Facing Execution for Liking a Post

by Lauren Pope

—

A woman is facing the death penalty. Her crime? Liking a post.

Azar Yahoo, 38, was arrested in Mashhad by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and charged with “collaboration with a hostile state.” Her actual offense was placing heart stickers on social media posts and expressing joy over the reported death of Ali Khamenei. She is being held without a lawyer, without contact with her family, and without broad public knowledge of her situation. We can at least work to change that last one.

\In her own city, three men have already been executed for political activity tied to the January 2026 uprising. Their names were Mehdi Rasouli, Mohammadreza Miri, and Ebrahim Dowlatabadi. For anyone wondering what comes next for Azar, their deaths are the answer.

Today is the 119th consecutive week of “No to Executions Tuesdays.” For 119 weeks, prisoners across 56 Iranian prisons have organized a coordinated hunger strike from inside their cells. In 2025 alone, the regime executed at least 1,639 people, a 68 percent increase over 2024 and the highest annual count since 1989. As in the US, the rate of executions is not slowing. Instead, executions have accelerated.

Inside Iran, no one is officially in charge. Khamenei’s successor has not appeared publicly. The Revolutionary Guard is running the country autonomously, patrolling the streets at night with rifles to try  to keep the population in line, and yet the population is no longer in line. Women walk past them in plain clothes, hijabs gone, openly defiant. The regime’s grip is loosening and every Iranian knows it. And so the executions accelerate, because killing is the last lever an unraveling state has left.

This is what state killing always becomes. It is sold as justice for the worst. It is expanded for political enemies. It is then deployed against ordinary people who liked the wrong post. There is no death penalty, anywhere, that does not eventually arrive here. Once a state assumes the power to kill those under its authority, the only question is who is enough of a threat to the state to warrant killing. The consistent life ethic does not grant this power to any government, of any flag, of any creed. It is not a coincidence that all parties in this brutal war — America, Israel, and Iran — allow this brutal practice. Once a state can kill its citizens for what they say, what they believe, and what they tap on their phones, the only remaining variable is which citizens.

Meanwhile, despite the claims that this war is serving to liberate the Iranian people, The President of the United States threatened on Truth Social, only weeks ago, to “knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran.” And while the Trump administration has made a few public statements against Iran’s use of the death penalty for political prisoners, they simultaneously threaten annihilation of the entire civilization. There are two killing machines pointed at the same people from different directions, and the people caught between them are still chanting “no to executions” in their cells, still walking past men with rifles without covering their hair, and still sending heart stickers on the internet because they refuse to be silent.  They remain brave and defiant in baring their hearts, wanting only freedom and peace. How shall we answer them?

We do not concede the killing power to a regime in Tehran, Tel Aviv, or Washington. We must, as Americans, stand together while holding the truth that the state should never be given the power to kill its citizens, nor should civilians be targeted in acts of war. This cycle of violence must end, and we must be the ones to say, “enough.”

Public pressure campaigns can work. Share the news about Azar. It’s still possible that her execution can be stopped. But then we must work to end this ghoulish practice everywhere in the world. No more executions. No more war.