Iran Human rights – Page 22

Human Rights Report Puts Focus on Iran Regime

October 28, 2015 by admin

Human Rights Report Puts Focus on Iran Regime

Ahmed Shaheed, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Iran issued a new report saying that the Iran regime was on track to execute more than 1,000 people in 2015 in an unrelenting campaign of brutal human rights suppression that continues unabated after agreeing to a nuclear agreement that proponents said would shift the regime to a more moderate stance.

Calling it an “unprecedented assault on the right to life in Iran,” Shaheed described a surge in executions over the past year. He said Iran hanged nearly 700 people since January.

Shaheed said that within the past two weeks, the Islamic Republic violated international law by hanging two juvenile offenders. He added “there are dozens more waiting a similar fate on death row.”

According the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, at the end of last year, at least 30 journalists were held in Iranian prisons, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. Others have been detained since, and in August state media accused a senior Wall Street Journal reporter who once served as a correspondent in Iran of conspiring against the government. The Journal called the claims “completely false, outlandish and irresponsible.”

Sherif Mansour, the Middle East and North Africa program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in an interview with the Associated Press, reporters often get targeted because they are “much easier to frame” as spies.

Additionally, in more signs of a brutal crackdown, the regime jailed and sentenced two Iranian poets. Fatemeh Ekhtesari, a practicing obstetrician, and Mehdi Mousavi, a trained doctor who teaches literature and poetry, were first arrested in December 2013, months after Hassan Rouhani took office and sentenced to 99 lashes apiece for shaking hands with members of the opposite sex. Ekhtesari received an 11½-year prison sentence, while Mousavi got nine years on charges ranging from propaganda against the state to “insulting sanctities,” as well as the lashings, according to PEN America, an organization promoting literature and freedom of speech.

“I think people thought with the nuclear deal, there would be sort of a bit of a thaw as well or a bit of an opening up,” said Karin Deutsch Karlekar, the director of Free Expression Programs at PEN America. “I think the judiciary is sort of pushing back and trying to make clear that there isn’t going to be that opening people were hoping for.”

Shaheed’s report detailed a grisly butcher’s bill of death by the regime:

Between Jan. 1 to Sept. 15 this year, Tehran hanged at least 694 people, the highest rate of executions under the regime in 25 years;
The bulk of the crimes committed by those executed were for non-violent, political or drug offenses;
By way of comparison, in the last year of Mohammad Khatami’s term as president in 2005, the regime carried out a total of 91 executions according to the report; nearly doubling in the first year of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s term to 177 executions;
According to Shaheed, the Iran regime executes more people per capita than any other country on the planet.

In addition to drug crimes, Iranian law applies the death penalty for a range of offenses: from threats to “the security of the state” to “enmity towards God,” also known as moharebeh, to “insults against the memory of Imam Khomeini and against the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic,” according to the State Department’s 2014 human rights report on Iran. “Prosecutors frequently used moharebeh as a criminal charge against political dissidents and journalists, accusing them of struggling against the precepts of Islam and against the state that upholds those precepts.”

Shaheed said a “deeply flawed justice system” that violates international standards and national laws sits at the heart of Iran’s human rights troubles. He said he continues “to receive frequent, alarming reports” about the mistreatment of detainees and the use of torture to obtain confessions. Many of the accused lack access to defense lawyers.

The authorities, he said, have also refused to acknowledge rights for gay, lesbian, or transgender individuals, saying it is incompatible with sharia law. And authorities have imposed harsh sentences, including the death penalty, for posting articles on social media deemed offensive to the government. A semi-official news outlet reported that more than 480 people were flogged during the first two weeks of Ramadan for not fasting.

The regime refused comment on Shaheed’s report and in fact has consistently refused to allow entry into Iran by Shaheed or any member of his office to see first-hand the human rights abuses going on in Iran.

In fact, while Shaheed was issuing his report, Rouhani was holding forth with state-controlled media IRNA in a ceremony welcoming the new Spanish ambassador to Iran, saying he believed sanctions on the regime would be lifted as early as the end of this year, again contradicting assurances by the nuclear deal proponents that the sanctions removal would only come after the regime had met its obligations for dismantling its nuclear infrastructure.

Clearly the regime remains committed to its policy of public executions and cares not a whit about international opinion on the matter.

