Iranians – International Freedom Coalition

Iranian Peoples

Case Undergoing Active Documentation

The Iranian nation traces its origins to one of antiquity's most remarkable experiments in civilized governance. Conquered, converted, and repeatedly transformed across the millennia, Iran was never fully absorbed; the Islamic Republic established in 1979 represents the most recent, and in many respects the most brutal, imposition of a foreign ideological framework onto a people who have fought for centuries to preserve their distinct identity.

Gazelle Sharmahd

Human Rights Activist · Founder, #CutTheRope Campaign

Gazelle Sharmahd is a human rights activist and the daughter of Jamshid Sharmahd, a German-American national of Iranian descent who was kidnapped from the UAE in 2020 by Iranian agents. Targeted for his activism, journalism, and outspoken criticism of the regime, Jamshid was sentenced to death in February 2023 for "corruption on earth" following a grossly unfair trial, and executed by Iran in October 2024, an event that drew international condemnation and led Germany to close Iranian consulates. Since her father's kidnapping, Gazelle has emerged as a leading advocate for human rights in Iran; in February 2024 she launched the #CutTheRope campaign, calling on people worldwide to stand in solidarity and demand an end to the cycle of state-sanctioned executions.

Region History

The record below traces the arc from Cyrus the Great to the Islamic Republic, and the architecture of structural discrimination that now governs the state's relationship with its many peoples.

I · Foundations

From Cyrus to the Pahlavis

The Iranian nation traces its antiquity to Cyrus the Great's establishment of the Persian Achaemenid Empire in 553 BCE. After his defeat of the Babylonians at Opis in 539, peoples held in captivity were encouraged to return to their homelands, most famously the Judeans, for which the Book of Isaiah hails Cyrus as the God of Israel's anointed one (45:1). The Arab conquest of 633 to 651 CE changed Iran's native language, all but outlawed Zoroastrianism, and killed civilians perhaps numbering in the hundreds of thousands, yet Iranians never fully assimilated and fought fiercely to preserve their culture. By the twentieth century Iran had adopted democracy in 1906, established a constitutional monarchy under the Pahlavi Dynasty in 1925, and recognized a woman's right to vote in the White Revolution of 1963.

II · Revolution

1979 and the Destruction of Civil Society

In 1978 a KGB-backed communist uprising allied with the followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized control of the country, and the following January the Shah, under covert pressure from the Carter administration, abdicated and left Iran. With Khomeini's return from exile, Sharia law was instituted, civil rights for women were abolished, the female minimum age for marriage was dropped to nine, and political dissidents, members of the Shah's government, and even the regime's one-time Marxist allies were executed by the tens of thousands. The revolutionary state built the apparatus of clerical courts, intelligence ministries, and Revolutionary Guards that governs Iran to this day.

III · The Republic Today

Structural Discrimination and Revolt

The constitution nominally protects minorities: Article 15 permits regional languages in media and education, and Articles 13 and 14 recognize Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians. In practice these provisions are minimally implemented, senior positions remain overwhelmingly held by Shia Persian men, development investment favors Persian provinces, and the IRGC garrisons Kurdistan, Khuzestan, Sistan-Baluchestan, and the Turkmen Sahra, treating cross-border ethnic ties as security threats. The Woman Life Freedom protests of 2022, triggered by the killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, brought the regime's brutality to world attention; during the uprising of early 2026, regime forces are estimated to have killed tens of thousands of unarmed protesters within days, under a national internet blackout.

"Today, Iran ranks as one of the world's most totalitarian societies, with arrest, rape, and torture as commonplace punishments for women showing hair beneath their hijab, wearing nail polish, or singing in public."

IFC Northern Middle East Desk · Iranian Peoples Dossier

The Communities of Iran

Iran is home to a remarkable diversity of ethnic, linguistic, and religious communities whose histories predate the modern state by thousands of years. The entries below sketch the principal communities and their relationship to the patterns of repression and resistance that define their experience under the Islamic Republic. Iran publishes no official ethnic census data; population figures are estimates drawn from academic and demographic sources.

Persians

Also known as Iranians (colloquially) · Farsis

LanguageIndo-European · Western Iranian (Farsi)

Population35 to 40 million in Iran

RegionsTehran, Isfahan, Fars, Khorasan, Kerman

ReligionShia Islam (majority) · Zoroastrianism · Secular

The dominant ethnic group, roughly 50 to 60% of the population, providing the cultural, linguistic, and political framework of the state; Farsi is the sole official language of education, law, and media, and Persian literary culture from Ferdowsi to Hafez remains a source of pride across ethnic lines. Persian secular, feminist, and dissident communities have led every democratic movement from the Constitutional Revolution to Woman Life Freedom, and the regime targets any challenge to clerical authority regardless of ethnicity.

