Medhi Yarrahi had posted RooSarito (Your Headscarf) on YouTube in August 2023 in preparation for the first anniversary of the powerful Woman, Life, Freedom (WLF) uprising in Iran. The historic uprising of millions was sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini at the hands of “morality police” for not covering her hair properly. It unleashed support from people around the world, especially the vast and politically diverse Iranian diaspora in Europe and North America, and by others as far away from Iran as Colombia in South America.      

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Mehdi Yarrahi (43) is a popular singer/composer, a voice of conscience, outrageously made political prisoner, who lives in Iran’s capital of Tehran. For his uplifting and daring song that praised defiant women who remove their mandatory hijab (head covering) in Iran, the regime responded with a prison sentence that included a cruel whipping of 74 lashes.¹ This sadistic beating of Mehdi is a real indictment of Iran’s Islamic dark ages theocratic laws based in the extreme misogyny of ancient Sharia. All those who support this vicious regime, even if rightfully to oppose the Israeli genocide in Gaza fully-backed by U.S., are complicit in perpetuating the “lesser evil” reactionary regime and foreclosing the hope for a better future expressed by many progressive artists and political prisoners in Iran.

On March 5, as the last part of his sentence, Medhi was subjected to the flogging which was intended to humiliate him and threaten any artist who stand against women’s oppression. Mehdi was unable to sit or lean back afterwards, according to his lawyer. However, far from being humiliated or cowed, he posted this defiant message on IG the next day.

You have brought glass to break our stone. Thank you for your constant support, dear ones, and the sincere companionship of the respected lawyers Mustafa Nili and Zahra Minoui. He who is not willing to pay the price of freedom does not deserve freedom. Wishing for liberation.

Artists and Activists Respond: “A Lash to an Artist is a Lash to Humanity”

Hundreds of Iranian artists, many of them inside Iran, have signed a statement titled “A lash to an artist is a lash to humanity,” condemning the flogging as “cruel and medieval”; including prominent signers such as rebel rapper Toomaj Salehi, and internationally renowned directors Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof. It said: “Mehdi Yarrahi, an honorable artist of Iranian music who has always embraced people’s pain… deserves the highest honors, not a cruel punishment like flogging… We, a group of Iran’s artistic community, warn of the social and cultural consequences of imposing punishment, pressure and disrespect on popular artists and strongly condemn such behaviour.”

Mehdi Yarrahi wrote on the day after his beating, “You have brought glass to break our stone”, quoting from a song he wrote during the 2022 uprising, “Life’s Anthem”:

You who have infamously occupied our throne,
you have brought glass to break our stone…”

Addressing the people, he goes on to sing:

Free your head from the yoke of slavery…
Behold, behold the coming morning!
Draw up a novel plan!
Strike the overturned throne!

Check out Life’s Anthem, subtitled in English, and others on his YouTube channel.

On March 14, Narges Mohammadi, herself on temporary medical furlough from Evin Prison, wrote that she and a group of activists and artists visited Mehdi Yarrahi to show their support. She wrote:

Mehdi Yarrahi is one of those artists who stand with the people of Iran, singing for them and paying the price not only through the deprivation of his art but also through imprisonment and lashes. He became the voice of the people in the powerful “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement. His songs, alongside those of other protesting artists, echoed from the throats of protesters, the imprisoned, and those in captivity…

In response to recent threats by the IRI to cancel the medical leave of Narges Mohammadi, Nobel Peace Laureate 2023, and return her to prison, more than 85 former Nobel laureates issued a joint statement calling for her immediate and unconditional release, and for all other political prisoners. Their following statement was also supported by Nobel Women’s Initiative and PEN America:

We, Nobel Laureates from across disciplines around the world, call for the full and unconditional release of our sister laureate Narges Mohammadi, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize 2023. Narges was recognized “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all”, becoming the fifth person to be awarded the prize while in prison.

‍Narges Mohammadi left Tehran’s notorious Evin prison on temporary medical leave in December 2024. We have united at this moment because her freedom remains tenuous and can be revoked at any time. We call for the temporary release to become permanent. Her resilience ignites a global call to action, reminding us that the pursuit of justice and freedom knows no borders.

Narges Mohammadi, like tens of thousands of human rights defenders, opposition politicians, artists, journalists and outspoken opponents of the Iranian regime, was imprisoned on politically motivated charges. She was imprisoned in 2016, and has faced six additional trials adding over 13 years to her sentence. She has continued to be an outspoken opponent of the regime and an advocate for women’s rights even behind bars. Her tireless fight for justice embodies the spirit of resistance against tyranny.

