In the chilling silence of the Mashhad Intelligence Department, the sound of a telephone ringing is a rare bridge to the outside world.  On the night of December 14, 2025, that bridge materialized for the family of Alieh Motalebzadeh.  The call was short, the speakerphone was on, and a security agent stood over her, monitoring every syllable.

Through the crackle of the line, Motalebzadeh, a renowned journalist and women’s rights activist, delivered a message that was less a greeting and more a desperate medical bulletin.  She had been beaten during her arrest.  She was being held in a facility run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).  Most critically, she was a breast cancer survivor being denied the life-saving medications required to keep her illness in remission.

Motalebzadeh is just one of at least 39 individuals swept up in a violent crackdown on December 12, 2025.  Their “crime” was attending a memorial service for Khosro Alikordi, a human rights lawyer who recently died under suspicious circumstances.  But as the gates of Vakilabad Prison and the Soroush Detention Center closed behind them, the narrative shifted from a story of political protest to a race against biological time.

Among the detainees is Narges Mohammadi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate whose name has become synonymous with the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement.  Her arrest was not a standard procedure; it was an assault.  According to her family, Mohammadi was struck repeatedly on the head and neck with batons by plainclothes agents.

The violence was so severe that she had to be rushed to an emergency room twice within the first 72 hours of her disappearance.  During the assault, agents reportedly whispered a chilling psychological blow: “We will put your mother into mourning.”  In the vocabulary of the Iranian security apparatus, this is not just an insult; it is a direct death threat.

Mohammadi now faces charges of “cooperating with Israel” — a capital offense often used to justify the “physical elimination” of high-profile dissidents.  For a woman already suffering from heart complications exacerbated by years of intermittent incarceration, the combination of physical trauma and the denial of specialized care transforms her detention into a slow-motion execution.

The cruelty of the Mashhad crackdown is perhaps most visible in the cases of Alieh Motalebzadeh and Pouran Nazemi.  Their stories highlight a recurring tactic of the Iranian state: the use of medical neglect as a form of torture.

Motalebzadeh’s daughter has taken to social media to broadcast her mother’s plight, noting that after three days of enforced disappearance, her mother appeared physically broken.  The “assembly and collusion” charges leveled against her ignore the reality that her primary struggle is no longer political; it is the battle to access the chemotherapy and radiotherapy follow-up care that keeps her alive.

Similarly, the sister of activist Pouran Nazemi has issued a frantic warning.  Nazemi suffers from severe kidney and liver disease.  During a previous stint in prison, she suffered a cardiac arrest after being administered medication she was known to be allergic to.  Today, she sits in a cell without access to her specialized prescriptions.  “The responsibility for the health and life of my sister lies with the mercenaries of the Islamic Republic,” her sister wrote in a statement that has echoed across Iranian digital networks.

Because the Iranian state-controlled media remain silent on the conditions of these women, the truth has emerged through the “digital resistance” of their children and siblings.  On Instagram and X (formerly Twitter), families are posting updates that often disappear after 24 hours due to platform settings or state-pressured deletions.

Marzieh Adinehzadeh, whose 17-year-old brother was killed in the 2022 protests, now posts about her father, Ali Adinehzadeh, who was also arrested at the memorial.  He suffers from heart disease and has been prohibited from making calls.  These families are not just mourning the dead; they are fighting to prevent the list of martyrs from growing.  They represent a “network of grief” that the state is desperately trying to dismantle by targeting everyone from Nobel winners to grieving fathers.

The walls of Iran’s prisons are porous when it comes to courage.  As news of the Mashhad arrests reached the women’s ward of Evin Prison in Tehran, political prisoner Sakineh Parvaneh announced a hunger strike.  In a letter smuggled out of the prison, she noted the bitter irony: The state claims to honor the families of “martyrs,” yet they arrested Javad Alikordi — the brother of the slain lawyer — while he was still in mourning.

From Qezel Hesar Prison, activist Ahmadreza Haeri also raised his voice, condemning the “thugs” who attacked Alieh Motalebzadeh.  “The voice of truth will not be drowned out by the barking of your unleashed dogs,” he wrote.  This cross-prison solidarity underscores that the detainees in Mashhad are not alone, even if they are in solitary confinement.

The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) has called on the U.N. high commissioner for human rights and the international community to demand the immediate release of these 39 individuals.  The charges — “propaganda against the state” and “disturbing public opinion” — are the standard tools of a regime that views a funeral as a threat to national security.

However, for the women left in the dark in Mashhad, the legal terminology matters less than the arrival of a pharmacy bag or a doctor.  As every hour passes without medication for Motalebzadeh or Nazemi, and as Narges Mohammadi remains in an undisclosed location following a head injury, the international community’s silence becomes a form of complicity.

In the struggle for human rights in Iran, the “human” is often lost in the “rights.”  But for the families waiting by the phone for a monitored call, the issue is simple: They want their mothers and sisters to come home before their bodies give out under the weight of a state that fears their grief more than their words.

Image: Ninara via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.