By Michael Tomlinson

Adoption Day for Nuclear Deal Brings Uncertainty

October 19, 2015 by admin

Adoption Day for Nuclear Deal Brings Uncertainty

Sunday marked what has been dubbed “Adoption Day” and we’re not talking about lost puppies. This weekend marked the start of the of what the Obama administration and other members of the P5+1 called the start of showing readiness to the Iran regime in lifting economic sanctions that have held the mullahs in Tehran in check for the past decade.

In a memo, President Obama directed the secretaries of state, treasury, commerce and energy “to take all necessary steps to give effect to the U.S. commitments with respect to sanctions described in (the Iran deal).”

This will be followed by “Implementation Day” on December 15 in which the U.S. and its partners will begin the actual process of lifting sanctions against the regime after certification by the International Atomic Energy Agency that the regime has lived up to its commitments to curb its nuclear program.

For the Iran regime, Sunday also marks the “put up or shut up” moment for the mullahs in which the regime will have to begin the process of dismantling parts of its nuclear program, including decommissioning nearly 15,000 centrifuges, converting its Arak heavy-water reactor so that it will produce less plutonium and reducing its stockpile of enriched uranium 98%. U.S. officials expect it will take about six months.

Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, told Iranian state television Sunday that the country would begin taking its next steps under the deal—including reducing the number of uranium centrifuges in operation, and removing the reactor core at the Arak facility—in short order, according to the Wall Street Journal.

But the real question is will the regime move aggressively forward in order to recoup frozen assets and foreign investments needed to stave off economic disaster from corrupt mismanagement at the hands of the mullahs, or will the regime simply slow walk changes while providing its usual propaganda lip-service, supported by loyal Iran lobbyists such as the National Iranian American Council, and stonewall any real changes?

Already we’ve seen efforts by the Obama administration and United Nations to provide some cover for the regime even as the mullahs have undertaken provocative steps in the wake of adopting the nuclear deal.

The most notable action has been the military buildup in Syria, including the mobilization and commitment of Iranian troops directly into the fight and coordination in drawing in Russia to fight the fights the Iran regime has been unable to win so far in support of the Assad regime.

This has been followed by the reported conviction of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian for espionage (ironically announced on the exact same number of days Iran held the 52 American embassy hostages), and the launching of a new ballistic missile design that has been denounced as a violation of UN Security Council resolutions banning the Iran regime from pursuing ballistic missile designs that could be used to deliver nuclear payloads.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power stopped short of any confrontational rhetoric, affirming Wednesday that the test violated a U.N. Security Council resolution “if the facts are as we believe them to be.” Iran has always considered such resolutions to be invalid and has violated their provisions numerous times since they were adopted in 2010. The Iranian government also denies the ballistic activity violates the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the formal name for the nuclear agreement.

The fact that the U.S. recognizes that the regime has already violated the UN agreement, yet opts not to confront the regime is indicative of what lies in store for us as the regime continues to make its aggressive and increasingly desperate moves throughout the Middle East.

The regime’s actions are remarkably similar to moves made by North Korea as it first agreed to restrictions on its nuclear program, only to continue advancing it in secret until it tested fully functional nuclear weapons in spite of successive efforts to sanction North Korea after the fact with no effect.

The mullahs in Tehran have watched and learned what Pyongyang did in steering tis nuclear program past international sanctions, which may be why Iran unveiled to the world video of once-secret underground missile bunkers where it stored its arsenal of mobile missile launchers.

The most significant aspects of the revelation by the regime are that: a) no one knew about these secret bunkers; and b) that the bunkers hint at the size and scale of secret military facilities that have hardened against attack by being buried as much as 500 meters under a mountain range.

Why this is important is that it basically invalidates significant sections of the nuclear agreement dealing with limited inspections only of “known” facilities and not allowing inspections of military sites. It also puts into proper perspective the nefarious nature of the regime as it hides most aspects of its military capabilities.

According to the Daily Beast, “while details about the alleged 500-meters-down subterranean base are few and difficult to confirm, the bunker and others like it could upset the delicate military balance between the United States and Iran as the two countries move forward on an agreement to limit Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for a gradual easing of economic and military sanctions targeting the Islamic regime.

