TEHRAN — The hunger strike, a pressure tactic of self-starvation used by political protesters around the world, is forcing Iran’s powerful judiciary to reconsider the conditions of at least one of its inmates after several started fasts that are leading to widespread support on social media.

The exact number of hunger strikers in Iranian prisons is unclear, but according to human rights organizations and reports in local media outlets, seven inmates, sentenced for crimes against the state, have refused to eat for intervals ranging from several weeks to more than two months.

Their backgrounds vary, but they include an antigovernment protester, a children’s rights activist, an ayatollah, a spiritual leader and a Lebanese computer technology specialist convicted of espionage.

It is not possible to verify their conditions because of restrictions preventing foreign reporters from visiting Iranian prisons without permission. While some members of Iran’s Parliament have said on their social media accounts that they are investigating the reports, other officials have dismissed the hunger strikes as plots organized by foreign opposition groups.

Conservative critics further argue that the extensive support for the hunger strikers seen on social media networks is an exaggeration created by automated messages.

One of the inmates, Arash Sadeghi, stopped his strike last Tuesday, after the judiciary met his demand to temporarily release his imprisoned wife. She was transferred back to prison on Saturday, said the couple’s lawyer, Amir Raeesian.

Refusing to eat to protest conditions in prison is illegal in Iran, but is not uncommon. However, the number of inmates now simultaneously fasting, in combination with a large social media campaign, is unusual in the country. It also providing a publicity platform for those in prison, Iranian analysts say.

“The success is clearly motivating others to join,” said Nader Karimi Joni, a journalist close to the reformist factions in Iran.

Two of the hunger strikers, Mr. Sadeghi and Ali Shariati, have been convicted of crimes against the state — charges that by Western standards would make them political prisoners. They went for nearly 70 days without food, advocates say, surviving on water and salts.

Mr. Sadeghi received a 15-year sentence last year for offenses like “provoking protest gatherings,” “conniving with counterrevolutionaries against the system,” “making propaganda against the system,” “insulting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei” and “insulting the sharia,” his lawyer, Mr. Raeesian, said. The “system” is an Iranian ideological term for the country’s political establishment: a coterie of clerics, commanders and revolutionary comrades.

Mr. Sadeghi’s sentence is lengthy even by Iranian standards, and reflects what rights activists regard as a new trend in which relatively unknown offenders receive long sentences, often as a warning to others.

He began his fast on Oct. 24 after his wife, Golrokh Ebrahimi-Iraee, started serving a six-year prison term for an unpublished story found on her private computer about a woman watching a film about a stoning and burning a Quran in anger afterward. She was convicted on blasphemy charges.

Mr. Shariati, 30, is serving a five-year sentence for his involvement in a 2014 protest supporting the female victims of acid attacks. He is demanding to be released.

Their ordeals have galvanized supporters to highlight the hunger strikes on messaging platforms, using hashtags like #savearash and #sosali. Both became worldwide trending topics on Twitter.

The use of the hunger strike in Iran has in some ways put the government in an embarrassing position, as it exalted the Northern Ireland hunger strikers who once vexed the British.

The embassy of Britain in Tehran is on Bobby Sands Street, renamed for the Provisional I.R.A. member who was imprisoned in Northern Ireland and died in 1981 after refusing to eat for 66 days.