Narges Mohammadi, Iran's imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has been rushed to a hospital in northwestern Iran after suffering what her foundation described as a "catastrophic deterioration" of her health, including two episodes of complete loss of consciousness and a severe cardiac crisis. Her family and international supporters are warning that the transfer may have come too late.

Mohammadi, 53, a human rights lawyer and activist, has been held at Zanjan Prison — a facility in Iran's northwest — since being transferred there without warning in February 2025. Her supporters say she had been denied adequate medical care for months despite a serious cardiac history, including previous heart attacks and emergency surgery in 2022, as well as pulmonary embolism, for which she has previously undergone stenting and angiography. On 24 March, fellow inmates found her unconscious in what her lawyers later described as a suspected heart attack, yet prison authorities refused to transfer her to hospital. On Friday, after she fainted twice due to severe drops in blood pressure, prison doctors concluded her condition could no longer be managed on-site and she was admitted to the cardiac care unit at a hospital in Zanjan. Her lawyer Mostafa Nili noted that a neurologist has since identified her neurological condition as the immediate clinical priority, despite the severity of her cardiac problems. Her brother Hamidreza Mohammadi, speaking from Oslo, said stabilising her blood pressure has proved impossible and called for her to be transferred to specialists in Tehran who have previously treated her. He said local prosecutors are "blocking everything."

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee echoed that call, with its chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes stating bluntly: "Her life is now in the hands of the Iranian authorities." The foundation said the hospitalisation came "after 140 days of systematic medical neglect" following her arrest on 12 December 2024 in the northeastern city of Mashhad, where she had spoken at a memorial ceremony for a fellow activist. Her family say she was beaten during that arrest. In February 2025, a Revolutionary Court — which typically offers defendants little opportunity to contest charges — sentenced her to an additional seven and a half years in prison.

Mohammadi was awarded the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of more than two decades of campaigning against Iran's use of capital punishment and its mandatory dress code for women, becoming the fifth laureate to receive the prize while behind bars. Over her lifetime she has been arrested 13 times and sentenced to a cumulative total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes. She had been on medical furlough from Tehran's Evin Prison since late 2024, but continued her activism publicly before her re-arrest in December. Her defiance and her case have made her a symbol of resistance for many Iranians, particularly among the youth who took to the streets in the wave of protests that followed the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody. The Iranian authorities have not publicly commented on her current condition.