Iran has carried out 1,051 state executions since President Masoud Pezeshkian took office on July 8, 2024 – a surge that security experts say the U.S. must weigh as it resumes nuclear negotiations with Tehran.

The figure, reported to Fox News Digital by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), represents a more than 20% increase from the number of Iranians killed in 2023, which saw 853 Iranians executed by the regime. 

In his race for the presidency, Pezeshkian aligned himself with moderates and reformists angry with the regime following the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini and the subsequent protests.

Iranians protest the death of Mahsa Amini’s death after she was detained by the morality police, in Tehran, Sept. 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Middle East Images, File)

“After suffering irreparable setbacks in the region and facing the growing threat of an uprising and overthrow, the regime has brutally accelerated executions and massacres,” she said in a statement to Fox News Digital. 

She has also called on the Iranian people, “especially the youth,” to protest the executions by joining the “No to Execution” movement.

However, students across Iran face a real threat in opposing the regime, as Pezeshkian and Iran’s minister of education, Alireza Kazemi, have reportedly dispatched State Security Forces to tamp down on what Khamenei has deemed “cultural infiltration, the enemy’s lifestyle, and hostile temptations” targeting Iran’s youth.