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Narges Mohammadi – the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and a globally recognized symbol of the Women, Life, Freedom movement who is arguably the most recognized human rights advocate inside Iran – reportedly faces a life-threatening medical condition inside an Iranian prison. Despite documented cardiovascular emergencies requiring urgent specialist care, Iranian authorities continue to deny her adequate medical treatment. Mohammadi’s family, lawyers, and international human rights bodies describe this negligent treatment as deliberate and potentially fatal.
Mohammadi is one of Iran’s foremost human rights defenders. Over more than two decades, she has campaigned relentlessly against the death penalty, the mandatory hijab, torture in detention, and the systematic suppression of civil society by the Islamic Republic. On October 6, 2023, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded her the Nobel Peace Prize for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her efforts to promote human rights and freedom for all. The Committee noted that at the time of the announcement, Mohammadi remained imprisoned in Evin Prison. She is only the second Iranian to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, after Shirin Ebadi in 2003. The scale of her persecution is extraordinary: Mohammadi has been arrested 13 times, convicted 5 times, and sentenced to a cumulative total of more than 23 years in prison, 154 lashes, and various bans on political activity and foreign travel.
Mohammadi’s most recent arrest came on December 12, 2025, when Iranian security forces violently dispersed a seventh-day memorial ceremony for prominent human rights lawyer Khosro Alikordi at a mosque in Mashhad, arresting dozens of mourners. Mohammadi was among those detained. According to her family, she was attacked by approximately 15 plainclothes agents outside the mosque, who struck her repeatedly with batons, primarily targeting her head and neck. During the assault, agents reportedly told her: “We will put your mother into mourning,” a statement her family characterized as a direct death threat. Mohammadi was subsequently subjected to an enforced disappearance for nearly three days before being allowed a brief phone call to her family on December 14, 2025. In that call, she described the severity of the beatings and noted that agents had accused her of “cooperating with the Israeli government,” a charge human rights observers say Iranian authorities routinely deploy as a pretext for severe repression against dissidents, with no factual basis. She further stated that the same forces had previously warned her lawyers that they intended to carry out her “physical elimination.”
Following her arrest, Branch One of the Mashhad Revolutionary Court sentenced her to seven years and six months in prison, two years of internal exile to the city of Khousf, and two years of a ban on leaving the country. In late February 2025, she was transferred from a security detention facility in Mashhad to Zanjan Prison, where her health has deteriorated sharply.
As of early May 2026, multiple credible sources have confirmed that her condition is critically deteriorating. Mohammadi’s lawyer, Mostafa Nili, reported that she had been admitted to a hospital from Zanjan Prison following severe and repeated fluctuations in blood pressure, including sudden drops that caused her to lose consciousness. She experienced repeated episodes of deterioration and symptoms including chest pain, prompting both the prison physician and a specialist to deem her emergency transfer to hospital necessary. She was admitted to the Cardiac Care Unit (CCU). Nili further reported that her blood pressure continued to fluctuate dangerously even while hospitalized. The Zanjan Province Legal Medicine Commission recommended a one-month suspension of her sentence for medical treatment. However, the Zanjan Prosecutor’s Office referred the decision to the Tehran Prosecutor’s Office, leaving her in continued detention without adequate care.
HRANA, the Human Rights Activists News Agency, reported that Mohammadi had been held without regard to the principle of crime-separation, meaning she was kept among violent offenders, and had previously been denied access to appropriate medical care despite her deteriorating physical condition. Her brother, Hamidreza Mohammadi, speaking to BBC Newshour programme, stated that he is convinced the Iranian regime has made a deliberate decision to withhold care from her and from other political prisoners. He expressed concern that international attention has been further diverted from the plight of Iranian political prisoners by geopolitical interests, arguing that economic calculations, particularly around the Strait of Hormuz, appear to be taking precedence over human rights advocacy by European governments.
Mohammadi’s current medical crisis does not exist in isolation. It is the culmination of a sustained, multi-decade campaign by Iranian authorities to silence her through imprisonment, physical harm, and denial of care. Her cumulative prison sentences span eight separate convictions issued between June 2021 and February 2025, totalling more than 23 years. She has also been sentenced to 154 lashes, two years of internal exile, two years of travel restrictions, and multiple other social prohibitions. Throughout her periods of detention, she has consistently been denied adequate medical care and held in conditions that violate both Iranian law and international human rights standards.
The international response to her deteriorating situation has been swift. On April 29, 2026, Mai Sato stated publicly that she was deeply concerned about Mohammadi’s reportedly deteriorating health in detention. On the same day, the Norwegian Nobel Committee called on the Iranian government to immediately release Mohammadi for medical treatment, citing statements from her family and lawyer expressing grave concern that her condition had severely worsened.
Iran is a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and is legally obligated to uphold rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and protection from arbitrary arrest and detention. The continued imprisonment of Mohammadi in retaliation for her speech and activism constitutes serious violations of these obligations. The denial of adequate medical care to a prisoner with documented, life-threatening cardiovascular conditions, the use of excessive force during arrest, the enforced disappearance, the holding of a political prisoner among violent offenders, and the issuance of direct death threats in custody collectively represent a pattern of conduct that legal experts and human rights observers describe as potentially amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment under international law.
Mohammadi has devoted her life to peaceful advocacy for human rights in Iran at extraordinary personal cost. The Iranian authorities’ apparently deliberate withholding of medical care from a critically-ill Nobel laureate represents not only a profound individual injustice, but appears to be a calculated act of political violence aimed at silencing one of the most important voices for human rights in the country. The Iranian government must immediately release her so that she can receive full medical treatment and allow her full access to independent specialist care. All prisoners held in deteriorating health conditions must be granted immediate access to adequate medical treatment, and Iranian authorities must cease the use of medical neglect as a tool of political persecution.
The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) strongly condemns the Iranian authorities’ continued persecution and medical neglect of Narges Mohammadi and other political prisoners in Iran. The deliberate denial of urgent medical care to the critically-ill Nobel Peace Prize laureate is unacceptable and represents a grave violation of fundamental human rights and Iran’s international legal obligations. NIAC calls on the Iranian government to immediately and unconditionally release Narges Mohammadi and all prisoners detained for the peaceful exercise of their human rights, and to ensure that all detainees receive immediate access to adequate and independent medical care. The international community must continue to call on Iranian authorities to end the use of imprisonment, abuse, and medical neglect as tools of political repression.