Iranian authorities have sentenced to death four more people, including a woman, over last January's protests, several rights groups said on Tuesday.

Iran has already hanged seven people in connection with the protests, which activists say were put down in a crackdown that killed thousands and led to tens of thousands of arrests.

Rights groups accuse the Islamic Republic of using the death penalty as a tool of repression to instill fear in society, and fear it will ramp up capital punishment in the wake of the war against Israel and the United States.

The four were sentenced to death by a Tehran Revolutionary Court presided over by the notorious judge Imam Afshari after being convicted of carrying out actions on behalf of the United States, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center said in separate statements.

The regime's judiciary accused the group of numerous charges, including "using explosives and weapons," "harming stationed forces on-site," and "throwing objects including bottles, concrete blocks, and incendiary materials from the roofs of buildings," according to the opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran.

It was not immediately clear when the verdict was issued.

The four convicted were named as Mohammadreza Majidi-Asl and his wife Bita Hemmati, along with two other men, Behrouz Zamaninejad and Kourosh Zamaninejad, who lived in the same Tehran building as the married couple.

Hemmati is believed to be the first woman to be sentenced to death over the protests.

The Abdorrahman Boroumand Center said it also believed that Hemmati was the woman who appeared in a video broadcast on state television in January being personally interrogated by judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei.

"The recording and broadcasting of forced confessions from defendants in an opaque process ... constitutes a blatant violation of the defendant's rights," it said.

According to Iran Human Rights Monitor, Iran has carried out 656 executions in the first three months of this year but the actual tally is "likely far higher" since Iran was largely offline in March when only eight were recorded.

Norway-based Iran Human Rights and Paris-based Together Against the Death Penalty said on Monday in their joint annual report on the death penalty in Iran that at least 1,639 people were executed in 2025 — including 48 women.

As well as the seven already executed, death sentences have been issued against at least 26 other people arrested over the January protests and several hundred more are facing charges that could see them executed, Iran Human Rights warned.

Last month, Iran executed three men who were accused of killing police officers during the protests, including Saleh Mohammadi, a young member of Iran's national wrestling team.

"Dozens of individuals arrested during the January 2026 protests have been sentenced to death following grossly unfair, fast-tracked trials conducted without due process, access to independent counsel and reliance on torture-tainted forced 'confessions' as evidence," said the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran called on the United Nations "to take immediate action to save the lives of prisoners sentenced to death, especially political prisoners and those detained during the uprising."