As the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) approaches the 61st anniversary of its founding on September 6, political prisoner Mehdi Vafaei Sani has sent a message from Ghezel Hesar Prison reflecting on how more than six decades of repression have failed to extinguish the movement or prevent a new generation from continuing its resistance.
Looking back at the PMOI’s history, Vafaei Sani argues that the movement has “created evolution within itself” while paying an immeasurable price in its struggle against dictatorship.
But the most significant part of his message concerns what he has witnessed inside Iran’s prisons: prisoners who have never lived within the PMOI’s organizational structure, but who nevertheless reproduce the same culture of resistance.
Resistance reproduced inside Iran’s prisons
Vafaei Sani writes that most PMOI supporters and Resistance Units he encounters in prison “have never been within the ranks and collective of the Mojahedin.” Yet, he says, they “stand firm and grow” with an extraordinary resemblance to the PMOI’s organizational culture and with a resistance similar to that of the political prisoners massacred in 1988.
“This very fact has left the regime’s butchers stunned and bewildered,” he writes.
His question goes to the heart of the PMOI’s 61-year endurance: How, despite physical separation, repeated generational change and tremendous losses, does the movement continue to produce people willing to sacrifice “everything they have,” including their families?
Vafaei Sani sharpens the contrast by arguing that while the regime has appropriated “all the information, wealth, media and even the beliefs of the people,” it still “longs for even one” person possessing the commitment he sees among resistance supporters.
For Vafaei Sani, therefore, the PMOI’s endurance is not simply organizational survival. It is the transmission of a culture of resistance to people who never experienced the organization’s earlier generations firsthand.
Years of prison and repression have not silenced him
Vafaei Sani’s own prison history gives weight to those observations. He was arrested on June 8, 2022, in Parand and sentenced to six years in prison over charges connected to the PMOI. During the October 15, 2022 fire and crackdown at Evin Prison, he was shot and wounded by regime agents.
On September 30, 2025, Intelligence Ministry agents removed him from Evin under the pretext of a family visit and transferred him to an intelligence detention facility. Regime authorities later sought to open a new case against him on the charge of moharebeh, which could result in a death sentence, on the pretext that he had attempted to save other prisoners during the bombardment of Evin.
In April 2026, Vafaei Sani and other political prisoners were beaten, handcuffed, shackled, blindfolded and transferred to Unit 3 of Ghezel Hesar. According to PMOI, the crackdown followed a memorial they had organized for six recently executed political prisoners.
Months later, his message from Ghezel Hesar again invokes the legacy of the prisoners executed in 1988 and the growth of resistance among a new generation.
A broader pattern of resistance from inside prison
Vafaei Sani’s message is also part of a broader pattern emerging around the PMOI’s anniversary.
Political prisoners Parisa Kamali from Yazd Central Prison and Arghavan Fallahi and Forough Taghipour from Evin Prison have issued their own messages marking the organization’s 61st anniversary. Kamali wrote, “If today I stand on the right side of history, I owe it to the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran.”
Fallahi, whose death sentence has been upheld, and Taghipour, who has already received an additional sentence for issuing a statement from prison, declared: “Put us in prison or close our throats with the hangman’s noose; we have become one living spirit that never dies.”
Taken together, the messages from Evin, Yazd and Ghezel Hesar reinforce Vafaei Sani’s central observation: prison has not isolated resistance from one generation to another. Instead, political prisoners themselves are becoming links in that chain.
“This beginning has no end”
Vafaei Sani concludes that continued growth and multiplication of resistance forces will “open a new path in world history.” He also singles out Iran’s women, whom he says remain “always on the front line of the struggle.”
His closing verse encapsulates the message of the letter:
“I said: This beginning has no end
Love, if it is love, is not easy.”
After years of imprisonment, violence and repeated pressure, his message from Ghezel Hesar is itself an example of the continuity he describes.
Full text of Mehdi Vafaei Sani’s message from Ghezel Hesar Prison
Message from Ghezel Hesar Prison — Mehdi Vafaei Sani — September 2026
Greetings and salutations to the heroic people of Iran.
If I am to speak of the long years of struggle in history, it is enough to look at more than 60 years of the blood-soaked struggle of the People’s Mojahedin Organization, which is a complete and eloquent book. The difference is that instead of becoming merely a part of evolution and a lesson for the future and itself disappearing from the scene, the Organization did the opposite: it created evolution within itself. Across the span of past and future history, it has accepted and paid an infinite price that, if one were to reckon it, cannot be calculated. This is my definition of this flourishing and growing movement.
And if I am to speak of our own path in the prisons, it is this: Most of the supporters and Resistance Units who are in prison, although they have never been within the ranks and collective of the Mojahedin, stand firm and grow with an astonishing resemblance to the Mojahedin’s organizational relations and with a resistance similar to the political prisoners executed in 1988. This very fact has left the regime’s butchers stunned and bewildered: How is it that, despite the Organization’s physical separation from the current of Iranian society, the change of multiple generations, and the many problems and calamities, it can raise such towering cedars who give up everything they have, their families, and more, while the regime has pocketed all the information, wealth, media and even the beliefs of the people, yet still longs for even one of these brave people? Meanwhile, the fighting women of our land, following the example of Maryam Rajavi, are always on the front line of the struggle, opening the way through complete emancipation.
This was a summary of the past, the present and the path ahead, which will certainly, with greater flourishing and the multiplication of forces, open a new path in world history.
Salutations to Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. Long live Iran. May the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran stand proud.
I said: This beginning has no end;
Love, if it is love, is not easy.
You said: One must set out from autumn,
Though the flower cannot withstand the storm.
Seyed Mehdi Vafaei Sani — September 2026
Ghezel Hesar Prison