Male Same-Sex Intercourse in Iran After the Islamic Revolution: Criminal Law and Prosecution Statistics

Before 1979, Iran’s criminal justice system was predominantly secular. Its backbone was a general penal code from the 1920s, drafted with the French legal model in mind.

At the same time, certain elements of a sharia-based penal approach remained. Sharia courts continued to exist, and Islamic criminal norms were applied in specific cases. Their role, however, gradually diminished. By 1973, sharia courts had been formally removed from the judiciary, and the institutional application of Islamic criminal law ceased.

In 1979, the Islamic Revolution overthrew the Shah’s monarchy and established a new political order grounded in the principles of Islamic governance. Iran was proclaimed an Islamic Republic; secular state institutions were restructured, and the state system and legislation—including criminal law—began to be shaped on the basis of sharia norms.

1979 and After: Sharia as the Foundation of the State and Legislation

After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran aligned its legislation with Islamic law: the Constitution declares sharia to be the foundation of the country’s laws. In practice, this means that many legal rules, including criminal provisions, are tied to religious conceptions of permitted and forbidden conduct.

The 2013 version of Iran’s Islamic Penal Code sets out separate and relatively detailed punishments for same-sex sexual relations.

Article 233 defines the term liwāt, used for sexual intercourse between men. Article 234 provides for the death penalty for liwāt.

The notes to these provisions clarify how liability is allocated. The “active” participant is subject to execution only in certain situations—for example, if he is married or if the case is classified as rape—whereas the “passive” participant, as worded, is punishable by death in all cases. The notes further state that if the “active” participant is a non-Muslim and the “passive” participant is a Muslim, the “active” participant is likewise subject to execution.

Alongside this, the Code prescribes corporal punishment for less “serious” sexual acts between men: Article 237 assigns 31–74 lashes for such conduct.

Sexual acts between women are addressed under a separate term, mosāheqeh; Article 239 provides 100 lashes for it.

Taken together, the 2013 provisions codify a harsh sanctioning regime: sexual relations between men are punishable either by death or by corporal punishment, depending on the legal classification of the act and the circumstances specified by statute.

These penalties fall under the sharia category of ḥudūd. Ḥudūd are fixed punishments for specific offenses which, in the religious legal tradition, are considered to be established by sacred texts and therefore not subject to judicial discretion. In classical doctrine, such punishments are to be imposed only on the basis of very strict proof—for instance, testimony from four witnesses. In practice, however, verdicts are often delivered on broader and more ambiguous grounds framed as “offenses against public morality.”

Separately, the Penal Code (Article 302) introduces the concept of mahdur al-dam—literally, “one whose blood is not protected.” In legal terms, this refers to a person whose killing, under certain conditions, does not trigger an obligation to pay diya (“blood money,” financial compensation for homicide) and does not require kaffāra (a form of religious expiation). The provision states that if the deceased committed a ḥudūd offense—among them liwāt—then killing that person does not entail diya or kaffāra. Formally, this can create a situation in which perpetrators of “morality” killings may be shielded from part of the legal consequences, because the law ties mahdur al-dam status to the absence of certain post-homicide obligations.

How Cases Are Brought: Confessions and Torture

In practice, criminal cases involving same-sex sexual contact in Iran are often recorded and described in court through broader terms that are more familiar to the authorities—such as “sodomy” or “debauchery.” In such proceedings, confessions frequently become the central evidence, and defendants often report that these confessions were obtained under pressure, including torture, and without access to legal counsel.

Publicly available and systematic court practice is difficult to assess: much of what is known about how these cases unfold comes not from official judicial publications, but from media investigations and human-rights documentation. Defendants accused of “sodomy” are often tried under expedited procedures, and coerced confessions appear to be a recurring feature.

