One glaring issue goes unaddressed in UN chief’s high-stakes talks with Iran’s president

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Tuesday as Iranians detained in connection with January’s nationwide protests continue to face prison sentences, alleged torture and a growing number of death sentences and executions.

The UN readout of the meeting, held on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek, said Guterres raised the humanitarian and economic consequences of the conflict involving Iran and stressed the need for diplomacy and respect for international law. 

The readout made no mention of Iran’s treatment of protesters, executions or allegations of torture.

Asked by Fox News Digital at Tuesday’s UN briefing whether Guterres raised those issues directly with Pezeshkian, and if so, why they were not included in the readout, the secretary-general’s spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, said he had “nothing to add to the readout.”

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But Dujarric said Guterres had raised the issues with senior Iranian officials in other meetings.

“I can tell you that in other meetings with senior Iranian leaders, in New York and other places, the Secretary-General has raised those issues directly,” Dujarric said. “We have, from this podium, on behalf of the Secretary-General, condemned in no uncertain terms the use of the death penalty in Iran, as we stand against the death penalty in every country.”

The exchange comes as human rights organizations report that Tehran’s crackdown has continued months after the January demonstrations.

Iran International reported Aug. 7, citing rights groups, that more than 60,000 people were detained across Iran following the protests, while some independent sources put the number of people summoned, detained or interrogated above 100,000.

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In Ardabil province alone, roughly 800 people were arrested during the protests, according to the report, which cited the Human Rights Activists News Agency, or HRANA. As of early August, at least 54 remained in Ardabil Prison, including 29 who had not yet received a hearing.

New figures released Tuesday show the punishments have continued. In its monthly report published Sept. 1, HRANA said it documented 78 executions across Iran in August, including two people executed in connection with the January protests. Iranian courts issued 21 death sentences during the month, including against 10 defendants in an Isfahan case stemming from the protests.

The group also documented six cases of forced confessions, four cases of prisoners being beaten, four transfers to solitary confinement and nine cases in which detainees were denied access to legal counsel.

HRANA reported Aug. 31 that 13 people arrested in connection with the January protests were sentenced to a combined 24 years, three months and one day in prison. Four of the defendants also received a combined 196 lashes, while one was sentenced to two years of exile.

The crackdown has also increasingly involved capital punishment. Iran International reported Aug. 26, citing HRANA, that two additional January protest detainees had been sentenced to death.

The same report cited the U.S.-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center as saying it had documented 950 executions in Iran since the beginning of 2026, including at least 30 protesters.

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Among those imprisoned is Seyed Ahmad Seyedabdollahi, a 32-year-old psychologist whose case Fox News Digital reported in August.

Seyedabdollahi posted an English-language video Jan. 4 appealing directly to President Donald Trump to support Iranian protesters. He was arrested 10 days later and ultimately sentenced to seven months in prison and barred from government and public services for five years.

His relatives told Fox News Digital that Iranian authorities later pressured him to record another video insulting Trump and Americans. Fox News Digital could not independently verify those specific demands, but IranWire reported Aug. 11 that security agents instructed him to read a prepared anti-Trump script on camera and that he repeatedly refused despite alleged threats and coercion.

His relatives also alleged that Seyedabdollahi was subjected to solitary confinement and torture. Hana Human Rights Organization reported Aug. 9 that he had been held in Borujen Prison since July 7 and that authorities opened a second case against him on a charge of “propaganda against the system of the Islamic Republic.”

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The fate of Iran’s detainees also surfaced Tuesday at the UN Security Council as France assumed the rotating presidency for September. The Security Council’s official presidency list shows France holding the September presidency, with Ambassador Jérôme Bonnafont serving as council president.

Asked by Fox News Digital whether France planned to address Iranians detained following the protests and reports of torture and executions during its presidency, Bonnafont said the council’s central focus on Iran this month would be Tehran’s nuclear program, but stressed that those discussions would not take place “in a vacuum.”

“You referred to this matter with the situation of the civilian population in Iran,” Bonnafont told Fox News Digital, according to a translation of his remarks. “They are the victims of the choices made by the Iranian authorities for years now, with these episodes of mass repression to which you referred.”

Morad Tahbaz, an Iranian-American environmentalist who spent years imprisoned in Iran before his release in a 2023 prisoner exchange with the United States, previously described to Fox News Digital the conditions detainees can face inside the Iranian prison system.

Tahbaz said he spent four months alone in a small cell under a bright light that remained on 24 hours a day. He was allowed out twice a day for about 10 minutes and was blindfolded whenever he left the cell.

He described the IRGC intelligence facility at Tehran’s Evin Prison as “probably the harshest and toughest imprisonment that any prisoner will go through.”

Tahbaz said one of the most difficult aspects of being held by Iran was knowing that even the end of a prison sentence did not necessarily mean freedom.

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“When you are a hostage … [you don’t know that] at the end of your sentence they’ll necessarily let you go,” Tahbaz told Fox News Digital. “They’ll just come up with another charge to keep you there for as long as you’re of value to them.”