Twelve matters in the Coalition’s register concern Iranian nationals resisting removal. Iran is not a party to the Convention against Torture and never signed it, so nothing it does can be called a breach of that treaty and no complaint about it can be brought to the Committee against Torture. A United Nations fact-finding mission has nonetheless found that torture in Iran has been committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack on the civilian population, and amounts to a crime against humanity.
Why this page exists
Iran is not a state that removes people. It does not appear in the States Engaging in Refoulement project, and it has no published arrangement with the United States to receive people who are not its nationals. For its own nationals the position is different: the Associated Press reported on 20 August 2026 that Iranian officials “acknowledged in September 2025 that as many as 400 Iranians could be returned under an agreement with the Trump administration”. That record is set out below, under Removals of Iranians from the United States. It appears on this site because it is one of the countries people in the register are resisting being returned to, and because the record of what happens to people inside it is among the strongest the Coalition has assembled.
Iran is also listed in the Third-Country Removals project, on The Countries page, flagged as a destination country where torture is documented.
What Iran has accepted, and what it has not
Iran is not among the 176 parties to the Convention against Torture. It is not a late ratifier or a signatory that never completed the step. It never signed the Convention at all, and appears nowhere in the depositary’s participant table. The Coalition therefore does not say that Iran has violated the Convention against Torture, and no page on this site should.
What binds Iran instead is the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which it ratified on 24 June 1975 without a single reservation. Article 7 of that Covenant prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in terms as absolute as the Convention’s.
Iran acceded to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol on 28 July 1976. Its reservations treat articles 17, 23, 24 and 26 as recommendations only, and it entered a further reservation on most-favoured-nation treatment. Article 33, the prohibition on return, is not reserved, and could not have been. Article 42 of the Convention forbids any reservation to article 33. Non-refoulement was never available to Iran to reserve against.
No individual can complain about Iran to any international body. Iran is a party to the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Racial Discrimination Convention, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Disability Convention. It has joined the complaint protocol to none of them, and made no declaration under article 14 of the Racial Discrimination Convention. Every individual-complaint gateway in the United Nations system is optional, and Iran has taken none.
There is no regional human rights court or commission in Asia, so no regional body has jurisdiction either. That is why the record below is built from inquiries, special procedures and monitoring data rather than from judgments. It is not a weaker record. It is the only kind of record that can exist about Iran.
What United Nations bodies have found
Torture as a crime against humanity. The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran, established by the Human Rights Council in November 2022, reported on 2 February 2024. At paragraph 108 it found that many of the violations it documented “amount to crimes against humanity, specifically those of murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, persecution, enforced disappearance and other inhumane acts, that have been committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack directed against a civilian population”. It further found that the crime against humanity of persecution on the grounds of gender had been committed, and that this intersected with discrimination on grounds of ethnicity and religion.
The Mission is not a historical body. Its mandate was extended for a further two years on 23 January 2026, with an additional instruction to investigate the protests that began on 28 December 2025. It reported again on 10 March 2026 and was issuing public statements as recently as this month.
Torture in capital proceedings, 2026. On 28 May 2026 the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran and the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions jointly transmitted an urgent appeal concerning seven named people said to be at imminent risk of execution “following judicial proceedings that raise serious concerns regarding alleged torture, arbitrary detention, and violations of fair-trial guarantees”. Two of them had been sentenced to death in April 2026 after confessions broadcast on state television. The Government of Iran replied on 10 August 2026, and that reply is part of the record.
Refoulement toward Iran: a sworn account
An Iranian man holding withholding of removal to Iran, granted by a United States immigration judge on 24 April 2025, was flown by ICE to Nicaragua on 16 October 2025. In a sworn declaration filed in the federal court record he states that a Nicaraguan immigration officer told him “that the Nicaraguan government had already agreed with the U.S. government that I would be sent to Nicaragua so that Nicaragua could send me back to Iran,” that when he refused to sign a form accepting deportation officers kicked the chair out from under him and kicked him in the stomach, after which he signed, and that he was flown on to Caracas the same night. There, “The Venezuelan officers put me on a Turkish Airlines flight to Tehran, Iran, with transit in Istanbul, Turkey.” He escaped return by leaving the airport in Istanbul.
