page_title: Casualties of the Iranian Revolution
section_title: Casualties of the revolutionaries
hierarchical_section_title: Casualties of the Iranian Revolution / Casualties of the revolutionaries
caption_attribution_description: English: former Prime Minister Amir Abbas Hoveyda, executed 7. April 1979; published in Keyhan and Etelaat.
context_page_description: Observers differ on how many people died during the Iranian Revolution. The number of casualties during the revolution is either close to 60,000, or around 2,000, depending on whether the estimates used are those of Islamic government or from historians in Western countries. The number of protesters and political prisoners killed by the new theocratic republic after the fall of the Shah is estimated by human rights groups to be several thousand.
context_section_description: Following the overthrow of the Shah's government on 11 February 1979 (22 Bahman 1357), members of the old regime, including senior generals, were executed by revolutionary leadership. For this aim, the Islamic regime formed komitehs (committees) in all provinces. Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani was the chief of the Central Provisional Komiteh for the Islamic Revolution. The komitehs were hampered by lack of necessary mechanism and legal procedure, leading to restructuring on 8 March 1979.
  In the first couple of months, over 200 of the Shah's senior civilian officials were killed as punishment and to eliminate the danger of coup d'état. The first death sentences were approved by the Tehran court on four of the shah's generals in February 1979. They were Mehdi Rahimi, the military commander of Tehran, Reza Naji, the military governor of Isfahan, Nematollah Nassiri, the head of SAVAK, and Manuchehr Khosrodad, an air force general. All four generals were executed by firing squad on the roof of the then Ayatollah Khomeini's headquarters on 15 February.
  On 7 April 1979, Amir-Abbas Hoveyda, former prime minister of Iran, was executed. Two days later on 9 April ten senior officials of the Shah, including two generals and a cabinet member, were executed in Tehran. Those killed included commander-in-chief of the air force, Amir Hossein Rabi'i. On 11 April, former foreign minister, Abbas Ali Khalatbari, and 10 more officials were executed in Tehran. On 8 May, a total of 21 former Iranian officials, including three former high-level politicians, were executed. They were Javad Saeed, former Majlis speaker, Gholam Reza Kianpor, former information minister, and Mohammad Reza Ameli Tehrani, former education minister. On 9 May, eight men, including the prominent Jewish executive Habib Elghanian, and former information minister, Abdul Hassan Saadatmand, were executed, raising the number of the executed people 119 since February 1979.
  On 23 July 1979, five more men were executed in the Khuzestan province. The death toll became 363 with these executions since February 1979. In August 1979, the courts began to try the members of the ethnic minorities in the country who participated in anti-government demonstrations, and the trials resulted in massive death sentences. By November 1979, the death toll was 550 and by January 1980, the number had reached at least 582.
  Critics complained that the brief trials lacked defense attorneys, juries, transparency or opportunity for the accused to defend themselves, were held by revolutionary judges such as Sadegh Khalkhali, the Sharia judge. Those who escaped Iran were not immune. A decade later, another former Prime Minister, Shapour Bakhtiar, was assassinated in Paris, one of at least 63 Iranians abroad killed or wounded since the Shah was overthrown, although these attacks are thought to have stopped after the early 1990s.
  The pace of executions then accelerated, leading to at least 906 executions between January 1980 and June 1981. After president Abulhassan Banisadr was impeached on 20 June 1981 (30 Khordad 1360), a concerted effort was made to find and prosecute the erstwhile supporters turned opposition, primarily leftists. Bloodletting became much worse.  According to Shaul Bakhash,
  The number who lost their lives will probably never be known with certainty. Amnesty International documented 2,946 executions in the 12 months following Bani-Sadr's impeachment. A list compiled the following year by the Mojahedin-e Khalq cited 7,746 persons who had lost their lives through executions, in street battles, or under torture in the short period from June 1981 to September 1983.
  According to historian Ervand Abrahamian, revolutionary courts executed more than 8000 opponents between June 1981 and June 1985. These were mainly members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq, but also included 
  Fedayins and Kurds as well as Tudeh, National Front, and Shariatmadari supporters. ... Thus the toll taken among those who had participated in the revolution was far greater than that of royalists. This revolution – like others –
caption: Amir-Abbas Hoveyda
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