US urges Iran to immediately stop targeting dissident journalists

“Death threats are coming from intelligence agents. Their aim was to show that the threats are serious. For them, there are no limits anymore,” Mohammadi said in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel published on Wednesday.

Last month, Norwegian Nobel Committee chair Jorgen Watne Frydnes said in a statement he had received an "urgent phone call" from Mohammadi who said her life was now in danger.

"The clear message, in her own words, is that 'I have been directly and indirectly threatened with 'physical elimination' by agents of the regime'," he said at the time.

In her Spiegel interview, Mohammadi accused Iranian intelligence authorities of intensifying their crackdown on civil society since the June ceasefire with Israel.

“The Islamic Republic is one of the worst regimes in the modern world. We human rights activists have been protesting for years against an apartheid-like system that systematically oppresses women,” Mohammadi said.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate also denounced the wide-ranging repression of free speech and the ongoing pressure on rights activists.

“In Iran, there is no freedom of expression. Critics are tortured and killed in prisons. The number of executions has even been rising on a daily basis. There is hardly a human rights activist in Iran who has not been imprisoned,” Mohammadi said.

According to Reporters Without Borders, “Iran has reinforced its position as one of the most repressive countries in terms of press freedom, with journalists and independent media constantly persecuted through arbitrary arrests and harsh sentences handed down after unfair trials before revolutionary courts.”

Path to democracy

Mohammadi argued that the Islamic Republic is in a constant state of crisis and has lost its legitimacy.

Referencing the antigovernment protests over the past few years, she said the Woman, Life, Freedom movement that started in 2022 cannot be silenced and will continue.

“We have not bowed our heads, and I am certain that the transition from a religious dictatorship to democracy is possible through the will of the people,” Mohammadi said.

The protests erupted nationwide in 2022 after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini in morality police custody for allegedly violating hijab rules. Hundreds of demonstrators were killed and thousands arrested in a sweeping crackdown.

Since then, Iranian authorities have executed 11 people over the Woman, Life, Freedom protests, with many more at risk.

Mohammadi, who is currently on medical furlough from Tehran’s Evin Prison, has refused two official orders to return and said she would not go back voluntarily. “If they want me, they should pay the price and arrest me themselves — I will not go to prison quietly,” she said in a statement on July 7, describing her stance as civil disobedience.

Mohammadi is serving a combined 13-year and 9-month sentence on charges including “spreading propaganda” against the Islamic Republic. While temporarily released, she has continued to speak out in interviews and online events with human rights groups.

“Currently, about half of tenants’ income is spent on rent, and to buy a house worth five to six billion tomans ($54,000 to $64,000), one would need to save for approximately 80 years,” Kianoosh Goodarzi said.

“The price per square meter of housing in northern Tehran has dropped by 30 to 50 million tomans ($321 to $535), but the 12-day war has had no impact on this price decline or the ongoing recession, which began during the COVID-19 period,” ISNA news agency cited Goodarzi as saying.

The costs of even basic items such as food continue to soar and the value of the Iranian currency continues to fall. The rial has lost over 90% of its value since US sanctions were reimposed in 2018.

Sanctions, corruption and economic mismanagement have contributed to the widespread economic hardship.

At least a third of the country is now forced to live below the poverty line, and the vast majority of Iranians are dissatisfied with the government’s economic policies, according to a poll by the country’s leading economic newspaper Donya-ye Eqtesad.

The poll results published on Monday showed that 89% of respondents were dissatisfied with the economic policies implemented by the Islamic Republic.

According to April statistics from the International Monetary Fund, unemployment in Iran now stands at 9.5%, up from 7.8% last year.

Impact of war

Asked if the 12-day war between Iran and Israel played any role in the real estate recession, Goodarzi said the downturn began long before that.

“The property market is very large, and the current recession is not due to the war, as we were already in recession beforehand."

He said suggested prices have dropped by 30 to 50 million tomans per square meter, but there have been no changes in contract agreements.

Israel launched land and air strikes targeting senior Iranian military leaders, nuclear scientists, and politicians, while damaging or destroying Iranian air defenses and nuclear facilities. The airstrikes killed over 1,000 people according to official statistics.

Iran’s political establishment views negotiations with the United States as the only way to avoid further escalation and existential peril, the report said citing its sources.

Iran’s leadership has now leaned towards talks as "they’ve seen the cost of military confrontation,” the report quoted one Iranian political insider as saying.

The report comes two months after Israel launched land and air strikes targeting senior Iranian military leaders, nuclear scientists, and politicians, while damaging or destroying Iranian air defenses and nuclear facilities.

The Israeli strikes began on June 13, on the eve of the sixth round of negotiations with the United States.

On the ninth day of fighting, the United States bombed three Iranian nuclear sites which US President Donald Trump has consistently said "obliterated" the country's nuclear program.

Trump has warned that he would not hesitate to strike Iran again if the country resumes uranium enrichment.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio along with foreign ministers of France, Germany and Britain set an informal end-August deadline for a new nuclear deal, warning that failure would prompt the E3 to reinstate UN sanctions on Iran using the so-called "snapback" mechanism.