His ticket to Tehran had been issued on 15 October 2025, the day before ICE flew him out of the United States. The declaration was filed in D.V.D. v. Department of Homeland Security and cited by the class to the Supreme Court in September 2026; the government’s Supreme Court application and reply do not name it, and the reply’s answer to the passage of the class’s response that cites it (pages 37 to 40 of the response) includes this sentence: “respondents note instances of chain refoulement, but neither their merits claims nor the judgment below is based on that concern.” The full account is set out in The Record. Sources: Declaration, D.V.D. v. DHS, D. Mass., ECF 233-18, Coalition copy (PDF) · Class opposition to the stay application, Supreme Court No. 26A406, pages 12 and 39 to 40 · Supreme Court docket, No. 26A406 · Government reply, pages 17 to 18, Coalition copy (PDF)
Removals of Iranians from the United States, 2025 and 2026
Flights to Iran. The Associated Press reported on 20 August 2026 that emails obtained by the National Iranian American Council show how the U.S. and Iranian governments “worked together to arrange for more than 100 Iranians to be flown back to Iran on three separate immigration flights in September and December 2025 and January 2026,” that “Iranian officials had some influence over which Iranian immigrants in the U.S. were sent back to their home country,” and that “On several occasions, the emails show ICE officials arranging for Iranian officials to meet for unspecified reasons with people detained in the U.S.” It reported that the Department of Homeland Security said in July 2026: “These allegations that ICE shared asylum application records with the Iranian government are FALSE.” Source: Associated Press, 20 August 2026, as published by CP24
Human Rights First stated on 29 October 2026 that “Reports from attorneys also indicate that the administration may also soon send another deportation flight forcing Iranians back to Iran, the fourth since the start of the Trump administration, and the first since the beginning of the war in February,” and that “The individuals deported have included Christian converts, ethnic minorities, and political dissidents.” A plaintiff’s notice filed in federal court on 1 September 2026 states that Iranian nationals, among them asylum seekers, “were scheduled to be on a deportation flight to Iran at the end of July 2026” and that “That flight was cancelled only after hostilities resumed between the United States and Iran.” Sources: Human Rights First, 29 October 2026 · Iranian American Legal Defense Fund v. Rubio, ECF 36, 1 September 2026
What was shared with Iran. In Iranian American Legal Defense Fund v. Rubio (D.D.C. No. 1:26-cv-02375), the plaintiff seeks “vacatur of Defendants’ policy of providing the Iranian government information about Iranian asylum seekers that is protected by 8 C.F.R. §§ 208.6 and 236.1(e)” and states that the defendants “denied that the policy exists based solely on a single ICE official’s declaration that DHS does not have an agreement with the government of Iran to provide it with protected information.” On 20 October 2026 the court denied the plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction “For the reasons stated on the record at last week’s hearing.” The docket then records a sealed ex parte order signed on 27 October, a briefing schedule filed on 2 November and a sealed document filed on 3 November 2026. Sources: Plaintiff’s pre-hearing submissions, ECF 40, 8 October 2026, pages 1 to 2 · Docket, Iranian American Legal Defense Fund v. Rubio
Iranians sent to a third country. Iranians holding United States protection have also been sent to the Central African Republic. Human Rights Watch reported that the first flight, on 12 June 2026, carried people from Iran and Egypt, “almost all of whom had US court-ordered protections against deportation to their countries of origin”. For the flight of late August 2026 the counts of Iranians differ: about 10 (Human Rights Watch), 6 (Third Country Deportation Watch) and eight (the Associated Press, citing Human Rights First). The plaintiff in Iranian American Legal Defense Fund v. Rubio stated in its notice of 1 September 2026 that the United States planned to remove “at least eight Iranians” there, that “At least six of these individuals had been granted withholding of removal, preventing their removal to Iran,” and that six were removed; it stated that it “understands that the United States Government has previously allowed the Government of Iran to choose which Iranians would be removed,” and that it does not know whether Iran was involved in selecting these eight. Third Country Deportation Watch records nationals of Iran among the 78 people sent to the Central African Republic on 23 October 2026, without saying how many. Sources: Human Rights Watch, 29 June 2026 · HRW, To Scare People, 8 October 2026, p. 43 · Third Country Deportation Watch, Central African Republic · Associated Press, 30 August 2026 · Iranian American Legal Defense Fund v. Rubio, ECF 36
What Iran does to others: the returns to Afghanistan
Iran deported 1,261,600 people to Afghanistan during 2025, which is 87.1 per cent of every deportation to Afghanistan recorded that year from anywhere in the world. A further 404,400 were recorded by the end of August 2026. United Nations refugee monitoring found that 215 holders of Iran’s own Amayesh refugee cards were deported between January and May 2025, against 14 in the same months of 2024, and that 42 per cent of those deported during 2025 held headcount slips issued under Iran’s own 2022 registration exercise. All of this took place while the refugee agency’s advisory against returning anyone to Afghanistan, renewed in September 2025, remained in force.
