Iran’s Arrest of Teenage Twins Exposes Tehran’s Expanding Death Campaign

Taraneh and Romina Rahimi were 19-year-old high school students living with their mother when masked men arrived at their home in the middle of the night.

Their U.S.-based cousin said the twin sisters were pulled from their beds and had bags placed over their heads roughly a month after they joined anti-regime protests in Isfahan. Authorities gave the family no explanation, leaving relatives to spend months searching courts, hospitals and government offices for answers about their whereabouts.

Four months after their arrest, their mother, Marzieh Nourmohammadi, was finally permitted to visit them at Dowlatabad Prison. She said she could barely recognize her daughters.

Masoud Nourmohammadi, the sisters’ cousin, told The Guardian that the twins’ faces were severely swollen and bruised. He said they had injuries to their elbows, hands and feet, as well as significant hair loss, which he attributed to guards pulling them by their hair while transferring them between cells. Their mother also learned that both sisters had spent time in solitary confinement.

Now 20, Taraneh Rahimi faces execution over her alleged involvement in the January protests. Her twin sister, Romina, could spend decades behind bars as the case unfolds amid a significant increase in Iran’s use of the death penalty.

The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported that Taraneh received a death sentence along with an additional 11 years in prison, while Romina was sentenced to 36 years. Branch 1 of the Isfahan Revolutionary Court issued the rulings, which remain initial-stage verdicts.

The twins are among 16 defendants prosecuted in the case widely known as the “Isfahan Shohada Square” case. HRANA said 10 of those defendants were sentenced to death, while the group collectively received 256 years in prison.

The sisters’ family alleges that authorities abused them in an effort to extract confessions.

Nourmohammadi told The Guardian that Taraneh was warned prison guards would rape Romina in front of her unless she signed a confession. According to the outlet, Taraneh later told the court that statements attributed to her had been secured through torture. Her mother was barred from attending the trial, the family said.

Radio Farda separately reported, citing Nourmohammadi, that the sisters endured physical and psychological abuse and were forced to confess to accusations they reject. The Hana Human Rights Organization told News Outlet that it had verified the torture allegations.

The torture allegations are not limited to the Rahimi sisters. HRANA reported that another defendant in the case, Ahmadreza Saeidi, told judges during a hearing that the investigating judge personally used an electric stun gun on his neck and genitals. Defense attorneys also reportedly said they were denied access to significant portions of the case file and were not given enough time to review the evidence before trial.

The sentences were handed down as human rights organizations documented a sharp rise in executions across Iran.

The Washington-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran documented 901 executions during the first seven months of 2026, including 56 people executed on political or national-security charges.

Behnam Ben Taleblu, Iran program senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told News Outlet that the executions should be viewed as part of a broader campaign by Tehran to suppress dissent at home.

“Despite the war in the region, despite the drone war, the missile war, the war over the Strait of Hormuz, the real war is the one that’s happening on a day-to-day basis inside the Islamic Republic,” Ben Taleblu said. “The Islamic Republic is quite literally cracking skulls, cracking down on civil society, on dissidents, on protesters.”

Among those imprisoned in Iran’s broader crackdown is Seyed Ahmad Seyedabdollahi, a 32-year-old psychologist whose case News Outlet reported in August.

Seyedabdollahi posted an English-language video on Jan. 4 appealing directly to President Donald Trump to support Iranian protesters, according to his relatives and News Outlet’s previous reporting. He was arrested 10 days later and ultimately sentenced to seven months in prison and barred from government and public services for five years.

His relatives told News Outlet that Iranian authorities later pressured him to record another video insulting Trump and Americans and alleged that he was subjected to solitary confinement and torture.

The Hana Human Rights Organization reported Aug. 9 that Seyedabdollahi had been held in Borujen Prison since July 7 and that authorities opened a second case against him on a charge of “propaganda against the system of the Islamic Republic.” Hana also confirmed that he was serving a seven-month sentence and had received a five-year disqualification from public and governmental services.

His relatives confirmed to News Outlet that authorities have continued pressuring him to say he was a “foreign agent” paid by the U.S. government. They also said authorities revoked his professional license, adding financial pressure on his family.

Ben Taleblu said Tehran has followed a similar pattern after previous periods of external conflict, turning its attention inward against perceived opponents.

“We saw this trend in the aftermath of the 12-day war as well,” Ben Taleblu said. “Lose a war abroad, come home and pretend like you’re the victor.”

“Simply here, the Islamic Republic is continuing the longest war it’s ever fought, which is the 47-year war against the Iranian people,” he added.

Wednesday marks four years since the Sept. 16, 2022, death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman who was detained three days earlier by Iran’s morality police over what authorities described as “improper hijab.” Her death sparked nationwide protests that became known internationally as the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement. The U.N. said reports that Amini had been beaten in custody warranted an independent investigation, while Iranian authorities maintained that she died of “natural causes.”

The 2022 uprising was itself part of a longer cycle of unrest. Nationwide demonstrations beginning in December 2017 rapidly spread across Iran and represented the largest challenge to the government since the 2009 Green Movement. The 2017-18 protests were followed by another major nationwide wave in 2019 and then the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising.

Ben Taleblu argued that whenever another major protest movement emerges, Western governments should be prepared to help Iranians communicate with one another and the outside world, particularly when authorities shut down internet access.

“We know every single time another major protest is happening, the way the regime cracks down is to first turn off the internet,” he said. “That means the regime fears what comes of coordination between Iranians and fears what comes of when the Iranians are able to send their message outside to the international community.”

“The partners of the Iranian people, America, Israel, the West, these are largely all cyber superpowers,” Ben Taleblu said. “We should not let the Iranian people continue to die in the darkness.”