Despite limited data, individual executions have been reported at different times. For example, in March 2005, a Tehran court sentenced two men to death for homosexual contact that was reportedly recorded on video. In the summer of 2005, two teenagers were publicly hanged in Mashhad, widely reported as Mahmoud A. and Ayaz M. They were accused of raping a 13-year-old boy; officially the case was framed as liwāt be onf (“same-sex intercourse by force”), i.e., sexual violence against a minor. Human-rights advocates argued that the sentence may not have been driven solely by the allegation of violence but also by the alleged same-sex relationship between the youths. In November 2005, two men aged 24–25 were hanged in Gorgan (reported as Mokhtar N. and Ali A.) on charges of liwāt. It was also reported that in 2006, another man was publicly hanged in Kermanshah on a “sodomy” accusation.

A case is also known from 2022. On 30 January 2022, two men (Farid M. and Mehrdad K.) were hanged in Maragheh Prison (East Azerbaijan Province) after being convicted under a provision described as “sodomy by force.” The defendants stated that the sexual contact was consensual, but the court classified it as rape.

Iran’s so-called morality police monitor “suspicious” individuals and conduct raids—for example, on private parties or participants in online chat groups. Such operations were reported, for instance, in Shiraz in 2003–2004. Detainees are often pressured to confess by security forces, sometimes through torture. After arrest, defendants commonly remain detained until sentencing, effectively spending the entire proceedings in custody.

What We Can Count: Documented Cases and Estimated Figures

There is no official statistical reporting on the number of cases or executions for male same-sex intercourse. Analysts and human-rights organizations therefore rely on media reports and scattered NGO documentation, and estimates vary substantially across sources.

According to calculations by the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center (ABC) and Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO), at least 107 executions were recorded for 1979–1990 on charges linked to homosexuality. These are “documented” cases, i.e., the most conservative approach. A Monash report (February 2021) offers a higher figure: its researchers counted 241 executions for the same category of offenses for 1979–2020.

On the other hand, some activists, human-rights advocates, and opposition journalists claim that thousands of executions—roughly 4,000–6,000—have occurred since the revolution (1979–2020), but such figures are not publicly verifiable. A UK Home Office/CPIN report (2025) emphasizes the absence of official publications while also citing an estimate that “more than 4,000 people” may have been executed for homosexual acts since 1979. The same document states that at least six men were executed for homosexuality in 2015–2020 and mentions ten death sentences for homosexual acts in 2020.

Overall, the available evidence suggests that executions for male same-sex intercourse appear episodic in reported cases, but the forty-year cumulative total could plausibly range from the hundreds to the thousands. This wide span is primarily methodological: some counts include only documented cases, while others repeat broader “activist estimates.”

Trends over time and across regions are even harder to pin down. After 1979—particularly in 1988–1990—Iran experienced a surge in executions across multiple offense categories, including mass executions of political prisoners, making it difficult to isolate specifically “homosexuality-related” accusations. Based on scattered information, reports of executions for “male same-sex intercourse” have been rare in recent years (aside from the 2022 case). Regional breakdowns are also fragmentary: for example, in 2022 nearly one-third of all executions in the country reportedly occurred in Sistan and Baluchestan (an ethnic-minority region), but that figure concerns executions overall rather than cases specifically tied to homosexuality.

Table: Execution Estimates in Iran for “Sodomy” and Other Homosexual Acts

Source	Period	Estimated number of executions	Type of estimate
ABC + IHRNGO	1979–1990	at least 107	documented cases (conservative count)
Monash report (2021)	1979–2020	241	research estimate based on collected cases
Home Office / CPIN (2025)	since 1979	more than 4,000	cited estimate in the absence of official statistics
Individual activists, human-rights advocates, and opposition journalists	1979–2020	about 4,000–6,000	publicly unverified estimates
Home Office / CPIN (2025)	2015–2020	at least 6	separately reported executions in a later period

References and Sources

• Human Dignity Trust. Iran — Country Profile.
• UK Home Office. Country Policy and Information Note (CPIN): Iran — Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity or Expression.