Iranian state media has aired at least 97 televised confession videos involving protesters since demonstrations began on Dec. 28, according to a U.S.-based human rights group that tracks the broadcasts.
The videos, shown on Iranian state channels, depict detainees handcuffed with faces blurred. Activists and the Associated Press description say the programming includes dramatic background music and inserts clips that appear to show protesters attacking security forces, along with segments that authorities characterize as evidence such as homemade weapons and footage that appears to show suspects setting fires or destroying property.
The Iranian government alleges that the confessions demonstrate foreign plots behind the unrest and the Associated Press story says activists regard the broadcasts as coerced confessions. The report says the confessions are long a staple of Iran’s hard-line state television, which the story describes as the only broadcaster in the country, and that the number of confessions aired over a short period is unusual.
Skylar Thompson, deputy director of the Human Rights Activists News Agency, said: “These rights violations compound on top of each other and lead to horrible outcomes. This is a pattern that’s been implemented by the regime time and time again,” according to the Associated Press report.
Thompson and the group said the nearly 100 confessions broadcast over just two weeks is unprecedented, pointing to a history of fewer forced-confession broadcasts in earlier periods and fewer aired in 2025. The Associated Press story cited activists’ estimates that from 2010 to 2020 there were around 350 forced confessions aired on state media, while it said other estimates attributed 40 to 60 confessions aired in 2025. It also cited reports that at least 37 televised confessions of people facing the death penalty were shown in the weeks after the 2022 protests following Mahsa Amini’s death, when she died after her arrest by Iran’s morality police for allegedly not wearing her hijab as authorities wanted.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment from the Associated Press, the report said. It said Iranian officials have described the protests as “riots” orchestrated by the United States and Israel, and it reported that Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the violence must be foreign-influenced because Iranians would never set mosques on fire.
The Associated Press story linked the confession broadcasts to international concerns about the use of coerced evidence and capital punishment. It said a 2014 U.N. Special Rapporteur report found that, among interviews with previously detained individuals, 70% said coerced information or confessions were used in their hearings, and that in nearly half the cases, the trial lasted just a few minutes. The report also said that in January 2023, the European Parliament adopted a resolution strongly condemning “the Islamic Republic’s policy of forcing confessions using torture, intimidation, threats against family members or other forms of duress, and the use of these forced confessions to convict and sentence protesters.”
The Associated Press story also cited a U.N. report on executions, saying Iran executed 975 people in 2024, the highest number since 2015. It said the report described four executions carried out publicly and that executions are carried out by hanging, with most executions tied to drug-related offenses or murder, while security-related offenses accounted for 3% of executions. Thompson said she was “gravely concerned” about what she described as a surge in executions connected to the latest protests, and the Associated Press report said the confessions involved serious security-related offenses that can carry the death penalty.
The Associated Press report said it could not independently verify overall protest casualties because the Iranian government has not released total figures. It said the Human Rights Activists News Agency reported that since the protests began on Dec. 28, 18,100 people have been arrested and more than 2,500 have been killed, with the vast majority described by the group as protesters.