Executions announced after years-long case
Iran said on 2025-06-10 that it executed nine members of the Islamic State group who had been detained after a 2018 clash with the Revolutionary Guard in western Iran. The announcement came through the judiciary’s Mizan news agency and said the death sentences had been upheld by the country’s top court.
According to the AP report, Iranian authorities said the militants were captured after a confrontation in which three Revolutionary Guard troops and several Islamic State fighters were killed. Officials also said security forces found a cache of weapons at the militants’ hideout, including a machine gun and 50 grenades, after surrounding the location.
The executions were carried out by hanging, which remains Iran’s standard method for capital punishment. The AP report added that Iran has executed people at a pace human rights advocates say is alarmingly high. Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam of Iran Human Rights said the nine executions were issued without fair trials and noted that seven others reportedly detained in connection with the 2018 attack had not had their cases publicly updated.
The case is part of a broader, long-running confrontation between Iran and the Islamic State group. IS once controlled territory across Iraq and Syria before being driven back by U.S.-led forces, but it has remained active through attacks and attempted attacks in the region. The group has also mounted strikes in Iran itself, including a June 2017 assault on parliament and a mausoleum in Tehran and two suicide bombings in 2024 that killed at least 94 people at a memorial for an Iranian general.
The 2018 clash cited in the report marked a moment of heightened tension between Iran and the extremist group. Tehran responded at the time with ballistic missile strikes into eastern Syria, vowing revenge after militants disguised as soldiers attacked a military parade in southwestern Iran. That attack killed at least 25 people and was claimed by both Islamic State and local separatists.
Tuesday’s executions also came at a time when analysts say the group could exploit wider regional instability. The AP report noted concerns that Islamic State may try to rebuild in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover and could benefit from Syria’s shifting security landscape after the fall of Bashar Assad last year. Those are longer-term strategic concerns, but they frame why the Iranian government presented the 2018 case as a counterterrorism victory.
For rights groups, however, the case is also another example of Iran’s use of capital punishment in terrorism-related prosecutions. The AP report included the view of Iran Human Rights that the executions were not the product of fair trials. That objection does not alter the fact of the executions themselves, but it does show how political and legal disputes remain attached to the case even after the sentences were carried out.
What was verified
AP supports the execution of nine Islamic State militants, the 2018 clash with the Revolutionary Guard, the weapons seizure, the use of hanging, and the human-rights criticism cited in the report.