“That’s because any facility a quarter mile below ground is way too deep for America’s existing bunker-busting bombs to directly destroy in the event Iran reneges on the nuke deal and tries to put atomic warheads on its long-range rockets,” the Daily Beast reported.

Then again, given the regime’s penchant for hyperbole, bluster and outright fabrication in order to make itself seem more militarily formidable than it really is, all of this could simply be fakery.

That begs the question of whether or not the U.S. and its allies should be making the $150 billion bet that the regime is a sheep in wolves’ clothing.

The people that know the regime best, the dissidents and members of the resistance movement worldwide, should be the ones we should be taking our cues from and in their view, the nuclear deal has only emboldened the Iran regime in its march towards oppression.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Culture of Terror and Violence Unchanging

October 12, 2015 by admin

Iran Regime Culture of Terror and Violence Unchanging

There are several constants in the universe: the theory of relativity, the speed of light and the single-minded commitment of the Iran regime to its path towards expansion of its vision of extremist Islam using all of the tools at its disposal.

Much has been made about the new nuclear deal with the regime as being a harbinger of improved relations; most of those arguments being exclusively made by the loyal Iran lobby led by the National Iranian American Council, but all of those arguments ignore one essential proof which is the regime has shown through its actions just how committed it is towards its revolutionary vision.

At the heart of the regime’s hold over Iran is its willingness to use brutal force and violence to reign in its opponents and liberal use of its prison system and death penalty to remove the most vocal and troublesome resistance elements. While the modern world is moving towards annihilation of the death penalty, in most nations, that still use death penalty, imposition of the ultimate punishment by the state comes as a last resort and is reserved for the most heinous of crimes; usually those involving mass murder, treason or the cruel torture and murder of a child.

But within the Iran regime, the death penalty and the entire judicial system is under political control and often used to silence dissidents, stifle free speech and oppress the dissatisfied. Within the regime judicial system, its various courts, police and paramilitaries fall under the authority of the top mullah, Ali Khamenei, and its religious courts hold sway over virtually every facet of Iranian life.

All of which came into stark relief this weekend as the United Nations designated World Day Against the Death Penalty and a large gathering was held in Paris of anti-death penalty activists from around the world.

The conference sponsored by the Committee Defending Human Rights in Iran, was entitled, “Iran, Human Rights, Stop Executions” and included notable participants such as Gilbert Mitterrand, former member of the French National Assembly and President of France Libertés (Danielle Mitterrand) Foundation, Phumla Makaziwe Mandela, women’s rights advocate and daughter of Nelson Mandela, the late leader of South Africa, David Jones and Mark Williams, members of the British House of Commons, Hanan Al-Balkhi, representative of the Syrian Coalition in Oslo, and Taher Boumedra, former human rights chief of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq – UNAMI.

According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a coalition of leading Iranian resistance groups, there have been over 120,000 executions carried out by the regime, often performed as public hangings from construction cranes. Any casual Google image search of “Iran” and “hangings” produces the grisly bounty of the mullahs.

While the world has been concerned over the plight of notable prisoners such as Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, who has been convicted and sentenced by a regime court in a sham trial, they are but just a tip of what qualifies as one of the largest state-operated political prison systems since the Soviet-era gulags or Khmer Rouge killing fields.

One of those prisoners, Farzad Madadzadeh, told his story in an interview with The Daily Mail where he detailed routine torture including beatings, electrocution, forced drug use and solitary confinement. His only crime: speaking out against the regime.

Last year, the country had the second highest number of executions in the world after China and also killed the most juvenile offenders, according to Human Rights Watch.

And it remains one of the biggest jailers of bloggers, journalists and social media activists, all part of the strategy by the regime to suppress open political dissent and maintain its control over what is increasingly becoming a fractured society chafing underneath three decades of brutal Islamic rule.

But the regime’s reach is not just confined within the borders of Iran. Regime security agents and their proxy allies have launched attacks in places such as Lebanon, Syria and Iraq to get at its political opponents, such as the large number of dissidents from the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran relocated to Camps Ashraf and Liberty and subject to frequent attacks.

The very nature of the regime has given many in Congress pause after approving the nuclear deal, forcing Democrats and Republicans to join and reassess the most pressing question facing them with the 2016 elections looming: What do we do about Iran now?

