Dr. Nahid Kalhori was born in Qom in a traditional family. In 2006, when she was still a high school student, she started her blog entitled “Freedom is not Free” about her opinion about what’s going on in Iran. She was one of the first, and youngest student activists, and bloggers. In 2008, After blogging for two years, She got arrested by the regime’s Intelligence Ministry in Qom. When She was in solitary confinement, Amir Fakhravar the leader of the Iranian independent student movement, and his friends in Europe started a campaign in her support. Amnesty International released an exclusive statement in her support and urged the Mullahs’ regime to release her. She was immediately released from solitary confinement but her case was under review by the Ministry of Intelligence. In November 2008, she got arrested for the second time. This time they stormed into her house and handcuffed her in front of her family. She was 19 years old then, a girl from a traditional family in the most religious city of Iran. You can imagine what was her situation then.
She had been in solitary confinement again under severe interrogations for six months, especially about her condition with Amir Fakhravar’s team. Ministry of Intelligence sent her case to the Revolutionary Court in Qom. Finally, because of her student activists and especially her blog posts, she got sentenced to pay penalties and was forbidden to have any social media. On June 2009, when the “Green Movement” was started, she saw a window of opportunity to escape the country and finish the nonstop nightmare of being arrested. July 20, 2009, on her twentieth birthday, she escaped Iran and went to Malaysia. There she got her Master’s degree and Ph.D. in Genetics at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM). However, regime officials didn’t leave her alone there. Several times she was asked to go to the regime embassy in Malaysia and even her family had been threatened inside Iran. During those times, she became a key member of the Confederation of Iranian Students (CIS). On July 20, 2012, when Amir Fakhravar stepped down as the Secretary General of CIS, she was elected to that prestigious position.
In 2013, CIS became the backbone of The National Iranian Congress (NIC). Both organizations, CIS and NIC have been recognized by the United States Congress as one of the most influential organizations in the Iranian opposition bloc. She managed successfully all the campaigns for these organizations. In 2018, she moved to Turkey due to the threats and security concerns for her life in Malaysia. In 2022, when the 3rd phase of the constitutional revolution was started after the regime killed Mahsa Amini, she was elected by the National Iranian Congress to serve as the Secretary General of the Execut