Architects of Resistance: The Women Leading Iran’s Revolution

Architects of Resistance: The Women Leading Iran’s Revolution

On this Christmas Eve, our thoughts go to Iran, to places where there is no celebration, no candlelight, and no silence without fear.

Our thoughts go out to the political prisoners facing death sentences.
They go out to the women imprisoned in the regime’s dungeons—many in poor health, deprived of care, enduring neglect, torture, and isolation, simply for refusing to surrender their dignity.

Tonight, we especially remember the Christian women and men imprisoned in Iran—jailed not for violence, not for hatred, but for opening their homes in faith, for forming house churches, for practicing their beliefs. They endure harsh and degrading conditions for nothing more than their conscience.

We pray for the oppressed people of Iran and all the followers of every religion—for those persecuted, harassed, and punished because their faith does not bow to tyranny.

And we pray for the Resistance Units, especially for their female members—women who, despite relentless surveillance, repression, and restriction, put their lives on the line every day to free their enchained people.

There is hope—because Iranian women are leading the fight against tyranny.

For more than 45 years, they have paid a heavy price.
Thousands have kissed the noose.
Thousands more have filled the prisons.
Yet they have not given up.

Not only have they endured—they have risen.
They have risen to leadership, carrying the movement forward, shaping it, sustaining it, and leading it for more than four decades with courage, clarity, and sacrifice.

Christmas is the story of hope born in darkness.
On this night, we choose not to look away.
We remember the prisoners.
We honor the resistance.
And we believe—in the power of faith, in the strength of women, and in the certainty that no regime, no prison, and no gallows can extinguish a people’s longing for freedom.

Support the cause of a free Iran and the struggle of Iranian women for freedom and democracy. One of the ways you can do so is to donate to the NCRI Women’s Committee.