While the NIAC and other regime allies would have us believe next year will bring economic opportunities and a revival for Iran’s people, the regime’s doubling down in Syria, willingness to call in Russian military aid to save the Assad regime and growing discontent at home points to a year of potentially extreme volatility.

The fact that news came out of a new ballistic missile test by the regime potentially violating the terms of the nuclear agreement tells the world all it needs to know about the Iran regime’s true intentions.

The missile — named Emad, or pillar — is a step up from Iran’s Shahab-3 missiles because it can be guided toward its target, the Iranian defense minister, Hossein Dehghan, told the semiofficial Fars news agency. In recent decades, with Iran’s air force plagued by economic sanctions and other restrictions, the country has invested heavily in its nuclear program and has produced missiles that can reach as far as Europe.

At a time when the world needs to recognize the essential nature of the Iran regime, it is vital that the regime’s most ardent opponents are giving more consideration in developing a strategy to confront the regime.

By Michael Tomlinson

The Importance of Linking Iran Sanctions and Human Rights

June 9, 2015 by admin

Bijan Khajehpour

Sens. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ) have put forward an amendment to the defense budget that would extend congressional sanctions against the Iran regime for 10 additional years. The amendment is aimed at extending the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996, currently set to expire at the end of 2016, to the end of 2026.

The amendment is an important step in resetting the expectations associated with the Iran regime’s nuclear weapons program because it links it to the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles and human rights abuses; a significant step towards properly addressing the central issues with the regime’s conduct towards the world.

The regime’s chief cheerleaders, the National Iranian American Council, predictably were quick to denounce the legislation, warning that passage of the bill would derail ongoing negotiations. The NIAC’s statement was noteworthy for a few things, namely that it placed the burden of completion of a deal on the U.S. and not the regime.

“There are legitimate questions about whether the U.S. will be able to deliver on the terms for sanctions relief under a nuclear deal, and the passage of this amendment would give credence to those concerns,” the NIAC statement said.

It is a remarkable sentence because it firmly ignores the chief obstacle to any agreement between the West and Iran, which is Iran’s historic inability to live up to any of its international agreements. As recently as last month, Iran has steadfastly refused to answer outstanding questions from the International Atomic Energy Agency about the “possible military dimensions” of its nuclear program.

On top of that omission are repeated comments by Iran’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei, who has reiterated publicly his opposition to allowing access to any Iranian military facility or Iranian nuclear scientists by international inspectors.

This follows continued denials by Iran that it is involved in proxy wars being waged in Syria and Yemen, not to mention its control of Shiite militias in Iraq that are now being accused of reprisal sectarian killings against Sunni Muslim villagers, all of which points to a disturbing and repeated pattern of deception, denial and distrust.

The action by Senators Kirk and Menendez comes after passage of legislation signed by President Obama and over the vigorous objections of NIAC authorizing congressional review of any nuclear agreement reached with Iran.

This latest bill from Kirk and Menendez addresses a glaring hole in current negotiations, which is the failure of negotiators to hold Iran’s human rights conduct accountable, as well as including the regime’s capacity to deliver a nuclear weapon well outside their neighborhood and threaten Europe and Asia.

The NIAC and the rest of the Iran lobby have fought hard to keep these things out of negotiations because they know full well their inclusion would almost certainly doom Iran’s hopes of securing a deal and lift economic sanctions and flood the regime with billions in new cash and investment.

The proposed amendment is not a deal breaker for the West as much as it is a safety clause assuring the West does not deliver a bad deal that could come back to haunt them.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Dangling Dangerous Dollars

June 9, 2015 by admin

With the June 30 deadline looming for the third round of nuclear talks between the P5+1 group of nations and the Iran regime, the news media have picked up steam in discussing the possibility of foreign companies jockeying for position in investing in Iran once a deal is completed.

But in the immortal words of Greek fabulist Aesop “do not count your chickens before they are hatched.” More than a cliché, they are prudent and appropriate words for any companies looking to take advantage of a newly opened market in Iran.

USA Today ran a story looking at visiting business delegations streaming into Tehran, all with an eye towards the completion of these talks and a signing of a deal. The vast majority of these companies are European with only a few American firms kicking the tires of an open Iranian market.

