154 Lashes: The Unbroken Spirit of Narges Mohammadi

By Dr Naim Tahir Baig

BOOK DESCRIPTION

154 Lashes: The Unbroken Spirit of Narges Mohammadi

154 Lashes presents the definitive biography of Narges Mohammadi, the Iranian human rights activist and 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureate whose extraordinary courage has made her the living symbol of Iran's freedom movement. The title refers to the cumulative corporal punishment sentences handed down by Iranian courts against Mohammadi for her human rights work—a stark numerical testament to both the brutality of state repression and her unwavering resistance against it.

Born in 1972 in northwestern Iran to an Iranian Azerbaijani family, Mohammadi's journey toward activism was shaped by childhood memories of her mother preparing weekly fruit baskets for prison visits and listening to radio announcements of executions. These formative experiences, including the execution of her uncle and cousins following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, planted the seeds of a lifetime commitment to human rights that no amount of persecution could extinguish.

Dr. Naim Tahir Baig traces Mohammadi's remarkable trajectory from physics student at Imam Khomeini International University, where she founded student organizations and women's mountaineering groups, to her role as vice president of the Defenders of Human Rights Center alongside Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi. The biography chronicles her tireless campaign against the death penalty through her organization Legam, her groundbreaking documentation of torture in her two-volume work White Torture, and her emergence as a leader of the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement following the death of Mahsa Jina Amini in 2022.

This comprehensive work documents the staggering personal cost of Mohammadi's activism: thirteen arrests, five convictions, sentences totaling thirty-six years of imprisonment, and 154 lashes. It examines her painful separation from her twin children Kiana and Ali, who have not seen their mother in person for eleven years and who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf in Oslo while she remained imprisoned in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison. The book explores the phenomenon of "white torture"—the psychological devastation of solitary confinement in soundproof white cells—which Mohammadi has experienced firsthand and exposed to the world.

Drawing from verified primary sources including Nobel Prize documentation, international human rights reports, court records, Mohammadi's own writings, and interviews with major news organizations, 154 Lashes presents not merely the story of one woman's resistance but a comprehensive chronicle of Iran's human rights crisis. From the 1979 Islamic Revolution through the 2022 nationwide protests to her most recent arrest on December 12, 2025, the narrative illuminates how individual courage can challenge entrenched authoritarianism and inspire global movements for justice.

This biography is essential reading for scholars of Middle Eastern politics, human rights advocates, students of resistance movements, and all who believe that one voice, raised in defiance, can change the course of history. Mohammadi's story demonstrates that the human spirit, when fortified by conviction, cannot be broken by any number of lashes, years of imprisonment, or threats of "physical elimination."

As Mohammadi herself has declared from within her prison walls: "I am full of hope, and free from any worries or frustration." Her story is ultimately one of triumph—not over her captors, but over despair itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dr Naim Tahir Baig
• Release date: Dec 15, 2025
• ISBN: 9798232711757

Dr Naim Tahir Baig

Dr. Naim Tahir Baig can be described as a Political Analyst, Geopolitical Strategist, Military and Security Studies Expert, Intelligence and Espionage Scholar, Social Commentator, Philosopher of Contemporary Issues, Digital Economy Specialist, Islamic Scholar and Interfaith Commentator, Poet and Literary Author, Regional Studies Expert, Multidisciplinary Intellectual, and Pakistan-Centric Analyst, reflecting his diverse expertise across politics, geopolitics, military strategy, intelligence, social commentary, business, religion, literature, and regional studies. Published Books of Dr. Naim Tahir Baig   Learn AI Fast: A Practical Guide for Busy Professionals Nuclear Orbits: From Soviet Satellites to Russian Space Power Trump vs. Putin: The Secrets Of Alaska Summit 2025 Nuclear Weapons in Space Trump's Siege on the Fed: Politics, Power, and the Fracturing of Global Finance The Great Realignment The Last Rock's Secret War: Okinotorishima The New American Empire In 2025 Fractured Faith: The Ken Paxton Divorce Scandal and the Crisis of Conservative Authenticity The Boomer Blockade: How an Aging Generation is Reshaping Global Power and Economics at Younger Generations' Expense Kiss Cam Crisis GAZA: The word 'ETHICS' is at stake Tarifaço: Trump's Tariff Assault on Brazil and the Battle for Hemispheric Power Love Seized Why Pakistan Can't Be Ignored ? Abandoning UNESCO, Abandoning America's Global Leadership Knowledge at the Cost of Drinking Water Artificial Intelligence Reshapes Nations' Strategic Cultures America Party Geopolitical Realignments And U.S. Decline Echoes of Love After Life After The Break-up Mental Health and Digital Wellness: Navigating the Hyper-Connected World Shadow War 2025: Israel's Secret Army Inside Iran Operation True Promise 3 2nd Edition: Operation Rising Lion: Israel's Strike Against Iran's Nuclear Program Behind The Veil Of Deception: Catherine Perez-Shakdam Operation Rising Lion 2025: Israel's Strike on Iran's Nuclear Program

