A group of 75 French lawmakers have taken the unusual step of formally sponsoring individual death-row political prisoners in Iran as the country's authorities continue to ramp up executions.
The move, taken on June 29 as part of a new National Assembly campaign organized by the Iran Freedom Congress (IFC), marked the IFC's first international human rights campaign since the group's founding earlier this year.
Under the sponsorship mechanism, each participating MP publicly attaches their name to an individual prisoner sentenced to death or facing imminent execution to give each case a parliamentary backer and a diplomatic pressure point.
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'Forced Confessions': Iranian Prisoners Speak Amid Wave Of Executions
Negin Shiraghaei, a member of the IFC’s Central Council, said the campaign took shape almost immediately after the congress's founding, calling the rise in executions an urgent priority "from literally the first day," despite the body being less than two months old.
Speaking to RFE/RL’s Radio Farda, she said that the choice of France was deliberate, citing the country's abolition of capital punishment 45 years ago as added leverage.
Shiraghaei described the sponsorship campaign as working on multiple levels.
Public pressure from foreign parliamentarians is felt both by Tehran and by their own governments, she said, while stressing that symbolic measures alone are "not enough by themselves" and need to be paired with concrete follow-through.
Among the IFC's specific requests, she said, is that foreign embassies request daily physical observers at the trials of those facing execution -- a demand Tehran "may not even agree" to, but one meant to signal that defendants have international backing.
Shiraghaei also argued that human rights should be made a nonnegotiable item in any future talks between Western governments and Tehran, criticizing what she called a pattern of human rights being set aside once economic or political interests are at stake in negotiations.
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Iran Has Carried Out Nearly 30 Political Executions Since Start Of US-Israel WarSince the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran on February 28, the Islamic republic has arrested hundreds of people on charges of collaborating with the US and Israel, and in some cases executed them on charges of "espionage" and "acting against national security."
Iran Human Rights Monitor, a foreign-based group that documents rights abuses, characterized the pace of executions as "a political purge" exploiting wartime conditions.
"The regime's priority is not external war, but internal suppression," it said in an April statement, noting the number of political executions in the first six weeks of the war already exceeded the total for all of 2025.
Iran is one of the world's biggest executioners, hanging hundreds of people per year, many for drug-related offenses and homicide.