Azerbaijanis

Also known as Iranian Azeris · Turks of Iran

LanguageTurkic · South Oghuz

Population15 to 20 million in Iran

RegionsEast & West Azerbaijan, Ardabil, Zanjan, Tehran

ReligionShia Islam (majority)

The largest ethnic minority and second-largest group overall, an estimated 20 to 25% of the population. Predominantly Shia, Azerbaijanis have seen greater integration at the elite level, and Supreme Leader Khamenei is himself of Azerbaijani origin. Cultural rights are nonetheless systematically denied: the Azerbaijani language is not taught in schools, publication is restricted, and activists advocating mother-tongue education have been arrested under laws criminalizing supposed separatism.

Kurds

Also known as Iranian Kurds

LanguageIndo-European · Northwestern Iranian

Population8 to 12 million in Iran

RegionsKurdistan, Kermanshah, Ilam, West Azerbaijan

ReligionSunni Islam · Yarsanism · Shia (minority)

Part of the world's largest stateless people, Iranian Kurds are mostly Sunni, a double minority in the Islamic Republic's framework, and the short-lived 1946 Republic of Mahabad remains a foundational symbol of Kurdish national consciousness. Kurdistan has seen near-continuous armed conflict since 1979, Kurdish-language education is entirely prohibited, and kolbars carrying goods across mountain passes are shot by border guards. Mahsa Amini, whose killing ignited the 2022 uprising and its Kurdish slogan Jin, Jiyan, Azadi, was Kurdish.

Arabs

Also known as Khuzestani Arabs · Ahvazi Arabs

LanguageAfro-Asiatic · Semitic · Arabic

Population4 to 6 million in Iran

RegionsKhuzestan (Ahvaz), Hormozgan, Bushehr

ReligionShia Islam (majority) · Sunni (minority)

Concentrated in Khuzestan, which sits atop the majority of Iran's oil and gas reserves, Ahvazi Arabs live with some of the starkest structural discrimination in the country: extraordinary resource wealth beside deep poverty, intense surveillance, and economic marginalization. Political, cultural, and environmental activists have faced systematic arrest, torture, and execution, and the 2021 protests over water scarcity were met with lethal force.

Baloch

Also known as Baluchi

LanguageIndo-European · Northwestern Iranian

Population2 to 3 million in Iran

RegionsSistan-Baluchestan Province

ReligionSunni Islam (Hanafi)

Inhabiting Iran's largest province and its poorest by almost every measure, the Baloch are Sunni, non-Persian, geographically peripheral, and economically marginalized at once, with some of the country's highest rates of poverty, malnutrition, and child mortality. Amnesty International and Iran Human Rights document that Baloch prisoners constitute a majority of drug-related executions despite the community representing under 3% of the population, and collective punishment following armed attacks is extensively recorded.

Turkmen

Also known as Iranian Turkmen · Yomut · Teke

LanguageTurkic · Northern Oghuz

Population1.5 to 2 million in Iran

RegionsGolestan, North Khorasan (Turkmen Sahra)

ReligionSunni Islam (Hanafi)

Tribal confederations of the steppe along the Caspian's southeastern shore, renowned for a carpet-weaving tradition of bold geometry in deep reds that is among the most recognized art forms of the Turkic world. The Turkmen Sahra mounted armed resistance immediately after 1979 before suppression by Revolutionary Guard operations. Naqshbandi Sufi sheikhs face periodic waves of arrest, the language is excluded from education, and ties to Turkmenistan are treated with suspicion by intelligence services.

Lurs

Also known as Lor · Luri people

LanguageIndo-European · Southwestern Iranian

Population4 to 6 million in Iran

RegionsLorestan, Kohgiluyeh, Boyer-Ahmad, Chaharmahal

ReligionShia Islam

A western Iranian people of the Zagros whose pastoral, transhumant herding traditions the Pahlavi state sought to eradicate through forced settlement. As Shia Muslims speaking a language close to Persian, Lurs occupy a more integrated position than Sunni or Turkic minorities, yet Luri regions remain among the most underdeveloped in Iran, and security responses to protests in Lorestan in 2019 and 2022 were documented as particularly violent, with multiple killings.