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PREFACE

Dr. Naim Tahir Baig

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In my three decades of scholarship examining international relations, geopolitical dynamics, and human rights, I have encountered countless narratives of courage against oppression. Yet few have moved me as profoundly as the story of Narges Mohammadi—a woman whose very existence has become an act of resistance, whose imprisonment has amplified rather than silenced her voice, and whose suffering has illuminated the darkest corners of authoritarian brutality for the entire world to witness.

The title of this work, 154 Lashes, emerged not from a desire for sensationalism but from a conviction that certain numbers possess the power to convey what thousands of words cannot. One hundred fifty-four lashes represent the cumulative corporal punishment sentences imposed upon Mohammadi by the Iranian judiciary—not for violence, not for theft, not for any crime that civilized societies would recognize, but for the simple act of speaking truth to power. Each lash represents a word she refused to retract, a prisoner she defended, a victim whose story she insisted on telling. In this arithmetic of persecution, we find the measure of both tyranny's cruelty and courage's cost.

Having authored over one hundred internationally published works spanning international relations, strategic studies, political analysis, and contemporary history, I approached this biography with the methodological rigor my scholarly training demands. Every claim in these pages has been verified against primary sources: Nobel Prize documentation, human rights organization reports, court records, international journalism from outlets including The New York Times, TIME Magazine, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, and The Economist, as well as Mohammadi's own writings, including her compelling work White Torture. Where sources conflict, I have noted the discrepancies; where certainty proves elusive, I have acknowledged ambiguity. This is not hagiography but biography—a distinction essential to honoring both historical truth and the subject herself.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has arrested Narges Mohammadi thirteen times. It has convicted her five times. It has sentenced her to a cumulative thirty-six years of imprisonment and one hundred fifty-four lashes. It has separated her from her children for eleven years. It has subjected her to solitary confinement in white cells designed to break the human spirit. It has returned her to prison immediately following heart surgery. It has, according to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, threatened her with physical elimination. And yet—and this is the inexplicable miracle at the heart of this narrative—it has failed to break her.

When I began researching this project in earnest, Mohammadi was serving her sentence in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison, organizing dance parties for fellow inmates and leading educational workshops in the women's ward. By December 2024, she had been granted a temporary medical furlough following surgery to remove a potentially cancerous bone lesion. Throughout 2025, despite repeated warnings from regime agents, she continued her activism with characteristic defiance—refusing to wear the mandatory hijab, meeting with fellow activists across Iran, and addressing international audiences via video conference. On December 12, 2025, as I was finalizing this manuscript, news arrived that she had been violently arrested once again in Mashhad while attending a memorial for human rights lawyer Khosrow Alikordi, whose suspicious death had drawn mourners and activists from across the country.

The timing felt less like coincidence than confirmation. This is a story without a conclusion because the struggle it documents remains ongoing. Mohammadi's narrative is not a historical artifact but a living chronicle, each day adding new chapters of courage and persecution.

My work in political analysis and geopolitical strategy has taught me that authoritarian systems possess remarkable resilience. The Islamic Republic has survived forty-six years of internal dissent, international pressure, economic sanctions, and the aspirations of a population that has known no other government. It has developed sophisticated mechanisms of control—from the morality police who arrested Mahsa Jina Amini to the revolutionary courts that have sentenced Mohammadi repeatedly to the torture chambers that she has documented in White Torture. These systems do not crumble easily.

