Prosecutor-General Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejei said on May 6 during a meeting of the High Council for Human Rights in Iran, "Unfortunately, the high number of executions in this country is related to drugs smuggling and the heavy penalties of this phenomenon. If within the existing laws we can review it in a way that we help the intelligence officials to punish the leaders of these smuggling networks, and for the rest we reconsider [their punishment], the goals of the system can better be realized with respect to drugs.”

While there are many caveats to Ejei’s statement, it is noteworthy that a figure with his background would make this suggestion publicly at this type of session. Ejei serves as the spokesman for the judiciary and is one of the more hard-line figures in Iran. He was one of the first Iranian officials to be sanctioned by the US government for human rights violations in 2010. He served as former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s intelligence minister from August 2005 to July 2009, and he has been a vocal critic of President Hassan Rouhani’s administration’s efforts to release the leaders of the Green Movement.

While some have seen these comments as promising, student activist and journalist Saeed Aganji said to Al-Monitor that it is true that Ejei’s statements may reflect a progress of sorts, still, the role of “officials are limited in this field due to laws of Islamic punishment.” He said that either way there is a difficult process to reform or change laws in Iran. Ejei, however, recommended how the law is applied with respect to the death penalty rather than changing it.

Iran is one of the leading countries in the world to use the death penalty. According to Amnesty International, 369 people were executed in Iran in 2013. Mohammad Javad Larijani, who heads the judiciary’s High Council for Human Rights, has defended the country’s use of capital punishment, saying that 80% of executions are related to drug offenses.