برای خواندن این مطلب به فارسی اینجا را کلیک کنید
Iran’s most prolific sociologist of social movements and civil society walked free today. Mostafa Nili, the defense attorney for Dr. Saeed Madani, confirmed to ISNA that his client was released from Damavand Prison on April 20, 2026, after completing four years of incarceration. The release of one of Iran’s most distinguished social scientists closes a painful chapter — while opening a hopeful one — in the story of intellectual resistance inside the Islamic Republic.
In January 2022, he was blocked by IRGC forces at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport, prevented from leaving Iran to begin a one-year research program at Yale University in the United States. Four months later he was arrested at home. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court sentenced him to nine years in prison for “propaganda against the establishment” and “organising opposition groups.” After a successful Supreme Court appeal, the sentence was reduced to four years following the court’s acceptance of a retrial request.
Throughout his detention, the authorities went further — forcibly transferring him in April 2024 from Evin Prison to Damavand Prison on the outskirts of Tehran. His wife, Mansoureh Ettefagh, stated that during her last visit before his transfer, his lawyer noted that no explanation was given in the transfer documentation, and she highlighted previous threats from interrogators suggesting the relocation was premeditated. Madani himself protested in an open letter to the judiciary, describing the use of “unjust, illegal, and unusual punishments.”
What made Madani’s imprisonment particularly remarkable was that he refused to be silenced. Even from Damavand Prison, he remained one of the most cogent voices on Iran’s future. In a remarkable eighteen-month intellectual exchange with diaspora sociologist Asef Bayat, conducted through open letters, Madani developed a comprehensive framework for democratic transition in Iran. He argued that the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising of 2022 represented a turning point, not an endpoint, in a longer process of societal transformation. He distinguished sharply between “revolution,” which he associated with historical patterns of violence and authoritarian outcomes, and “democratic transition,” which he saw as the only viable path for Iran’s future. He called for a national coalition, a referendum, and the construction of democratic language to replace the inherited vocabulary of revolutionary politics, warning that “we cannot promote a strategy that people tried fifty years ago and are still living with its consequences.”
Even though Iranian authorities had used his book Against the Death Penalty as evidence against him in court, his pen kept moving. As geopolitical tensions mounted, Madani released a letter from prison criticizing Iran’s uranium enrichment program, calling it economically unjustified, and arguing that peaceful nuclear energy for electricity generation was the only option compatible with Iran’s development needs. High-ranking security officials reportedly held meetings with him in Evin Prison, asking for his analysis and advice on the protests that rocked Iran following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, to which Madani reportedly responded that “the solution is to stop the government’s violence and give rights to protesters.”
Dr. Saeed Madani is widely considered the Iranian sociologist who has written most extensively and courageously about the social crises afflicting Iranian society and the movements that have emerged in response. His academic record spans decades of studying how social injustice affects women, children, and disadvantaged and minority groups, with published books and articles covering child abuse, the sociology of sex work, the necessity of combating poverty and inequality, substance-use disorders, addiction, civil disobedience, and social movements in Iran.
His books — Sociology of Prostitution, Addiction in Iran, The Necessity of Fighting Poverty and Inequality in Iran, Violence Against Children in Iran, and Social Movements — represent some of the most serious empirical contributions to understanding contemporary Iranian society. Remarkably, he translated the book Social Movements: Genesis, Upsurge, and Decline by Jeff Goodwin and James Jasper into Farsi while in prison — a testament to a mind that no cell could confine.
Madani holds a PhD in criminology, is editor-in-chief of the research journal Social Welfare, and was one of the founders of the publication Iran Farda (Iran Tomorrow). He is a member of the Iranian Sociological Association and a faculty member of the Social Welfare Research Group at the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences in Tehran.
Madani’s imprisonment was not his first encounter with the coercive apparatus of the Islamic Republic, it was simply the most prolonged. He was arrested in 1994, 2000, 2001, and 2011 for his writings, civil society work and political affiliations. In 2013, he was sentenced to six years in prison and ten years of internal exile in Bandar Abbas, a port city 1,500 kilometers from his home in Tehran, before being permitted to return in November 2017.
Dr. Madani returns to a society that has changed profoundly during his four years of confinement, and to which he has much to contribute. The intellectual framework he developed from inside Damavand Prison, emphasizing democratic transition, non-violence, institutional coalition-building, and the democratization of the change process itself, has already shaped debate among Iran’s reform-minded thinkers both at home and abroad. No country is strengthened by imprisoning its finest minds. Iran’s sociologists, journalists, and civil society leaders are not a threat to be neutralized – they are a resource to be honored.
NIAC welcomes Madani’s release and reiterates its call on the Islamic Republic to release all remaining political prisoners, cease the practice of forced internal exile, and honor its obligations under both its own legal code and international human rights standards.