On March 24, 2026 — the eve of Nowruz, the Iranian New Year — human rights organizations documented a new phase in Iran’s systematic use of judicial institutions to suppress political dissent, describing the Islamic Republic’s strategy as “Official State Terrorism and Arbitrary Deprivation of Life.” Iranian courts have processed over 10,000 cases arising from protest-related arrests, with the judiciary reportedly conducting more than 1,400 online court sessions in a single day to accelerate mass sentencing. The regime has drastically restricted access to independent defense counsel: fewer than a dozen independent lawyers remain available to represent the tens of thousands of political defendants churned through the system. Trials have been conducted with compressed timelines, without meaningful examination of evidence, in violation of both Iranian procedural law and international human rights standards. Far from operating as an independent check on executive power, Iran’s courts are functioning as an institutional accelerant of authoritarian consolidation — with senior judicial officials publicly coordinating with security forces in an explicit strategy of political elimination.

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