‍Her struggle is not hers alone—it is a shared fight for every woman, every political prisoner, and every soul who dares to stand against oppression. [Emphasis by IEC]

‍“The ropes of the gallows will be torn by the powerful hands of each and every one of us. I hope for the day when execution chambers and gallows serve only as reminders of tyranny’s cruelty and as lessons for our pursuit of humanity, freedom, and equality” — Narges Mohammadi

We stand with Narges Mohammadi and with all those unjustly imprisoned for daring to envision a more just and equitable Iran and call on the international community to rise in solidarity and amplify the rallying cry that reverberates across Iran: “Women, Life, Freedom.”

Together, let us demand justice for Narges Mohammadi and for all those who defy oppression with courage, hope, and an unbreakable will. We, the undersigned Nobel laureates, demand the unconditional release and the dismissal of all charges against Narges Mohammadi.

Let the Spirit of Fearless and Selfless Resistance Spread Around the World — and Free Iran’s Political Prisoners

Yarrahi’s music stands as part of the growing resistance of writers, filmmakers and musicians to the reactionary, murderous regime. As Narges’ post speaks to, the regime’s retribution for WLF support from these artists point to the exceptional role they play in concentrating the rage of the people against injustice, expressing their common humanity, and to dreaming of a far better future for how society and people could be.

In the turbulent and threatening situation in the world today, and in the US in particular (see revcom.us), this courageous and principled stand is one which should be spread and emulated with haste and a love for the world’s oppressed humanity, including the implacable resisters to women’s oppression in Iran. Donate and actively participate in the work of the IEC today at www.freeiranspoliticalprisonersnow.org

Towards our common hopes and aspirations, we want to share the photo of the courageous IWD celebration/gathering held in Tehran on March 2, 2025:

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FOOTNOTE:

1.  Three prior cases had already been filed against him on charges like "propaganda against the system" and "collusion and assembly against national security" for his protest songs. Through most of his musical career which began in 2010, Mehdi Yarrahi has dealt with social themes like pollution in Khuzestan, the Iran-Iraq war, workers’ conditions, and the struggles of women. For this he has been banned from performing several times. In the RooSarito case, the song was called “illegal and unethical” and he was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison (one year required to be served) and 74 lashes. He served much of the first year under house arrest with an ankle bracelet due to medical problems in prison.  

Breaking: At the end of this article, see a Statement signed by (as of March 4) 191 former prisoners in support of this lawsuit,

A civil suit was filed in Orlando, Florida on February 10, 2025 against Parviz Sabeti, a former head of the SAVAK, secret police under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi Shah of Iran. (Installed in a U.S. CIA coup in 1953, the Shah was overthrown in 1979.^[1]) An “exclusive” article in The Independent (UK)summarized much of the lawsuit. Below are extensive excerpts from the lawsuit which detail the crimes of the late Shah’s regime, but also expose the links to the current Islamic regime in Iran.

Three former political prisoners during the Shah’s reign (John Doe 1, 2, 3), now living in California, allege that Sabeti “…planned, supervised and advocated for the arrest, detention and the extended torture of perceived political opponents of the Shah’s repressive regime—frequently merely artists, writers, playwrights, and students—in violation of laws against torture and crimes against humanity…” (#6 of lawsuit). There are already threats circulating against the lawyers/firm who filed this lawsuit by the late Shah’s fascist social base monarchist thugs in the U.S.

The suit says Sabeti hid his location and identity for 40 years but resurfaced during the 2022-2023 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising. “The former Shah’s son, Prince Reza Pahlavi, and even Defendant Sabeti have been presented by Monarchists as the leaders who should replace the Islamic Republic.” (#12) The three California residents (ages 72, 85, 68), like millions of others in the Iranian Diaspora, want justice and fear potentially even greater horrors if a new version of the Shah’s regime returns to Iran.

Depraved Sadism of U.S.-Shah’s SAVAK and Henchman

Under “Statement of Facts,” the lawsuit’s visceral and sickening descriptions of Sabeti and the SAVAK include (#34) “SAVAK functioned both as an intelligence agency and security force, with functionally unlimited power to censor the media, screen applicants for government jobs, and use all means necessary to hunt down and persecute dissidents. SAVAK played the role of police, prosecutor, and magistrate in Iran, as recognized by the U.S. Department of State.”

