Methodology
Iran Monitor documents identifiable senior or otherwise strategically significant figures linked to the Islamic Republic of Iran whose deaths since 1979 were directly caused by discrete, deliberate lethal operations attributable to foreign states or non-Iranian organizations. Ordinary battlefield casualties arising from ongoing tactical combat are excluded.
Significance must derive from the person's pre-existing responsibility or function. Evidence of specific targeting because of that function may contribute.
The death must result from a discrete, deliberate foreign lethal act rather than ordinary ongoing tactical combat.
A qualifying person may be included when killed in a deliberate strike on a defined target even if public evidence does not establish that the attacker knew that individual was present.
01Person criterion
An individual qualifies when reliable evidence shows that, before death, the person held a sufficiently senior leadership, command, policy, institutional, diplomatic, security, intelligence, scientific, or programme-level role, or performed a specialized function of demonstrable strategic significance.
Strategic significance is assessed from the person's pre-existing responsibilities, access, expertise, operational importance, or other relevant function. Evidence that a foreign actor specifically selected the individual for lethal targeting because of such a function may contribute to establishing strategic significance. The fact that a person was killed in a foreign operation, standing alone, is not sufficient.
Rank, affiliation, family relationship, posthumous prominence, or individual targeting is not sufficient on its own. Individual targeting is also not required for inclusion.
02Death criterion and battlefield exclusion
The death must be directly caused by a discrete, deliberate lethal operation attributable to a foreign state or non-Iranian organization. Assassinations, defined strikes, raids, bombings, ambushes outside ongoing tactical engagements, lethal sabotage, and comparable operations may qualify.
Ordinary tactical-combat casualties are excluded, including personnel killed in exchanges of fire, aircraft shot down during combat missions, and comparable deaths arising from the ordinary conduct of an ongoing battle. The rule concerns how the person died, not whether a war existed at the time.
03Sources and responsible actor
Entries are synthesized from publicly available documentary, official, journalistic, academic, and specialist sources. Each dossier displays no more than three Selected Sources representing the principal evidentiary basis of the record collectively; they are not claim-by-claim citations.
Primary sources are not assumed to be more reliable merely because they are primary. Interested-party statements are assessed in context. Where reporting differs materially, Iran Monitor uses cautious wording or preserves the limitation in the dossier rather than attempting to resolve every open-source disagreement.
The Actor field identifies the foreign state or non-Iranian organization assessed as responsible for the qualifying event. There is no separate public attribution-confidence field; inclusion itself requires that the event criterion has been assessed as met.
04Quality control, exclusions, and updates
Version 1.0 was built from a formally reviewed candidate pool using predefined person and death criteria. The candidate set underwent independent review and adjudication, followed by final dossier and source review before the scholarly release was frozen on 24 August 2026.
Reviewed candidates that did not meet the criteria are retained in a public exclusion register. Material new evidence may justify later reassessment. Once a scholarly version is frozen, later substantive changes are issued in a new version so that the earlier release remains reproducible.
The public website intentionally provides a concise methodological summary. Detailed case-identification procedures, validation, inter-rater assessment, and adjudication will be described in the peer-reviewed Iran Monitor methodology/data paper. Version-specific documentation, including the codebook and release notes, is available with each archived release under Releases. The article DOI will be linked here after publication.