Narges Mohammadi says war, poverty and repression are crushing Iranians

Narges Mohammadi said Iranians are enduring sharper repression, war and economic distress. Her warning, alongside her prison memoir's release, underlines both the human cost and the persistence of resistance.

In Short

• Mohammadi said ordinary families were bearing the heaviest cost of multiple crises
• She was temporarily freed on medical grounds after collapsing in custody
• Her prison memoir was smuggled out page by page by inmates

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi has said Iranians are being crushed by worsening economic hardship, war and a sharp rise in internal repression, leaving “no room for people to breathe” after the past year and a half. Speaking to The Associated Press from outside Iran, the prominent human rights activist said ordinary people were paying a very heavy price even as many continued to resist.

Mohammadi, 54, was temporarily released from prison earlier this year for medical reasons after she lost consciousness and was taken to hospital. Her memoir, A Woman Never Stops Fighting, written in prison and smuggled out in parts with the help of fellow inmates, is being released this month in French, German and nine other languages. The English and Farsi editions are due next year, with her representatives saying the timing is meant to honour the memory of Mahsa Amini.

Mohammadi said Iranians were dealing with overlapping crises caused by war, deepening economic pressure and harsh state crackdowns on protests. “I am sorry to say, but since the outbreak of war, in the past months and last year and a half, we have seen that repression in society has severely increased and now, with these economic pressures and with the repression that really has left no room for people to breathe, it's the people who are paying an extremely heavy price,” she said.

At the same time, she said resistance continued to run through Iranian society, and traced that change to the 2022 protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old woman who died in hospital after being detained for violating the authorities’ strict Islamic dress code. “If you go out into the streets, you see a wave of resistance among the people, a wave of awareness, and their determination to stand up for their rights,” Mohammadi said.

She said repression by the government had intensified, but added that many in a younger generation “know their rights” and were standing firm. “And that gives us reason for hope,” she said.

The AP said it had agreed not to ask Mohammadi specific questions about Iran’s political situation and leadership because of concerns for her safety, though she spoke in general terms about the cost of war.

In the interview, Mohammadi, who has been jailed repeatedly over decades for her human rights work and was in prison when she was awarded the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, described her most recent arrest, detention and health. She said security forces beat her severely when she was detained in December in Mashhad, where she and a group of activists had gone to attend a memorial for human rights lawyer Khosrow Alikordi, who was found dead in his office.

She said she was arrested while giving a public speech and was later sentenced to seven-and-a-half years for attending that rally. She is now facing a total of 16 years in prison and more than 100 lashes. She has not been flogged, but said she spent long periods in solitary confinement.

“My detention was really life-threatening,” she said. “My head was severely hurt, because most of the hits were to my head, and despite being in that condition, they kept me for two months in solitary confinement during which my condition was really concerning.”

Mohammadi said she lost consciousness on May 1 and was released on bail nearly 10 days later before being transferred to a hospital in Tehran, where she stayed for another two weeks. “I am recovering,” she said.

She said she began writing her memoir in 2019 during an earlier period of imprisonment in Tehran’s Evin prison, where many political prisoners are held. Her handwritten notes from that period were lost when she was moved to another site. This time, she said, the manuscript was taken out of prison page by page. “With the help of fellow inmates, we got a few pages out, a few pages at a time,” she said. “If it weren’t for them, I couldn’t have done it.”

Mohammadi said she drew inspiration from the stories of other women while growing up, starting with her mother. “I tried to put an image to each of these - how these women really managed to change their world, their society, themselves, the next generation - make them aware, make them resist,” she said.

She also spoke of “terrifying memories” from her childhood during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war and said that experience gave her “a hatred for war”. “I wasn’t more than a child when the Iran-Iraq war happened, but I remember a lot of the repression, repression of many political currents and forces, many executions that happened in the silence and darkness of Evin and prisons around the country,” she said.

Mohammadi said she was deeply troubled when she learned that Evin prison had been bombed during the 12-day war between Israel and Iran in 2025, at a time when she was out of prison. “At that moment, I felt that, in this country, we are at the intersection of injustice, discrimination, war, authoritarianism,” she said. “All of those are trampling on our people’s human rights.”

Across different cases, Mohammadi has been handed sentences totalling 44 years. She has already spent 10 years in prison, including 161 days in solitary confinement. She has been barred from travelling abroad since 2009 and has been unable to join her husband and two children, who live in exile in France. In a later text message shared by her team, she said, “My sentence is currently suspended, and I must return whenever the judiciary issues the order.”

Mohammadi’s account brought together her warnings about rising repression, the strain of war and economic distress, details of her own detention and recovery, and the release of a memoir written from prison as she continues to speak about resistance and human rights in Iran.

With PTI Inputs

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