Despite clear evidence of self-defense, Iranian authorities convicted Arvin Nathaniel Ghahremani of murder and sentenced him to death.
Iran’s execution of a Jewish man this week has capped the regime’s bloodiest month in two decades.
Twenty-year-old Arvin Nathaniel Ghahremani was executed on Monday at Kermanshah Central Prison. In 2022, Ghahremani was ambushed at a gym by seven Muslim men, including Amir Shokri, who allegedly owed him money. Shokri initiated the attack by stabbing Ghahremani, who then fatally wounded his attacker after wresting the knife away in the ensuing struggle.
Despite clear evidence of self-defense, Iranian authorities convicted Ghahremani of murder and sentenced him to death. Under Sharia law, his life could have been spared if his family secured forgiveness from Shokri’s relatives. A May execution date was postponed as Ghahremani’s family attempted to negotiate blood money with the Shokri family, but they refused all offers.
Final appeals for a retrial were rejected, sealing the young man’s fate.
The case has drawn attention to Iran’s accelerating use of capital punishment, with a staggering 166 people executed in October alone. Data compiled by Iran Human Rights Organization shows that the regime has carried out more than 350 executions during Masoud Pezeshkian’s first three months as president.
Among those executed besides Ghahremani were Afghan, Baluch, and Kurdish citizens, along with at least six women. Their charges spanned from intentional murder and drug offenses to the ambiguous crimes of “enmity against God” and “corruption on earth,” with two executions performed publicly.
“While the world’s attention is focused on the tensions between Iran and Israel, the Islamic Republic is using this opportunity to conduct the largest wave of executions in Iran’s prisons in two decades,” said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the Norway-based organization.
Following the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising after the death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody in 2022, Iran’s leadership has increasingly wielded the death penalty as a means of suppressing dissent. Recent UN assessments challenge Iran’s broad application of capital punishment, which has accounted for approximately 75% of all documented executions worldwide in 2023.