Your Courage in the January Uprising Has Moved a Nation—and the World
The website of the NCRI President-elect, Maryam Rajavi, published her podcast addressed to the brave women and girls in Iran, who created the uprising, on January 29, 2026.
The translation of the podcast follows:
A thousand salutes to the courageous struggle of my dear sisters and daughters who rose up across Iran and, side by side with their brothers, set the flames of the uprising ablaze even brighter.
In the very first days of the uprising in Hormozgan Province, the people of Bandar Abbas launched their protests led by brave women at the forefront.
On January 4 in Mashhad, the people, again led by women, clashed with security forces while chanting “Death to the dictator.”
In Tehran-Sar, 200 young women marched through the streets chanting “Freedom, freedom.”
On January 7, women in Shiraz blocked the city’s streets.
On January 8, the girls of Saravan filled the streets with cries of protest.
And now, thousands of women who created the uprising are imprisoned by this brutal regime.
To this day, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran has published the names and photos of 125 women slain during the January uprising.
This is the bloody price that the women of Iran are paying for freedom, for equality, and for the liberation of Iran from the grip of dictatorship.
My dear sisters and daughters,
Your courage during the uprising has earned the admiration of all.
The brave woman who, standing at the front of a protest, shattered the heavy silence of the street with the cry “Death to the dictator.”
The young woman, who refused to retreat and threw tear gas back at the forces of repression.
The fearless young woman, who stood before water cannons so others could move forward.
The injured young women fallen on the pavement, carried to safety by their brothers.
The courageous mother in Arak who shielded the youth with her own body against bullets.
And the mothers and daughters who transformed mourning into resistance, turning grief into protest.
Though the images are heartbreaking, from the search for the bodies of their slain children to the sight of torn and bloodied bodies, their message is clear: the struggle, the uprising, continues.
And hundreds of other acts of courage and sacrifice have once again proven that women are the vanguard of the uprising and the trailblazers of Iran’s democratic revolution.
From the prisons, execution grounds, and torture beds of the 1980s, to the massacre halls of 1988, and now to the streets of Iran’s cities in the January uprising— the pure blood of women has flown for freedom.
And this river of sacrifice and resistance will not be stopped.
It will carry away the clerical dictatorship once and for all.