Armenians

Also known as Iranian Armenians · Hay

LanguageIndo-European · Armenian (independent branch)

Population100,000 to 150,000 in Iran

RegionsTehran, Isfahan (Jolfa), Urmia area

ReligionArmenian Apostolic Christianity

Present in Iran for over two thousand years, with the Jolfa quarter of Isfahan established under Shah Abbas I in the early seventeenth century. Recognized under Article 13 with two reserved Majles seats and their own schools and churches, the community has nonetheless declined from roughly 250,000 at the Revolution to under 150,000 through emigration. The proselytization ban confines the faith, conversion from Islam is punishable by death, and institutions operate under close surveillance.

Assyrians

Also known as Syriac Christians · Chaldeans

LanguageSemitic · Northeastern Neo-Aramaic

Population15,000 to 30,000 in Iran

RegionsTehran, Urmia (West Azerbaijan)

ReligionAssyrian Church of the East · Chaldean Catholic · Syriac Orthodox

Among the region's oldest continuous inhabitants, descendants of ancient Mesopotamia still speaking Neo-Aramaic dialects directly descended from the language of the Assyrian Empire. Devastated by the Seyfo, the Assyrian genocide of 1914 to 1918, and diminished by a century of displacement, the community has fallen from an estimated 100,000 in 1979 to a fraction of that today, making demographic attrition an existential concern under the same anti-proselytization laws and surveillance that constrain all Iranian Christians.

Jews

Also known as Persian Jews · Yahudi

LanguagePersian and Judeo-Persian · Hebrew (liturgy)

Population8,000 to 15,000 in Iran

RegionsTehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, Yazd, Kerman

ReligionJudaism (various traditions)

One of the world's oldest continuous Jewish communities, present for over 2,700 years and predating the destruction of the First Temple; it was Cyrus the Great whose decree permitting return to Judea is recorded in the Hebrew Bible. From roughly 80,000 to 100,000 at the 1979 Revolution, the community has declined catastrophically to a small remnant. Constitutionally protected yet ideologically suspect under the state's conflation of Judaism with Zionism, several Iranian Jews have been executed on espionage charges widely regarded as politically motivated.

Bahais

Also known as the Bahá'í community of Iran

LanguagePersian (primary)

Population300,000 to 350,000 in Iran

RegionsNationwide: Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, Yazd

ReligionBahá'í Faith (not recognized by the state)

Iran's largest non-Muslim religious minority and its most severely persecuted. Because the faith originated in Iran in the nineteenth century and claims a prophetic revelation after Muhammad, the state treats it as apostasy, and Bahais have no constitutional recognition or legal standing. Over 200 were executed in the Republic's first decade, including two successive National Spiritual Assemblies, students are banned from universities, and the community's informal university, the BIHE, is repeatedly raided and its teachers imprisoned.

Yarsanis

Also known as Ahl-e Haqq · Kaka'i · People of Truth

LanguageGorani dialect · Kurmanji · Persian

Population500,000 to 2 million (estimates vary widely)

RegionsKermanshah, Kurdistan, Ilam, Lorestan

ReligionYarsan (syncretic indigenous religion)

Followers of one of Iran's most distinctive indigenous traditions, rooted in Kurdistani spiritual culture and centered on divine manifestation across successive human forms and on the sacred tanbur lute as a vehicle of spiritual experience. The state does not recognize Yarsan: followers are classified as Muslims regardless of their own self-identification, exposing them to apostasy penalties if they identify publicly, and the destruction and desecration of Yarsan sacred sites is documented by Kurdish human rights organizations.

Crimes Against the Iranian People

This section documents categories of crimes and systematic human rights violations committed by the Islamic Republic of Iran against its own population, with particular focus on ethnic and religious minorities whose experience of state violence is compounded by structural discrimination. Entries draw on findings by the United Nations Human Rights Council, the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, and survivor testimony gathered by diaspora advocacy organizations.

Extrajudicial & Judicial Killing

Mass Executions and Political Death Sentences

Iran consistently ranks among the world's top executioners, with Kurds, Baloch, Arabs, and Bahais executed at rates far beyond their share of the population, on charges ranging from drug offenses to moharebeh, enmity against God. The 1988 prison massacres, in which an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 political prisoners were executed after death-committee hearings lasting minutes, have never faced domestic investigation; Ebrahim Raisi, who served on the Tehran death commission, later became President. In January 2023, protesters Mohammad Mehdi Karami and Seyed Mohammad Hosseini were executed after trials of under ten minutes, based on confessions their families said were extracted under torture.

Torture & Cruel Treatment

Systematic Torture in Detention

Decades of documentation from Evin Prison and provincial intelligence detention centers record prolonged solitary confinement, flogging, suspension by the limbs, mock execution, sexual violence including rape, and threats against family members, with coerced confessions routinely used as trial evidence and broadcast on state television. After the November 2019 protests, Amnesty International documented systematic torture of detainees including electric shock and forced stress positions; during the 2022 to 2023 uprising, UN investigators recorded at least eight deaths in custody with evidence of torture.

