Iran doubled executions in 2025 as global death penalty use hit 44-year high
In 2025, Iran significantly increased its use of the death penalty, contributing to a global rise in executions to the highest level since 1981. Amnesty International reported that at least 2,707 executions occurred worldwide, with Iran accounting for over 2,159 of these. The report highlights a concerning trend, as several countries, including Saudi Arabia and the U.S., also saw increases in their execution rates.
- ▪The global use of the death penalty reached a 44-year high in 2025.
- ▪Iran's annual execution rate more than doubled, with at least 2,159 executions reported.
- ▪Excluding China, documented executions increased by 78% from the previous year.
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Story provenance
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Record
| Original publisher | CBS News — Top |
| Canonical URL | https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-doubled-executions-2025-global-use-death-penalty-hit-44-year-high/ |
| Publication time | Mon, 18 May 2026 19:14:28 -0400 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-18T23:19:56.957Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-18T23:19:56.957Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | UISvdzLo998f · 2 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
World Iran more than doubled executions in 2025 as global use of the death penalty hit 44-year high, report says By Emily Mae Czachor Emily Mae Czachor News Editor Emily Mae Czachor is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. She typically covers breaking news, extreme weather and issues involving social justice. Emily Mae previously wrote for outlets like the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek. Read Full Bio Emily Mae Czachor Updated on: May 18, 2026 / 7:18 PM EDT / CBS News Add CBS News on Google The use of the death penalty skyrocketed last year, with documented executions reaching a worldwide high not seen since 1981, a new report found.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at CBS News — Top.
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