And yet my research into resistance movements has also revealed a consistent pattern: authoritarian systems that appear invincible in one decade often collapse with stunning rapidity in the next. The Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Union dissolved. Apartheid ended. No regime built on the suppression of human dignity has proven permanent. The Woman, Life, Freedom movement that erupted following Amini's death in September 2022 may not have toppled the Islamic Republic, but it planted seeds that continue to germinate. In courtrooms, in prisons, in streets, and in homes where women remove their headscarves despite the consequences, the struggle persists.

Narges Mohammadi occupies a unique position in this struggle. She is neither politician nor revolutionary in the conventional sense. She has not advocated violence or called for foreign intervention. Her weapons are documentation, testimony, and the simple insistence on being seen and heard. Her book White Torture transformed personal suffering into evidence for future prosecutions. Her letters from prison have appeared in international publications. Her smuggled Nobel lecture, delivered by her seventeen-year-old twins in Oslo, reached a global audience of millions. She has demonstrated that moral authority, consistently exercised, can challenge material power.

This biography is organized thematically and chronologically, following Mohammadi's journey from her childhood in northwestern Iran through her student activism, her marriage to fellow activist Taghi Rahmani, her work with the Defenders of Human Rights Center, her campaigns against the death penalty, her documentation of torture, her role in the 2022 protest movement, her Nobel Prize, and her continuing activism and persecution through December 2025. I have included appendices documenting her complete arrest and sentencing history, her awards and honors, biographical information on key figures, a glossary of relevant terms and organizations, and a comprehensive bibliography of primary sources.

Throughout this work, I have endeavored to let Mohammadi speak in her own voice wherever possible. Her writings—from her early political essays to her prison letters to her Nobel lecture—reveal a mind of remarkable clarity and a spirit of extraordinary resilience. My role as biographer has been not to interpret but to contextualize, not to judge but to document, not to mythologize but to humanize. Narges Mohammadi is not a saint but a woman—a mother separated from her children, a wife whose husband lives in exile, a daughter who witnessed her family's persecution, an engineer who chose activism over safety, a prisoner who organizes dance parties in her cell block. Her heroism is not superhuman but deeply, inspiringly human.

I write this preface in December 2025, three days after Mohammadi's most recent arrest. Her whereabouts remain unclear. Her health remains precarious. Her future remains uncertain. But her message has already escaped every prison that has held her, reached every corner of the globe, and inspired countless others to speak when silence would be safer.

In the end, 154 Lashes is not merely the story of Narges Mohammadi. It is the story of every prisoner of conscience who has chosen integrity over survival, truth over comfort, and resistance over resignation. It is the story of every mother who has wept for her children while remaining true to her principles. It is the story of every woman who has removed her headscarf in defiance of laws designed to control her body. It is the story of human dignity asserting itself against all the instruments of its suppression.

I offer this work to readers with the hope that it serves as both documentation and inspiration—evidence of what authoritarianism inflicts and testimony to what it cannot destroy.

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Dr. Naim Tahir Baig

Ph.D. in International Relations Author of 100+ Internationally Published Works Specialist in Geopolitical Analysis, Strategic Studies, and Human Rights

PDS&CE, Pakistan

December 2025

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The abolition of the mandatory hijab is equivalent to the abolition of all roots of religious tyranny and the breaking of the chains of authoritarian oppression.

— Narges Mohammadi, Nobel Prize Speech, 2023

PART I: ROOTS OF RESISTANCE (1972–1998)

Two childhood memories led her on the path to activism: her mother cramming a red plastic shopping basket with fruit each week for prison visits with her brother, and her mother sitting on the floor near the television to hear the names of prisoners executed each day.