European officials have warned Tehran that unless it fully cooperates with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the mechanism could be activated, restoring UN sanctions this fall.

In a meeting assessing the situation after the 12-day war between Israel and the Islamic Republic, Iran's former president Hassan Rouhani told advisers that easing tensions with global powers, including the US, is necessary for the country.

“If we can reduce tensions with Europe, our neighbors, the East and West, and even the United States in favor of national interests, not only is there nothing wrong with it, but it is necessary and obligatory,” Rouhani said.

Tehran moderates are increasingly openly signaling readiness for a return to nuclear talks, hinting at accepting some restrictions on its activities.

“Israel’s strikes on Evin prison on June 23 killed and injured scores of civilians without any evident military target in violation of the laws of war and is an apparent war crime,” said Michael Page, the rights group's deputy Middle East director said.

“The Israeli attack placed at grave risk the already precarious lives of Evin’s prisoners, many of them wrongfully detained dissidents and activists.”

More than 1,500 people were believed to be held in Evin at the time, including political activists imprisoned in violation of their rights by the Iranian government, the group added.

The attack which took place during visiting hours caused extensive damage to the visitation hall, the central kitchen, the medical clinic, and sections where prisoners — including political detainees — were held.

Citing official Iranian figures, Human Rights Watch said at least 80 people were killed, including prisoners, their family members, and prison staff. Iran’s judiciary announced that at least 71 people were killed, also citing the victims to be a mix of prison personnel, prisoners, visiting relatives, and nearby civilians.

Former Iranian political prisoner and student activist Motahareh Gounei said in July that the government wanted the inmates, many of whom are political prisoners, "to be buried under the rubble of war” .

At the time of the attacks, the office of the Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, released a statement announcing the strikes.

"The IDF is now attacking with unprecedented force regime targets and government repression bodies in the heart of Tehran, including the Basij headquarters, Evin prison for political prisoners and opponents of the regime, the 'Israel Destruction' clock in Palestine Square, the internal security headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards, the ideology headquarters, and other regime targets," the statement said on June 23.

Under international humanitarian law, prisons are considered civilian infrastructure.

Human Rights Watch said the laws of war prohibit “attacks that target civilians and civilian objects, that do not discriminate between civilians and combatants, or that are expected to cause harm to civilians or civilian objects disproportionate to any anticipated military advantage.”

On the day of the strike, amid massive criticism from rights groups, Israel's military spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said the attack was carried out “in a pinpoint manner, to avoid harm to those uninvolved.”

Among the critics was Nobel Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, a former inmate and dissident, who said at the time: "Attacking a prison when the inmates are standing behind closed doors and they are unable to do the slightest thing to save themselves, can never be a legitimate target.”

More than 600 political prisoners were transferred back to Tehran’s Evin Prison earlier in August with some political prisoners saying Iran used brute violence during the process.

A senior figure from Iranian Kurdish parties in Sulaymaniyah told Iran International that “one of the topics discussed between Iran and Iraq during Ali Larijani’s trip to Baghdad was the increase of pressure and further restrictions on Kurdish parties.”

Separately, an opposition figure based in Erbil said that “after Larijani’s visit to Iraq, sources in the Kurdistan Regional Government warned all parties that if Israel attacks the Islamic Republic again, the likelihood of threats from Iran against the Kurdistan Region and these parties is serious.”

Both sources confirmed to Iran International that “in the event of a possible next Israeli attack on Iran, the Islamic Republic will react against the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.”

On Wednesday night, Iraq’s National Security Advisory issued a statement saying that the document signed between Baghdad and Tehran during Larijani’s trip was a “security memorandum of understanding for cooperation on border affairs and confronting Iranian Kurdish opposition.”

The statement noted that Iraq already had a security protocol with Iran, signed in March 2023, known as the Joint Security Agreement. That agreement covered “border security and measures to neutralize the activities of Iranian Kurdish opposition forces present in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.”

According to the advisory, the memorandum signed this week was the result of earlier coordination to convert the existing protocol into a formal memorandum of understanding with the same content, including “matters concerning the five Iranian Kurdish opposition parties.”

The statement added that the document was prepared before recent hostilities between Israel and Iran, had been approved by Iraq’s Council of Ministers, and was signed during Larijani’s visit in the presence of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.

The advisory stressed that “there is no security agreement between the two countries; rather, it is a security memorandum of understanding.”

According to information obtained by Iran International, another goal of Larijani’s trip was to encourage Shi’ite factions to push for parliamentary approval of a Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) bill.

The PMF, or Hashd al-Shaabi, is an umbrella organization of Shi’ite militias formed under the direct supervision of Qasem Soleimani, the late commander of the IRGC Quds Force.

In March 2025, the Iraqi parliament introduced draft legislation seeking to reform the PMF by placing it more firmly under the authority of the prime minister as commander-in-chief, explicitly aiming to limit external influence, including from Iran.