"Renewing the Pledge… Between Genuine Sacrifice and Cost-Free Claims of Change"

In the “Renewing the Pledge” message sent by MEK member Seyed Mohammad Taqi Sangdehi from Fashafouyeh Prison, after the martyrdom of MEK members Behrouz Ehsani and Mehdi Hassani, the difference becomes strikingly clear between a path that truly pays the price of freedom and another path that seeks the fruits of change without bearing its cost.

This message is not just a few passing words from behind bars. It is a living testimony to the meaning of commitment. When a resistance fighter declares from inside prison that he stands “in the field of struggle” for the liberation of the Iranian people, and that he renews his vow to remain steadfast and fight to his last breath, he is not asking for a free role, nor is he satisfied with slogans. He is placing his life and soul on the side of freedom.

Here lies the difference between the path of the MEK and the path of Reza Pahlavi.

The first is the path of sacrifice, paying the price, standing firm in the face of prison and execution, and accepting the real consequences of the struggle for freedom.

The second, in the eyes of many, is the path of easy rhetoric and safe waiting, where grand slogans are raised without a matching willingness to endure the sacrifices that real struggle demands.

This contrast becomes even sharper when one recalls positions that reflect a preference for remaining within the circle of personal safety, rather than stepping into the field of risk and paying the cost. And here the essential question arises: how can someone who does not appear ready to bear even the minimum cost of freedom present himself as an alternative for a people who are paying for it with their blood every day?

What Mohammad Taqi Sangdehi writes from prison, and what martyrs such as Mehdi Hassani and Behrouz Ehsani embodied, exposes by itself the emptiness of any project that seeks to dominate the scene without sacrifice. Freedom is not made by those who wait for it from afar, nor by those who place their personal comfort first. It is made by those who accept that they must pay for it with their years, their blood, and their nerves.

That is why this “renewing the pledge” is not merely an individual position. It is the expression of an entire line of organized resistance — a line that believes overthrowing despotism requires men and women who actually face danger, not those who direct the battle from a safe distance.

Thus, the distinction remains plain:

between those who see freedom as a cause worth sacrifice,

and those who treat it as a cost-free road to the spotlight.

And in the end, when one says, “No Shah, No Mullahs,” this slogan does not remain merely a rejection of both sides. It becomes a clear call to support the Provisional Government announced by the National Council of Resistance of Iran. Here it becomes evident which path is more rightful and more truthful: the path of those who pay the price and struggle for freedom, not the path of those who seek power without sacrifice. For that reason, a special responsibility falls — particularly on the Arab states of the Gulf — to recognize and support this democratic alternative, because it guarantees freedom for Iran, good-neighborly relations and stability for the region, and an end to the interventionism of velayat-e faqih forever.

In the final reckoning, history does not preserve the names of those who merely spoke. It immortalizes those who paid the price."