Geneva, August 29, 2025 (dpa/CrestNewsOnline) At least 841 people have been executed in Iran so far this year, the United Nations (UN) said on Friday, calling on Tehran to impose a moratorium on the death penalty.

“In July alone, Iranian authorities executed 110 individuals,” Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement.

“This represents more than double the number of people executed in July of last year and follows a major increase in executions during the first half of 2025,” she added.

In 2024, at least 975 people were executed in Iran.

Shamdasani said “the high number of executions” reflects “a systematic pattern of using death penalty as a tool of State intimidation, with disproportionate targeting of ethnic minorities and migrants.”

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has already called on Iran to suspend the death sentence, “as a step towards its abolition,” according to the spokeswoman.

Iranian authorities have intensified a crackdown on dissent following the Israeli attacks in June, with Iranian media reporting a number of executions related to accusations of espionage for Israel

Shamdasani appeared to indirectly address this development, when she said: “Patterns we have documented across different countries indicate that there are periods when governments are even less tolerant to dissent —– to anything they can see as threatening the public order.”

“And in these moments there can often be an increase of repressive tendencies.”