had killed anyone.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

moharebeh carries a mandatory capital penalty in Iranian law and is defined around drawing a weapon to spread fear, which makes the prosecution's framing of an act, rather than the act itself, decisive at sentencing. Where protest and armed insurrection are distinguished by a prosecutor's characterisation and the case file is not published, the gap between the two is not something an outside observer can close.

Hengaw, an independent Norway-based monitor outside the National Council of Resistance of Iran network, counted at least 89 executions across Iran in August 2026 against 67 in July, and recorded that official Iranian sources announced only eight of the 89. An unannounced hanging therefore counts as the norm on this system. These two were announced through Mizan, which makes the publicity itself a choice and points at the intended audience inside Iran.

Escalation

Up, and running on its own track. These executions concern domestic protest rather than the war, and they continued through the week Iranian and American envoys were exchanging written terms through Doha, which is the point: this strand of state conduct has not been responsive to anything at the negotiating table.

The trigger worth watching is whether any of the pending cases on monitors' lists is announced as a Supreme Court confirmation, because confirmation has been the step immediately preceding execution in both of these cases.

What could happen next?

Meaning
Announcing these two hangings through Mizan, when official sources announced only eight of 89 August executions on Hengaw's count, makes the publicity a deliberate act aimed at an Iranian audience.
Immediate · Assessed
Risk
Supreme Court confirmation has immediately preceded execution in both of these cases, so any further confirmation reported by monitors marks a case at imminent risk.
Short term · Assessed
Consequence
Executions over domestic protest continued while negotiations ran, which means diplomatic engagement on the war carries no observable restraint on this conduct.
Medium term · Assessed
Precedent
A charge whose application turns on a prosecutor's characterisation, with unpublished case files, leaves no external route to test whether a capital sentence followed an armed act.
Long term · Suggested

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources from Iran

Iran

Primary parallel: Iran hanged Mohsen Shekari on 8 December 2022 and Majidreza Rahnavard on 12 December 2022, both convicted of moharebeh over the protests of that autumn, both announced through Mizan within weeks of conviction. The pattern is the same one here: the charge, the announcing outlet and the speed from confirmation to execution all match, which is what makes these hangings legible as deterrence rather than as isolated cases.

Counter-parallel: The rapper Toomaj Salehi was sentenced to death in 2024, had the sentence overturned by Iran's Supreme Court after sustained international attention, and was later released. The same court that confirmed these two sentences has quashed one, so confirmation is not automatic and the outcome has turned on visibility before.

Consensus view: Human Rights Watch, working with the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, documented at least 59 men executed on politically motivated national security charges between 18 March and the end of August 2026, 29 of them arrested in connection with the December 2025 and January 2026 protests.

In 16 of those 29 cases the authorities alleged no killing, citing damage to public property, stone-throwing or entering government buildings. That ratio is the detail separating a judicial process from a deterrent.

Counter-view: Iran's judiciary, through its own outlet Mizan, presents both men as participants in unrest in the Tabarsi district of Mashhad on 8 January 2026 in which four security personnel died, with both death sentences confirmed by the Supreme Court and Nikandish convicted of moharebeh, the charge in Iranian law for armed insurrection against the state. No independent body has tested that account of what either man did.

Key tension: Whether moharebeh was applied to proven armed acts or used to convert protest into a capital offence, which turns on case files Iran has not published.

Sources:Iran Human Rights Monitor·Iran Human Rights Monitor·National Council of Resistance of Iran

Mentions:Mashhad →Mizan →Supreme Court of Iran →Iran →Iran Human Rights →National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) →Human Rights Watch →Abdorrahman Boroumand Center →Hengaw →Norway →Semnan →Shahrud →United Nations →New York →National Security Council (Iran) →

First Reported In

Update #180 · Washington left Iraq as it answered Tehran

Iran Human Rights Monitor· 1 Oct 2026

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Different Perspectives

Russia

Russia vetoed the same renewal on 17 September, arguing that Britain, France and Germany never validly triggered the snapback that reimposed the pre-2015 UN resolutions. No panel was ever seated under that mandate, so the UN list decays fastest for states that screen against it rather than against the American one.

China

China vetoed renewal of the UN sanctions monitoring mandate on 17 September, arguing that Resolution 2231 terminated on 18 October 2025 and that the Security Council should drop Iran's nuclear file altogether. On that reading there is nothing to monitor, so the sanctions survive and their enforcement does not.

Iraq

Baghdad saw the last American counter-Islamic State troops leave its territory on 30 September, completing a timetable it agreed with Washington in September 2024. Iraqi airspace deconfliction passes to Baghdad, which still has an open inquiry into the Maysan drone launches that has named nobody.

Pakistan

Treasury names Waseem Pasha Tajammal of Rawalpindi as the Cavalier group's chairman and places one of the designated incorporations in Islamabad. QatarEnergy separately told Pakistan that liquefied natural gas cargo cancellations would run through November, so Islamabad carries an enforcement question and a supply gap at once.

Turkey

Treasury named a Cavalier Dynamics company incorporated in Istanbul among the ten nodes it designated on 29 September, and Ankara has published no response. Turkey imported a record 120,000 barrels a day of Indian diesel in August, cutting Russia's share of its diesel imports to 20 per cent.

India

Suraj Yadav, a wiper from Uttar Pradesh, was killed aboard the Cape Dao on 23 September, and 19 of the ship's 20 Indian crew were taken off alive. India's September imports ran at 575,000 barrels a day from Iraq and 566,000 from Saudi Arabia, back to pre-conflict rates.