In March 25, 2026, the Iranian regime executed PMOI members Mohammad Taghavi and Ali Akbar (Shahrokh) Daneshvarkar. In a desperate attempt to justify their state-sanctioned murder, the clerical regime framed them with fabricated charges.

Mohammad Taghavi was a lifelong champion of freedom whose spirit remained unbroken until his final breath. Born in 1966 in Tehran, Taghavi spent the 1980s and 1990s as a political prisoner. He was imprisoned again in 2020 for approximately three years for his ties to the PMOI, before being released on February 25, 2023, and exiled to Kahnuj in Kerman province. He was arrested for the final time on February 23, 2024, while attempting to leave the country.

Newly published excerpts from Taghavi’s letters, smuggled out of the regime’s most brutal dungeons, offer a rare and inspiring glimpse into the mind of a man who conquered the fear of death and exposed the profound vulnerability of his captors.

Facing the “hanging judge” and defeating solitary confinement

Following his 2024 arrest, Taghavi was transferred to Evin Prison’s notorious Ward 209, run by the Ministry of Intelligence, where he endured months of severe pressure and solitary confinement. In a letter addressed to the leadership of the Iranian Resistance on December 26, 2024, Taghavi powerfully described the psychological torture of solitary confinement to the outside world, noting how it attempts to “reduce life to an animalistic survival level, stripping away all the features, actions, and details that define your identity… leaving the captive human naked before the harsh and dry domination of the jailer and the executioner.”

Yet, Taghavi fought back against this psychological erasure every single day. He wrote that every morning, while his cellmates slept, he would stand facing the heavy iron door of his cell, asking himself if he was prepared for whatever was to come. He would chant PMOI slogans of defiance to build his revolutionary fire so that “the domination and hegemony of the executioner would be broken.”

His unyielding defiance extended to the regime’s sham judicial theater. When forced before the notorious judge Iman Afshari of Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court, Taghavi boycotted the proceedings and refused to sign the court documents. He exposed the judge’s utter impotence, prompting Afshari to angrily threaten him: “You do not deserve to live, it is better that you are executed.”

The captors’ terror: “What will you do to me?”

One of the most striking revelations in Taghavi’s letters is the paralyzing fear among the regime’s own security forces regarding their imminent downfall. Taghavi noted that the entity truly terrified of its fate is the regime itself.

Even inside its most secure torture chambers, the enforcers recognize the unstoppable momentum of the Iranian Resistance. In his December 2024 letter, he recounted an interaction with a high-ranking intelligence officer in Ward 209 who nervously asked him from a position of weakness: “If our places change, what will you do to me?” He also described another guard pulling a colleague away from Taghavi in fear during an altercation, saying, “Let him go, let him go, he is a Mojahed!”

The ultimate pledge: Choosing to “die standing”

In a letter from Fashafouyeh Prison dated August 7, 2025, written shortly after the regime executed two other PMOI members, Behrouz Ehsani and Mehdi Hassani, Taghavi made his ultimate pledge.

Echoing Ehsani’s famous last words—”I will not bargain with anyone over my life”—Taghavi wrote that when a desperate regime tries to take a prisoner’s “will to live” hostage through terror, it is the exact moment to take the offensive. He penned a historic vow: “I swear to fight valiantly until my last breath and to die standing, and to the last step.”

A legacy of joy and impending liberation

Despite facing the gallows, Taghavi found absolute peace and ultimate liberation in his cause. Concluding his December 2024 letter, he wrote words that continue to resonate as a powerful manifesto of courage: “I have never been this happy in my life. The thought of the great day of the Iranian people’s liberation, which is very, very close, pushes away any feeling associated with death.”

Mohammad Taghavi’s words prove that a regime relying on the noose has already lost the battle against a people who no longer fear death.

The regime might have extinguished Mohammad Taghavi’s life, but the flame of his resistance shines ever brighter.

© Eurasia Review