Saeed Soltanpour was a theater director, playwright, poet, member of the Iranian Writers’ Association and a leftist political activist. Soltanpour was executed on June 26, 1981 as part of the wave of oppression and executions against cultural and political activists that took place during the 1980s in Iran.

Soltanpour was imprisoned by both the Pahlavi Shah’s regime and by the Islamic Republic. His political ideology was close to that of the Organization of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas, an underground Marxist-Leninist guerrilla movement in Iran that advocated for armed struggle to fight against imperialism and Iran’s monarchy.

In 1968, Soltanpour published a poetry book, called Sadaye Mira / The Voice of Mira, which contained 58 poems that he had written over a period of seven years from 1961-1968. However, the book’s publication was suspended only a few months later.

It was at this time that Soltanpour was placed on the proscribed list of SAVAK, the then Shah’s intelligence organization and secret police.

In 1969, Soltanpour was able to stage the play Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen (its Persian title was Dushman-e Mardom) in the theater. But on the play’s 11th night SAVAK security forces raided the theater and shut down the play.

One year later, in 1970, Saeed Soltanpour staged the play Amozgaran / Teachers by Mohsen Yalfani. A performance of the play was again raided by SAVAK agents and subsequently forced to shut down.

In 1972, Soltanpour was accused of "having Marxist sympathies" and of being affiliated with the leftist and socialist “Organization of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas.” He was sentenced to five years imprisonment on these two charges and was released from prison on July 13, 1977 after serving the entirety of his prison sentence.

Arrest and Execution after the Islamic Revolution

In April 1981, on the day he was getting married, Saeed Soltanpour was arrested by agents from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps for his leftist leanings.

Sarvar Ali Mohammadi, a writer, later described Soltanpour’s arrest on his wedding day. Mohammadi wrote that the wedding ceremony was taking place in a house in the Shahrara neighborhood of Tehran. However, when the bride and groom’s wedding party was coming to the house, the faces of the wedding guests on the street seemed strange. Mohammadi writes: “We were greeted by unfamiliar faces with insincere similes. There was no sense of camaraderie or celebration around the house.”

According to Ali Mohammadi, his bride and those with her thought that the people on the street were friends from Sultanpour's organization. However, two Revolutionary Guards agents approached Soltanpour and took him away on the pretext that he had “smuggled currency or something like that.” They said that he would be taken away and then returned in a couple of hours, but Sultanpour refused to leave.

The two members of the Revolutionary Guards left and came back to the wedding ceremony in greater numbers: “The Revolutionary Guards agents had agreed not to disturb him until the end of the ceremony, after which they would take Saeed for only two hours of questioning and then bring him back themselves.”

Some of Soltanpour’s friends who were guests at the ceremony proposed a plan to smuggle him out of the wedding ceremony, but Sultanpour “rejected the offers of escape because it might be dangerous for his friends and guests, most of whom were not affiliated with his organization.”

According to Ali Mohammadi's bride, the wedding ceremony came to an end when agents from the Revolutionary Guards fired shots into the air and took Soltanpour away.

After enduring two months interrogation and torture in prison, Saeed Soltanpour was executed by a firing squad on June 21, 1981, at the age of 40.

One of the Revolutionary Guards, who was working in Evin Prison at the time, spoke about Soltanpour’s trial in prison, saying: “Ayatollah Gilani tried Saeed Soltanpour alone in one of the rooms of Evin Prison on June 20. When he found out that Soltanpour was born in Sabzevar, he asked him: ‘Do you know Mulla Hadi Sabzevari?’ Soltanpour said yes. Gilani then said to Sultanpour: ‘Would you be prepared to study the thoughts and teachings of Sabzevari?’ To which Sultanpour replied, ‘If I have time, definitely.’ After that, without informing him of his sentence or even the fact that he was going to face the death penalty, Ayatollah Gilani said to Soltanpour, ‘Good, well, make sure to study Sabzevari's works.’ After that, Soltanpour was sent back to his prison cell and he was shot the next day.”

In an article about Soltanpour, BBC Persian reported that, when he was asked to repent and renounce his ideological beliefs during a televised programme, Soltanpour refused to do so, saying that he would prefer death to renouncing his beliefs.

Details of his arrest by agents of the Revolutionary Guards in 1981 and his death are still shrouded in ambiguity.

Saeed Soltanpour was one of the leading proponents of street theater after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. He staged the play Abbas Agha Kargar Iran National, which was based on a true story, in the streets of Tehran.

While the theater and the dramatic arts were enthusiastically welcomed by the Iranian people and theater audiences, it was met with bloody clashes and oppression by pro-revolutionary government street thugs, known as Hezbollahis. 

After Soltanpour’s execution, the publication or performance of his screenplays was banned in Iran.

The judicial authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran have so far not only refused to publish any information or documents about the evidence in support of Soltanpour’s execution and the manner in which the execution took place but, they have also hindered any attempts by independent human rights groups to research Soltanpour’s death.

The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance has also banned the publication of all of Saeed Soltanpour's works and writings.