The “Facts” section of the lawsuit states that SAVAK carried out “…mass arrests and torture of thousands of perceived political opponents, including lawyers, writers, theater directors, university teachers, members of ethnic minorities groups, intellectuals, students, activists, artists and political rivals…without judicial oversight, and detainees were not informed of charges against them…” (#36)

The SAVAK also hunted down Iranian students and other dissidents abroad including in the U.S. It was popularly known among activists and academics that the SAVAK was trained and managed by the U.S. CIA and Israel secret police Mossad.^[2]

The gruesome list of SAVAK torture techniques listed in this “Facts” section includes: beating bloody the bottom of detainee’s feet, “…sleep deprivation; extensive solitary confinement; glaring searchlights; standing in one place for hours on end; nail extractions; snakes (favored for use with women); electrical shocks with cattle prods, often into the rectum; cigarette burns; sitting on hot grills; acid dripped into nostrils; near-drownings; mock executions; and an electric chair with a large metal mask to muffle screams while amplifying them for the victim. This latter contraption was dubbed the Apollo—an allusion to the American space capsules. Prisoners were also humiliated by being raped, urinated on, and forced to stand naked… Mehdi Rezai, a political prisoner, recounted his torture by SAVAK in open court and accused Sabeti of having urinated in his mouth.” (#40)

Publicizing confessions coerced under torture was one of the SAVAK’s specialties inherited by the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). This is the supposed benevolent regime of the Shah (and his SAVAK) who was warmly welcomed and hosted by the late U.S. president Jimmy Carter in 1979 at the White House.

SAVAK of the Shah Is SAVAMA of the IRI

Under the section “Absence of Available Remedies in Iran” there is searing exposure of the transformation of the Shah’s SAVAK into the Mullahs’ SAVAMA, and the ongoing active relations between Sabeti and the current IRI regime. It asserts, “Upon the removal of the Shah from power in 1979, the newly formed Islamic Republic of Iran … apprehended some members of the former regime, including some high-ranking officials associated with SAVAK. However, … rather than eliminating SAVAK, the Islamic Republic effectively rebranded it as a new security entity…(‘SAVAMA’). …SAVAMA was to serve essentially the same purpose as SAVAK—to stop the proliferation of opposition organizations in Iran and acquire intelligence on Iraq by employing the experienced ex-intelligence officers of SAVAK and the military. …SAVAMA contained many of the same staff members and senior leaders as SAVAK, thereby functionally continuing SAVAK's reign of terror. The appointment of General Hossein Fardust, a former Deputy Director for SAVAK, as the head of SAVAMA exemplifies the collaboration between former SAVAK personnel and the Islamic Republic. …Members of SAVAK were also integrated into Iran's intelligence system” (#116-#119).

The facts marshalled in this lawsuit not only serve to inform the mostly younger activists in Iran and in the Iranian diaspora who did not experience the horrors of the Shah’s regime, they also objectively indict the U.S. imperialists who were the Shah’s chief backers. The lawsuit also directly denounces^[3] the efforts of some imperialist forces to use the former Shah’s son, “Prince” Reza Pahlavi (PRP), as a vehicle for an imperialist-backed regime change which would more effectively repress the people’s movement from below. The “Prince” brags of having close connections with and support from military and paramilitary forces in the IRI. ^[4] Sabeti’s ongoing connections are probably one key to this.

Too many otherwise informed activists in the Iranian Diaspora have focused their efforts on lobbying to get the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp) labeled as a “foreign terrorist organization” (FTO) by the Western imperialists like the U.S.—which the U.S. did do in April 2019. The facts exposed in this lawsuit demonstrate the foolishness and irony of these efforts, which objectively let the U.S./CIA (or Mossad) off the hook and show (willful) ignorance of history and reality. As the IEC keeps repeating, our Emergency Appeal insists that:

The governments of the U.S. and Iran act from their national interests. And, in this instance, we the people of the U.S. and Iran, along with the people of the world, have OUR shared interests, as part of getting to a better world: to unite to defend the political prisoners of Iran. In the U.S., we have a special responsibility to unite very broadly against this vile repression by the IRI, and to actively oppose any war moves by the U.S. government that would bring even more unbearable suffering to the people of Iran. We demand of the Islamic Republic of Iran: FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS NOW! We say to the U.S. government: NO THREATS OR WAR MOVES AGAINST IRAN, LIFT U.S. SANCTIONS!

On one side, many in the U.S. “left” refused to support this campaign with the refrain that the IEC was “helping the U.S.” by exposing the crimes of the IRI, while those on the opposite side of the same stupidity charged that we were aiding the IRI by our second demand to the U.S. government. In the “background” section of the “resources” tab of the IEC’s website, there is this all important analysis that frames what IEC initiators and organizers see as crucial:

Some of us working on the Campaign have been inspired by the groundbreaking analysis of the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian on the global clash between imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism. We find this analysis to be an accurate framework to understand the global dynamics and symbiotic relations between these two contending oppressive powers. We wanted to share this with IEC supporters and activists, and others fighting on behalf of Iran’s political prisoners even as it has bigger applicability in our current world (e.g., U.S. vs Afghanistan, Russia vs Chechnya, etc.)

In BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian (1:28), he writes,

What we see in contention here with Jihad on the one hand and McWorld/McCrusade [increasingly globalized western imperialism] on the other hand, are historically outmoded strata among colonized and oppressed humanity up against historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system. These two reactionary poles reinforce each other, even while opposing each other. If you side with either of these "outmodeds," you end up strengthening both.

