Days after her arrest, Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi was able to make a phone call to her family. During the call, she informed them that security authorities had charged her with “collaborating with Israel.”
Mohammadi had participated last Friday in the city of Mashhad in a memorial ceremony for lawyer and human rights activist Khosrow Ali Kordi. His death from a sudden heart attack in his office sparked widespread controversy within Iranian opposition circles, particularly after security authorities confiscated the cameras installed at the entrances of the building where he died and barred his lawyers from accessing them.
Khosrow Ali Kordi was a member of the “Khorasan National Front,” a civil opposition group with an inclusive national identity. He used his profession and office to defend political prisoners and prisoners of conscience regardless of their political affiliations or ethnic backgrounds, eventually becoming a symbol of civil resistance and peaceful struggle. It was therefore natural for his memorial to take on a national dimension, with participation from across the spectrum of the Iranian opposition.
According to a statement issued by the Khorasan National Front, what occurred at the time of the gathering was that young men unknown to the participants entered the courtyard of the mosque where the memorial was being held and began disrupting the speakers by chanting provocative slogans. When Mohammadi took the stage, the young men did not limit themselves to chanting against her but also threw stones at her. A video recording shows the moment Mohammadi was struck by a stone while delivering her speech. The provocation then escalated further, as security forces surrounded the area and stormed the gathering using batons and rifle butts, bringing the ceremony to an end after arresting 40 people, including Mohammadi.
Websites affiliated with the Iranian opposition reported that Mohammadi was subjected to repeated and severe blows with batons to her head and neck. One of the security officers reportedly told her, “We will make your mother grieve for you.” The assault was so violent that it required her transfer to the emergency room twice over two consecutive days following her detention.
In her brief phone call with her family, Mohammadi said that her physical condition was not good, though her psychological state remained stable. In a statement published by her family on social media, citing testimonies from several participants, it was reported that “more than 15 individuals rushed to assault Narges. Some were pulling her hair violently, while others were beating her with batons and sticks.” Others added that “among those who attacked Mohammadi were individuals who did not appear to be Iranian, as we heard them insulting her in heavily accented Persian. It is possible that they were members of Shiite militias trained in repression and based in Iran.”
The Revolutionary Prosecutor in Mashhad announced the arrest of 39 people during the memorial ceremony for Khosrow Ali Kordi. All remain in detention. Among those arrested are human rights activists Sepideh Gholian and Pouran Nazemi, as well as Alia Motebalizadeh, who is battling cancer. Also detained is Javad Ali Kordi, Khosrow’s brother, who is also a lawyer and a former detainee serving a suspended sentence. The prosecutor accused him of organizing and managing Friday’s ceremony, while pro-regime figures accused him of supporting Netanyahu. In a video published after the confrontation, Ali Kordi said he had been inside the mosque preparing for the ceremony when he was informed that government forces had surrounded the building. When he stepped into the courtyard, he saw large numbers of intelligence officers, riot police, and security forces assaulting the attendees.
Following the incident, the European Union issued a statement calling for the release of Mohammadi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Meanwhile, her fellow activist and former detainee Nasrin Sotoudeh released a statement saying she arrived at the site after the gathering had been dispersed due to a delayed flight. “Despite the courtyard being completely empty,” she said, “Basij forces were still arriving in large numbers, wearing black shirts and carrying batons.”
Regarding the political significance of the disruption of Khosrow Ali Kordi’s memorial and the arrest of such a large number of prominent human rights activists, Iranian opposition figures explain that the gathering was not merely a commemoration of a beloved figure’s death. Rather, it served as a reminder that preserving the legacy of activists is itself part of the struggle for human dignity, and a form of political dissent and peaceful civil resistance.
Lawyer Khosrow Ali Kordi was not simply a skilled legal professional and meticulous case reader, but also a courageous human rights defender. For Iranian opposition groups, particularly among Kurds, the loss of someone like him represents the silencing of a voice that fought for a better future for his people and for a more just and equal society. As a result, the memorial turned into a confrontation with the regime, or into a moment whose meaning transcended emotion and became firmly rooted in politics.
Iranian society, having lost most spaces for expression and freedom, has been forced to transform social occasions into arenas for political practice. What happened in Mashhad offers a clear example of how a memorial ceremony can turn into an act of protest. When authority confiscates and monopolizes public space, everyday movement becomes political, and social rituals are transformed into moments that redefine the relationship between society and the state. People’s actions acquire political weight, and ordinary gatherings become acts of reclaiming space, the right to go out, the right to appear, and the right to meet.
Such rituals, with their deeply rooted symbolic value in the collective consciousness, have long served as the infrastructure for major social and political transformations. Any regime may be able to disperse a gathering, but it remains incapable of erasing its meaning from collective memory.
In this context, Iranian opposition figures have described the dispersal of the gathering in Mashhad and the subsequent arrests as a clear indicator of the regime’s fear and disarray. Despite its brutal repression, the authorities are aware that they are incapable of extinguishing the Iranian people’s yearning for freedom. They also recognize that the protest movement in Iran is decentralized and leaderless, and therefore will not collapse with the arrest or removal of a handful of figures.
Human experience around the world shows that major political transformations have often been the result of horizontal, non-centralized movements. Iran’s “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, for example, which lacks a centralized leadership, has nonetheless succeeded in producing structural change within the country.
Since the failure of the Green Movement and its leaders Mehdi Karroubi, Mir Hossein Mousavi, and Zahra Rahnavard to lead political change in Iran, due to intertwined factors foremost among them the regime’s bloody repression, Iran’s protest movement has evolved into a horizontal one. That is, it has become a broad network of small, everyday acts.
Leaderless and centerless protest movements, uprising after uprising, have demonstrated that armed resistance is not a prerequisite for struggle. Symbolic acts such as civil disobedience, demonstrations, the creation of counter-narratives to official discourse, and the removal of the hijab in public spaces have all proven to be effective forms of resistance.
From this perspective, what occurred in Mashhad cannot be read as an isolated security incident. Rather, it reflects a structural dilemma confronting the Iranian regime, which has come to realize that the protest movement is no longer centralized or containable, and that the country is witnessing a horizontal mobilization: women have rebelled against compulsory veiling, a generation of young people no longer accepts the system, and social occasions are increasingly transformed into acts of resistance and expressions of political dissent.
