Iran's regime came for teenage twins. Their fate offers a glimpse of Tehran's widening death campaign
Taraneh and Romina Rahimi were 19, still in high school and living with their mother when masked men came for them in the middle of the night.
According to their U.S.-based cousin, the twin sisters were dragged from their beds with bags placed over their heads about a month after they joined anti-regime protests in Isfahan. Their family was given no explanation and spent months searching courts, hospitals and government offices trying to determine where they had been taken.
Four months later, their mother, Marzieh Nourmohammadi, was finally allowed to see them at Dowlatabad Prison. She barely recognized her daughters.
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Their cousin, Masoud Nourmohammadi, told The Guardian that the twins had badly swollen and bruised faces, injuries to their elbows, hands and feet, and significant hair loss that he said resulted from guards pulling them by their hair as they were moved between cells. He said their mother also learned that the sisters had been held in solitary confinement.
Now 20, Taraneh Rahimi faces execution over her alleged role in the January protests, while her twin sister could spend decades in prison, in a case unfolding amid a sharp rise in Iran’s use of the death penalty.
Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported that Taraneh was sentenced to death and an additional 11 years in prison, while Romina received a 36-year sentence. The sentences were issued by Branch 1 of the Isfahan Revolutionary Court and remain initial-stage verdicts.
The twins are among 16 defendants prosecuted in what has become known as the "Isfahan Shohada Square" case. HRANA said 10 defendants received death sentences and the 16 defendants collectively received 256 years in prison.
The sisters’ family says the abuse was intended to force confessions.
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Nourmohammadi told The Guardian that Taraneh was threatened that prison guards would rape Romina in front of her unless she signed a confession. The outlet reported that Taraneh later told the court that admissions attributed to her had been obtained through torture. Her mother was not permitted to attend the trial, according to the family.
Radio Farda separately reported, citing Nourmohammadi, that the sisters suffered physical and psychological abuse and were forced to confess to accusations they deny. The Hana Human Rights Organization told Fox News Digital they have verified the torture allegations.
Concerns about torture extend beyond the sisters. HRANA reported that another defendant in the same case, Ahmadreza Saeidi, told judges during the hearing that the investigating judge personally used an electric stun gun on his neck and genitals. Defense lawyers also reportedly complained that they had not been given access to substantial portions of the case file or adequate time to examine evidence before trial.
The sentences come as rights organizations document a sharp rise in executions across Iran.
The Washington-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran documented 901 executions during the first seven months of 2026, including 56 people executed on political or national-security charges.
Behnam Ben Taleblu, Iran program senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that the executions should be viewed as part of a broader campaign by Tehran to suppress dissent at home.
"Despite the war in the region, despite the drone war, the missile war, the war over the Strait of Hormuz, the real war is the one that's happening on a day-to-day basis inside the Islamic Republic," Ben Taleblu said. "The Islamic Republic is quite literally cracking skulls, cracking down on civil society, on dissidents, on protesters."
Among those imprisoned in Iran’s broader crackdown is Seyed Ahmad Seyedabdollahi, a 32-year-old psychologist whose case Fox News Digital reported in August.
Seyedabdollahi posted an English-language video on Jan. 4 appealing directly to President Donald Trump to support Iranian protesters, according to his relatives and Fox News Digital’s previous reporting. He was arrested 10 days later and ultimately sentenced to seven months in prison and barred from government and public services for five years.
His relatives told Fox News Digital that Iranian authorities later pressured him to record another video insulting Trump and Americans and alleged that he was subjected to solitary confinement and torture.
The Hana Human Rights Organization reported Aug. 9 that Seyedabdollahi had been held in Borujen Prison since July 7 and that authorities opened a second case against him on a charge of "propaganda against the system of the Islamic Republic." Hana also confirmed that he was serving a seven-month sentence and had received a five-year disqualification from public and governmental services.
His relatives confirmed to Fox News Digital that authorities have continued pressuring him to say he was a "foreign agent" paid by the U.S. government. They also said authorities revoked his professional license, adding financial pressure on his family.
Ben Taleblu said Tehran has followed a similar pattern after previous periods of external conflict, turning its attention inward against perceived opponents.
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"We saw this trend in the aftermath of the 12-day war as well," Ben Taleblu said. "Lose a war abroad, come home and pretend like you're the victor."
"Simply here, the Islamic Republic is continuing the longest war it's ever fought, which is the 47-year war against the Iranian people," he added.
Wednesday marks four years since the Sept. 16, 2022, death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman who was detained three days earlier by Iran’s morality police over what authorities described as "improper hijab." Her death sparked nationwide protests that became known internationally as the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement. The U.N. said reports that Amini had been beaten in custody warranted an independent investigation, while Iranian authorities maintained that she died of "natural causes."
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The 2022 uprising was itself part of a longer cycle of unrest. Nationwide demonstrations beginning in December 2017 rapidly spread across Iran and represented the largest challenge to the government since the 2009 Green Movement. The 2017-18 protests were followed by another major nationwide wave in 2019 and then the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising.
Ben Taleblu argued that whenever another major protest movement emerges, Western governments should be prepared to help Iranians communicate with one another and the outside world, particularly when authorities shut down internet access.
"We know every single time another major protest is happening, the way the regime cracks down is to first turn off the internet," he said. "That means the regime fears what comes of coordination between Iranians and fears what comes of when the Iranians are able to send their message outside to the international community."
"The partners of the Iranian people, America, Israel, the West, these are largely all cyber superpowers," Ben Taleblu said. "We should not let the Iranian people continue to die in the darkness."