— The New York Times, 2023

Chapter 1: The Red Basket

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In the wake of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, she was a witness to the arrests of her activist uncle and two cousins. In an interview to New York Times, she recalls how her childhood memories propelled her to be an activist. Two particular images stand out: the image of her mother packing a red plastic basket with fruits every week for prison visits with her brother, and the sight of her mother sitting on the floor, eagerly listening to the names of prisoners being executed daily on TV when Mohammadi was just nine.¹

The city of Zanjan sits in northwestern Iran, about 170 miles northwest of Tehran, a city with a history of progressive, left-leaning politics.² On April 21, 1972, in this predominantly Azerbaijani city, Narges Mohammadi was born into a middle-class family whose trajectory would be forever altered by the revolutionary upheavals soon to engulf Iran.³

Her father worked as a cook and farmer, providing for the family through the labor of his hands.⁴ Her mother, Ozra Bazargan, came from a politically engaged family, and it was through this maternal lineage that young Narges would first encounter the brutal realities of political resistance in the Islamic Republic.⁵ The Mohammadi family, like millions of Iranian Azerbaijanis, navigated a complex ethnic and cultural landscape—part of Iran's largest ethnic minority, primarily Shi'a Muslims who maintained both Azerbaijani and Persian linguistic identities.⁶

A Childhood in Motion

Narges did not spend her formative years in Zanjan alone. The family moved through Iran's diverse regions, growing up in Karaj and the Kurdish cities of Qorveh and Oshnaviyeh.⁷ This geographic mobility exposed the young girl to Iran's remarkable ethnic diversity at a time when the Pahlavi monarchy was aggressively promoting Persian nationalism. In Kurdistan, she witnessed communities navigating their own complex relationship with the Iranian state. In Karaj, she saw the rapid industrialization that was transforming traditional Iranian society. These early experiences of cultural multiplicity would later inform her commitment to universal human rights that transcended ethnic or sectarian boundaries.

The Revolution Through a Child's Eyes

Narges was six years old in the autumn of 1978 when Iran erupted in mass protests against Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi's increasingly authoritarian rule. Nationwide demonstrations against the Shah had begun in October 1977, developing into a campaign of civil resistance that intensified through 1978.⁸ By January 1979, the demonstrations had paralyzed the country. On the streets of cities across Iran, millions chanted for the Shah's removal and the return from exile of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The Shah fled into exile on January 16, 1979, and Khomeini returned from his fourteen-year exile two weeks later.⁹ On February 11, the monarchy finally collapsed, and what had been a broad coalition of Islamists, secularists, nationalists, laborers, and ethnic minorities gave way to Khomeini and other leading Shi'a clerics, who consolidated their hold and established an Islamic theocracy.¹⁰

For seven-year-old Narges, the revolution was not an abstract political event but an intimate family tragedy that unfolded in her living room and at her mother's side. The Bazargan family, politically active and engaged in opposition movements, paid a heavy price for their convictions. After the revolution's triumph, when Khomeini's lieutenants began implementing their vision of an Islamic Republic, the new regime turned on many who had participated in the uprising—betraying secular liberals, communists, and members of reformist Islamic groups.¹¹

The Wages of Resistance

Within days of the revolution's victory on February 11, 1979, sham trials and summary executions began.¹² The first four death sentences were issued by Hojjat al-Islam Sadegh Khalkhali and carried out in the early hours of February 16, 1979.¹³ Khalkhali, appointed as head of the Revolutionary Courts, earned the grim moniker the hanging judge as he presided over trials that sometimes lasted only minutes before sending defendants to firing squads.¹⁴

By early November 1979, 550 people—mostly high-ranking officials of the Pahlavi regime and military commanders—had been sent to the firing squads by revolutionary tribunals.¹⁵ The regime summarily executed nearly 4,500 non-Islamists of all strands during this period.¹⁶ Between 1980 and 1985, according to historical estimates, between 25,000 and 40,000 Iranians were arrested, 15,000 were tried, and between 8,000 and 9,500 were executed.¹⁷

The Bazargan family was swept up in this purge. Narges's maternal uncle, a political activist, was arrested along with two of her cousins.¹⁸ The new regime systematically eliminated not just supporters of the old monarchy but also those who had fought for the revolution itself—a betrayal that would define the Islamic Republic's relationship with dissent for decades to come.

The Red Basket

Every week, Ozra Bazargan would fill a red plastic shopping basket with fruit—pomegranates, perhaps, or oranges and apples, whatever was in season—and make the journey to visit her imprisoned brother.¹⁹ Narges watched her mother pack the basket with methodical care, each piece of fruit a small gesture of love and solidarity against the concrete walls of the prison. This weekly ritual—the red basket filled with fruit—became Narges's first education in the price of political conscience.

But the basket was only one image that would haunt her. The other was far