While this is a very important formulation and is crucial to understanding much of the dynamics driving things in the world in this period, at the same time we do have to be clear about which of these "historically outmodeds" has done the greater damage and poses the greater threat to humanity: It is the historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system, and in particular the U.S. imperialists.

Political Prisoner Golrokh Iraee Writes from Evin

Golrokh Iraee is a long-time fighter for women’s rights who is in Evin Prison, sentenced to 6 years for "assembly and collusion against national security” and 1 year for “propaganda against the regime" for alleged plans to join the Woman, Life, Freedom protests in September 2022.^[5]

Her Instagram account recently posted two notable messages:

*On the lawsuit against Parvis Sabeti, it said, in part: “The end of this current dictatorship is possible by cutting off this Washington-based proxy group and the hidden arms of power. Until people’s courts are held in Iran and all murderers and torturers are tried and punished.” (2/25/2025) By “Washington-based proxy group,” she refers to the monarchists grouped around Reza Pahlavi, and rejects their strategy of relying on forces of the current IRI.

*The day before, her IG post called for a broad movement of the oppressed people “willing to pay the price” to stop executions, in contrast to waiting on some kind of “spontaneous” change by the IRI.

Appearing in front of prisons, which was recently carried out in connection with the “Tuesdays No to Execution” campaign, is a big step towards drawing public opinion to the horrific dimensions of the death penalty. Every year, dozens of people lose their precious lives on political charges and hundreds are killed for murder, drugs, robbery, etc. These dear souls, no matter what they are accused of, even if they deserve to be punished, must rise up against their death sentences and force the rulers to abolish this brutal punishment. The cycle of government killings will stop, but not spontaneously and not at the will of the rulers. This is possible only if we the oppressed people stand tall against it. Until the abolition of the death penalty and the overthrow of the foundation of oppression….

In order to bring about fundamental changes and break the laws that are the backbone of the system for domination, repression, and intimidation, we must pay a price. If the opposition to the abolition of the death penalty is public, tangible, and on the ground, the regime cannot take thousands of lives every year with brazenness and evil.

In the increase in the number of executions, the finger of blame is pointed, after the tyrannical rulers, at ourselves, who despite 46 years of murder and crime, have always been a bystander and have not been able to draw public opinion to the horror of what is happening. Unlike in the past, the Islamic Republic seeks to … obtain approval from public opinion in order to justify the issuance and execution of the death penalty. Therefore, in such circumstances, it is the responsibility of the progressive forces to make public opinion more aware of the horrific dimensions of the incident than ever before, and to prepare the ground for protest and turn the field into an arena of struggle until the abolition of the death penalty.

We think Golrokh’s comments have important relevance to this historic and tumultuous time in our world. We call on all justice loving people of the world to stand in solidarity with, and continue the struggle for, freeing ALL Iran’s political prisoners with due compassion, passion and urgency.

Collective statement from political prisoners from the era of Mohammad Reza Shah: We support the lawsuit and trial of Parviz Sabeti!

Posted in Farsi by Akhbar Rooz and reposted to IG by Golrokh Iraee on March 3, 2025. Below is a curated mechanical translation.

We, a group of political prisoners from the dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah, who were tortured in SAVAK prisons and witnessed the physical and mental torture of other political prisoners, and who still bear the scars of torture and whipping on our bodies and souls, declare our firm support for the trial of [lawsuit against] Parviz Sabeti, head of the Third Directorate of SAVAK and responsible for the widespread human rights violations of the previous regime.

This lawsuit, which was courageously initiated by three of our former prisoners, is an important step in the path of seeking justice and ending the impunity of SAVAK criminals. As direct victims of the system of torture and repression, we know very well that the truth about the crimes that have been covered up for years and the realization of justice are essential conditions for preventing their repetition in the future.

Parviz Sabeti, as a key official of SAVAK, played a senior and direct supervisory role in the planning, directing and execution of the repression, torture and murder of political prisoners and the violation of the fundamental rights of thousands of people in Iran. Now, his trial has a clear message: the crime will not be forgotten and the criminals will eventually face justice, albeit late.

This trial is also a warning to the torturers and oppressors of the Islamic Republic regime who think that they will escape justice with the passage of time. We have emerged from the black holes of torture and oppression and are living proof of the fact that neither the crime will be forgotten nor will the lawsuit be stopped.

We emphasize and support the indisputable right of our former fellow prisoners to seek a fair trial and call on human rights institutions, awakened consciences, and all forces seeking justice to follow and strengthen this process. The demand for justice is a right that is never subject to the passage of time.

We, the political prisoners of the former regime, the signatories of this statement, declare our full readiness to appear in any court to testify about the torture and murder in the Shah's prisons.