In her report to the General Assembly of 26 August 2025 the Special Rapporteur on Iran recorded that returns were “affecting even individuals with valid documentation” and that “many deportees face serious risks of persecution, torture and death under the Taliban regime upon return”. Her recommendation 50(u) called on Iran to “halt the mass deportation of Afghan nationals and ensure compliance with non-refoulement obligations”. She repeated it in March 2026.
On the evidence, that is refoulement. The Coalition says so and also says the thing that follows from it: no body with jurisdiction has ever been able to make that finding, and none can. Iran is not in the States Engaging in Refoulement project for that reason, and the reason is a gap in the machinery of international law rather than a doubt about the facts.
What independent organisations have documented
Human Rights Watch publishes an annual chapter on Iran, linked in the sources below. It is documentation by a named organisation, not a finding by a body with jurisdiction, and it is carried here on that footing.
The Hengaw Organization for Human Rights reported on 1 November 2026 that “Iranian authorities executed at least 85 prisoners, including six political prisoners, in October 2026,” and that “the total number of executions documented by Hengaw since the beginning of 2026” had reached “at least 689.” On 4 November 2026 it reported that a 42-year-old political prisoner held in Evin Prison “has been sentenced to death on charges of ‘corruption on earth’”; according to his lawyer, the sentence was imposed “in connection with his online activities,” and his charges included “communicating and exchanging information with individuals affiliated with Israel.” Sources: Hengaw, 1 November 2026 · Hengaw, 4 November 2026
What is still being investigated
That any body with jurisdiction has found Iran responsible for refoulement. None has, because none can, and nothing above should be read as saying otherwise.
That Iran’s own 1963 refugee regulations enshrine non-refoulement. This is asserted in material the Coalition has been given and it has not been verified against the Iranian text. Investigating.
Whether any Iranian sent to the Central African Republic has since been sent on to Iran, and whether the further flight to Iran that Human Rights First reported on 29 October 2026 as possible has taken place. Investigating.
What happened to any individual deported from Iran to Afghanistan. The United Nations report on the treatment of people returned to Afghanistan interviewed 49 people, of whom 40 had been returned from Pakistan and five from Iran. Its most detailed account of torture does not state which country the person was returned from. The Coalition does not attribute it to Iran.
The decisions on this site
Twelve matters in nine cases, each linked to the decision itself.
Nouri v. Herrera, C.D. Cal., 28 August 2025, 3 September 2025 and 26 May 2026.
Grigorian v. Bondi, S.D. Fla., 8 July 2025, interim relief refused, and 9 September 2025, relief granted. The petitioner is an Armenian Christian from Iran.
Zavvar v. Scott, D. Md., 8 September 2025. The third countries proposed for this Iranian national were Australia and Romania.
Sarfarzi-Esfahari v. Murray, E.D. Cal., 25 February 2026. No third country was ever identified by the government, and the injunction runs against removal to any of them without a fear hearing first.
Eshaghpour v. Bondi, W.D. Wash., 14 January 2026.
Babakhanlou v. Blanche, W.D. Wash., 15 April 2026.
Khodabakhsh v. English, N.D. Ind., 22 May 2026.
Sharifi v. Raycraft, W.D. Mich., 8 July 2026.
Abedi v. Carter, 10th Cir., 21 October 2026.
Sources
Treaty status, from the depositary. Convention against Torture, in which Iran does not appear. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, for the accession of 28 July 1976 and the reservations.
United Nations bodies. A/HRC/55/67, Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran, 2 February 2024, paragraph 108. A/80/349, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, 26 August 2025, paragraphs 39 and 40 and recommendation 50(u). UA IRN 8/2026, 28 May 2026.
Returns to Afghanistan. Border Monitoring Report, January to May 2025, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 24 June 2025. 2025 Afghan Returns, One Year Recap, 24 February 2026. Afghanistan situation data portal.
Independent organisations. Human Rights Watch, World Report 2026, Iran chapter; Central African Republic, 29 June 2026; To Scare People, 8 October 2026. Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, 1 November 2026 and 4 November 2026. Human Rights First, press release of 29 October 2026. Third Country Deportation Watch, Central African Republic.
News reports. Associated Press, 20 August 2026, as published by CP24; Associated Press, 30 August 2026, as published by WYPR.
Court records. Iranian American Legal Defense Fund v. Rubio, No. 1:26-cv-02375-ACR (D.D.C.): notice of factual developments, ECF 36, 1 September 2026; pre-hearing submissions, ECF 40, 8 October 2026; docket, for the minute order of 20 October 2026. Government reply in Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D., No. 26A406, pages 17 to 18: filed copy and Coalition copy.
Compiled 13 September 2026, updated 5 November 2026. Where this page summarises a report, the full document is linked above and should be read rather than relied on through the summary.