Unlawful Killing

Lethal Force Against Protesters and Civilians

From the 2009 Green Movement through Bloody November 2019, when security forces killed an estimated 1,500 people in days and dozens were reportedly surrounded in a Mahshahr marsh and shot, to the Woman Life Freedom uprising, the Republic has fired live ammunition into crowds, at medics, and at the fleeing and wounded, with killing consistently most severe in Kurdish, Baloch, and Arab regions. During the uprising of early 2026, conducted under a national internet blackout, regime forces killed an estimated 16,500 to 90,000 unarmed protesters according to varying reports, in what Iran International described as the deadliest episode of state repression in Iran's modern history.

Religious Persecution

Systematic Persecution of the Bahá'í Community

Persecution of Bahais is institutionalized in law, policy, and religious authority, reaching every aspect of life from birth registration and marriage to burial, education, and employment. Over 200 Bahais were executed in the Republic's first decade, including the entire nine-member National Spiritual Assembly of Iran in 1980 and its replacement body in 1981, targeted specifically for religious leadership and belief. The Bahá'í Institute for Higher Education, created because Bahai students are banned from Iranian universities, has been repeatedly raided and dozens of its faculty imprisoned for teaching.

Ethnic & Political Persecution

Repression of Kurdish Political, Cultural and Civil Life

Within months of the Revolution, Khomeini declared jihad against Kurdish movements seeking autonomy and sent helicopter gunships, artillery, and ground forces against Kurdish towns, with summary executions of captured combatants and suspected sympathizers documented by international journalists; the template has held ever since. Kolbars, cross-border porters with no legal economic alternative in chronically underdeveloped Kurdish provinces, are shot by border guards with complete impunity, and in January 2024 IRGC ballistic missiles struck the exiled KDPI headquarters in Erbil, killing senior party members and civilians including children.

~700

Kolbars killed by security forces since 2010

~16%

Of executions are Kurdish, against roughly 10% of the population

Kurdish-language schools permitted in Iran

45+

Years of continuous armed conflict in Kurdish regions

Gender-Based Persecution

Gender Apartheid and the Violation of Women's Rights

UN experts characterize the Republic's legal and social system as gender apartheid: mandatory hijab enforced by the morality police and new surveillance mechanisms, discrimination in divorce, inheritance, custody, and testimony, blood money valuing a woman's life at half a man's, criminal responsibility for girls at nine lunar years, and marriage at thirteen. The September 2022 killing of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini in morality police custody, with medical evidence indicating a blow to the head, ignited the Woman Life Freedom uprising, which was met with live ammunition, mass arrest, torture, and execution; in 2023 and 2024, more than 1,000 suspected chemical attacks on girls' schools were reported across multiple provinces.

Repression of Civil Society

Suppression of Press, Expression and Digital Rights

Iran blocks Instagram, WhatsApp, X, YouTube, and virtually all Western news media while building out the National Information Network, an intranet designed to function if the country is disconnected from the global internet. The 96-hour total shutdown of November 2019, among the most complete blackouts in any country's history, is believed by investigators to have been timed to enable mass killing with minimal documentation. The Committee to Protect Journalists ranked Iran the world's leading jailer of journalists during the uprising; Niloofar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi, who reported Mahsa Amini's death, faced capital charges before their eventual release.

Top 5

Most censored internet globally (Freedom House 2023)

30+

Journalists imprisoned during the 2022 to 2023 uprising

~180M

Estimated VPN users, roughly all adult internet users

Ethnic & Religious Persecution

Systematic Persecution of the Baloch Community

The Baloch face a convergence of extreme economic marginalization, disproportionate execution rates, collective punishment, and near-total exclusion of their language and Sunni institutions from public life. On September 30, 2022, IRGC and security forces opened fire on worshippers leaving Friday prayers at Zahedan's Makki Mosque, the largest Sunni mosque in Iran, killing at least 90 people after a protest against the alleged rape of a 15-year-old Baloch girl by a police commander; UN investigators characterized the killings as a possible crime against humanity, and no prosecutions followed. In 2023, dozens of Baloch were executed on drug charges after trials lasting minutes, conducted in Persian rather than Balochi.

~20%

Of all Iranian executions are Baloch, from 2 to 3% of the population

90+

Killed on Zahedan's Bloody Friday, September 30, 2022

No. 1

Poorest province in Iran: Sistan-Baluchestan (World Bank estimates)

Iranian Peoples