Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi says Iran threatens her life after its war with Israel

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s security services have threatened the life of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi after her native country’s war with Israel, the Norwegian Nobel Committee and activists said Friday.

Mohammadi said that the threats have come through both her lawyer and other indirect channels as she’s kept up public statements about the Islamic Republic’s theocracy, women’s rights and others issues, the committee said.

“The clear message, in her own words, is that ‘I have been directly and indirectly threatened with ‘physical elimination’ by agents of the regime,’” the committee said in its announcement.

The Free Narges Coalition Steering Committee, which advocates for the 53-year-old laureate, said that the threats came from Iran’s Intelligence Ministry. Iran’s government hasn’t responded to Mohammadi’s recent remarks, and Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The warnings about Mohammadi came as Iran has made arrests and conducted executions in the wake of the 12-day war with Israel, raising concerns of a further possible crackdown targeting human rights activists and others.

Mohammadi has been giving a series of interviews with media abroad during the war, further raising her profile, while Israel at one point began striking targets synonymous with Iran’s ruling theocracy. She herself fled Tehran for a time during the Israeli airstrikes and said: “War does not have the capacity for the fundamental transformation that the Iranian people seek.”

“In Iran, there is a misogynistic and religious government helmed by (Supreme Leader Ayatollah) Ali Khamenei who has taken us to hell while promising paradise,” Mohammadi told the Wall Street Journal recently. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is taking us to hell while promising freedom and democracy.”

Mohammadi has been out on a medical furlough from prison, where she is serving 13 years and nine months on charges of collusion against state security and propaganda against Iran’s government. She has kept up her activism, despite numerous arrests by Iranian authorities and spending years behind bars. That includes backing the nationwide, women-led protests sparked by the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, which have seen women openly defy the government by not wearing the hijab.