US-Israel war is not helping thousands of prisoners across Iran

Thousands of prisoners in Iran are trapped inside facilities with dwindling food and water, locked cell doors and no means of escape as US-Israeli airstrikes shake the cities around them, according to accounts from inmates, families and human rights organisations.

Reports from inside Greater Tehran Prison describe inmates going days without adequate food or water after an attack near the facility prompted a failed escape attempt that was met with pellet guns, firearms, and tear gas.

Since then, conditions have deteriorated sharply. The prison's gas supply has been cut, access to basic facilities is severely restricted, and phone credits are running out, leaving inmates on the verge of total disconnection from the outside world.

"If a missile hits the prison, there will be no way for us to save our lives," one inmate said in a voice message obtained from a family member. "Instead of taking measures to protect us, they are making conditions even harder."

The accounts describe a humanitarian emergency building inside Iran's prison system.

Political detainees and ordinary inmates are caught between a regime that has responded to the war by tightening restrictions, refusing bail and furlough for political prisoners, and transferring some detainees to unknown locations without telling their families, and coalition airstrikes that have hit detention infrastructure before. During Israel's 12-day war on Iran last June, strikes on Tehran's Evin Prison killed at least 80 people, including prisoners and social workers. Families and rights groups say they fear a repeat.

Families in the dark

The information blackout has compounded the fear. Iran's internet shutdown, imposed during the protests and maintained through the war, has severed most channels families relied on to reach their relatives in prison.

Saeedeh Varesteh, whose husband, Amir Jalalian, a former researcher at the International Atomic Energy Agency, is detained in Evin, said she has had no news of him since February 28. Living in Vienna, she has tried to follow up with the prison but received no response.

Other prisoners' families told her that administrative staff locked doors and left the premises, she said. The prison store has closed, and inmates are struggling to meet their daily needs.

"My husband's lawyer told me that under Iranian law, the judiciary is supposed to release low-risk prisoners on bail during wartime, particularly political detainees," she said. "Authorities appear to be deliberately refusing to do so."

Human rights organisations have echoed those concerns. Several groups, including the office of imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, warned of an impending humanitarian crisis in Iranian prisons.

The groups added that administrative order inside Evin has effectively collapsed, with guards abandoning their posts and cell doors locked, leaving prisoners confined with no food distribution or medical care.

Mohammadi was arrested in December while protesting the suspicious death of a fellow activist and is currently jailed in Zanjan, a city northwest of Tehran that was shaken by a massive explosion on Saturday.

The volunteer lawyers' network Dadban warned that periods of intense political or military tension in Iran have historically led to harsher treatment of political prisoners, including greater restrictions, violence and additional pressure on detainees.

Welded doors and empty shelves

The daily reality inside prisons has become a struggle for basic survival. Families report that drinking water in many facilities comes from wells that inmates say are unsuitable for consumption, particularly after recent contaminated rains.

Behrooz Ahmadi (pseudonym), the father of one prisoner, said that supplying bottled water has become nearly impossible. Reduced deliveries and rising prices have pushed the cost of a single bottle to roughly 25,000 tomans ($0.1), a price most prisoners cannot afford.

Most prisons now provide two meals a day, he said, and both the quantity and quality have declined significantly since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran. 

"Prison stores have been closed for days at a time, and shelves in those still operating are nearly empty, while high overcrowding in many facilities has intensified pressure on inmates and raised serious concerns about their health," he said.

At Greater Tehran Prison, blast waves from nearby explosions on 2 March shattered windows and damaged several walls. Reports say prison guards beat inmates and fired tear gas inside the facility in the aftermath. At Mahabad prison in the northwest, anti-riot guards attacked prisoners who protested being held in dangerous wartime conditions following a strike on a nearby Revolutionary Guards base. Guards fired tear gas, injuring at least two prisoners, and food rations were reduced to one meal a day while phone calls were restricted.

Reza Khandan, a political prisoner in Evin, wrote to Iran's judiciary chief warning that authorities had ignored repeated warnings from prisoners, just as they did before the June strike that destroyed parts of the complex.

"This time, no excuse will be acceptable," he wrote. "The direct responsibility for the lives of prisoners lies with the judiciary and the prison organisation."

Human shields

Among the most alarming allegations are reports that some political prisoners have been moved to locations near military sites. Hosein Razzagh, a former political prisoner, said recent detainees in some Iranian prisons have been transferred to Revolutionary Guard barracks.

"These transfers are not for their protection," he said. "The Islamic Republic wants to turn its opponents into human shields."

The claim has not been officially confirmed. But it sits alongside a pattern of unexplained transfers that has deepened the anxiety of families already struggling to locate their relatives.

Shailin Asadollahi said her brother Ali was moved from Ward 209 in Evin Prison to an area known among prisoners as the "Green Line," a zone directly at risk of bombardment that falls within a military area targeted in multiple attacks.

Their elderly father waits outside the Revolutionary Court daily seeking his son's release on bail, but is met with shifting responses, from "the case hasn't returned yet" to "detention extended" to "no one will be released until the end of the war."

"We don't even know where my brother is being held," she said. "If you won't release him, at least allow him to contact the family. Any harm that comes to Ali or other political prisoners is the responsibility of the Islamic Republic."

Iran executed more than 2,000 people in 2025 alone, according to rights monitors. Several human rights organisations have warned that the wartime blackout and breakdown of judicial oversight could allow death sentences to be carried out in secret, without notification to lawyers or families of those on death row.

This story is produced in collaboration with Egab.