Political Prisoner Ehsan Rostami Faces Execution As Iran’s Regime Ramps Up Crackdown On Dissidents

The Iranian regime’s judiciary has formally charged 36-year-old sociologist and publisher Ehsan Rostami with “Baghi” (rebellion), a charge that carries the death penalty, marking a dangerous escalation in Tehran’s war against political dissent. On December 10, 2025, the fifth branch of the Evin Prosecutor’s Office issued the indictment, accusing Rostami of collaboration with the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). Following the hearing, authorities transferred him to solitary confinement, raising urgent concerns about his imminent execution.

A campaign of torture and hostage-taking

Rostami, a graduate of Allameh Tabatabaei University and director of Samandar Publishing, is a recognized cultural figure active in philosophy and socio-political movements. He was arrested on August 20, 2025, alongside his cousin Ramin Rostami, during raids in Tehran. For four months, they were subjected to inhumane torture. In October, both men undertook a 23-day hunger strike to protest the brutal pressure from interrogators.

The regime’s cruelty extended to Rostami’s family. On October 17, security forces arrested his 63-year-old father, Jahangir Rostami, in Harsin. The retired teacher was severely beaten and, two days later, brought before his son with a bloodied face in a coercive attempt to extract a false confession from Ehsan. Jahangir Rostami was temporarily released on December 16 on a bail of 15 billion rials.

Systematic legal terror

The death sentence facing Rostami is part of a broader, frantic campaign by the judiciary to silence the PMOI. On December 6, 2025, political prisoner Karim Khojasteh, a 62-year-old engineer, was informed of his death sentence in Rasht. The very next day, the judiciary reconfirmed the death sentences of six other political prisoners—Babak Alipour, Pouya Ghobadi, Vahid Bani Amerian, Mohammad Taghavi, Akbar Daneshvarkar, and Abolhassan Montazer—in hearings that lasted only a few minutes.

These trials are widely regarded as shams. For instance, Zahra Tabari, a 67-year-old woman recently sentenced to death, was tried via video conference in ten minutes without access to a lawyer. Boxing champion and political prisoner Mohammad Javad Vafaei Sani, also faces imminent execution as the regime judiciary has upheld his death sentence multiple times.

War on youth and history

The crackdown targets both Iran’s defiant youth and survivors of the 1980s massacres. Among those on death row is Ehsan Faridi, a 22-year-old honors student at Tabriz University, whose sentence was upheld despite serious procedural flaws. Simultaneously, the regime is targeting former political prisoners like Abolhassan Montazer and Mohammad Taghavi to erase living symbols of defiance against repression. Currently, at least 18 political prisoners face imminent execution for supporting the PMOI.

Fear of regime collapse

This surge in executions—including 335 in November 2025 alone and over 2,500 since Masoud Pezeshkian took office in July 2024—betrays the regime’s profound weakness. Terrified by the expansion of PMOI Resistance Units and a society on the brink of uprising, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is using the gallows as a political weapon.

The international community must intervene to stop the Iranian regime’s killing machine and save the lives of dissidents and political prisoners.