“Even if all sanctions are lifted, there will still be blacklists of Iranian companies that Western companies should avoid,” said Bijan Khajehpour of Atieh International, a consulting firm in Vienna that works to bring companies into the Iranian market. “Assets in the economy controlled by the semi-state organizations are gradually approaching the size of government.”

But Khajehpour is wrong when he says that “developing Iran’s economy will lead to greater peace, political reform and moderation by its revolutionary government” because Khajehpour has a long record of associating with supporters and lobbyists of the Iran regime, including Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council, in efforts to direct companies and investment into Iran.

Khajehpour and his firm – co-founded with his wife Pari Namazi who is the sister of Siamak Namazi a close confidante of Parsi – have been boldly supportive of the regime in advocating for the lifting of economic sanctions by working to steer greater interest by foreign companies in Iran. The effort is designed to create a fait accompli and build global momentum towards the “inevitability” of a nuclear deal.

While the potential size of the Iranian market is significant with 81 million people, the obstacles are daunting irrespective of what happens at the negotiating table in Switzerland. For one thing, Iran ranks in the top 40 of most corrupt nations according to Transparency International; listed at 136, tied with Nigeria and Cameroon, with corruption running rampant throughout Iran’s government with much of the nation’s wealth diverted to the mullahs who control the country and their families.

Another facet of this corruption is the shell-company ownership of vast sectors of the Iranian economy by quasi-governmental entities such as Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps military which controls nearly a tenth of the entire nation’s economy by some estimates. The IRGC has made no bones about its desire to see a completed nuclear deal because of the vast wealth that would be pumped into its coffers at a crucial time when it has expended billions of dollars in propping up the Syrian regime, Shiite militias in Iraq and Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The IRGC also recognizes that unless it can secure a deal and have foreign investment flow back in, disaffected Iranians suffering under the mismanagement and general ineptness of the mullahs might very well choose regime change in order to get their Apple iPhones and McDonald’s Big Macs.

The true scope of the conundrum facing Western companies revolves around the central idea of why would you want to invest billions in a corrupt regime who’s very actions might turn all those billions into lost assets in the likelihood that Iran’s mullahs continue their nuclear development in secret as they did before?

Every public hanging, arrest of a religious minority, acid attack on a woman, or assault by Shiite militia poisons the well so to speak and makes it untenable for any politician to give the mullahs what they want, especially in an election cycle.

By Michael Tomlinson

Trita Parsi and Paul Pillar Outdo Themselves

June 3, 2015 by admin

Trita Parsi, head of the Iran regime’s top cheerleader, the National Iranian American Council, and Paul Pillar, a former assistant at the Central Intelligence Agency, authored an editorial in Huffington Post in which they attempted to make the argument that Israel was preparing to attack its adversary Hezbollah in an effort to derail nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 group of nations.

It’s an odd editorial since it reinforces the Iran lobby’s belief that in order to save a faltering nuclear deal it needs to raise the boogeyman of Israel. For the Iran lobby, Israel serves the same purpose as neo-cons, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) or Fox News, it gives people like Parsi and Pillar the opportunity to run hysterical promising war, apocalypse and mayhem should a nuclear deal not be achieved with Iran’s mullahs.

It’s a typical effort to cajole a reaction from American voters by promising war. A curious tactic considering NIAC has consistently promised a pathway to peace, but logic has never been a NIAC strong suit.

In fact, Parsi and Pillar are scraping the bottom of the barrel when they cite a NPR poll as evidence of shifting momentum for a nuclear deal among Americans. A closer reading of the article they cite reveals points quite unfavorable to them. Among those include:

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll last month found more than 7-in-10 said they thought a deal would “not make a real difference in preventing Iran from producing nuclear weapons.”
A Pew survey found that 73 percent said they either knew “a little” or “nothing at all” about nuclear talks. That same poll also found that a strong majority (62 percent) wants Congress to “have the final authority for approving any deal” not President Obama.

The funny thing is that the overwhelming majority of Americans don’t mind talks with Iran on a nuclear deal. Where they disagree with Parsi and Pillar is that the majority of Americans don’t believe Iranian regime will adhere to any deal and that mullahs in Iran simply can’t be trusted.

Americans are an optimistic people. They want to believe negotiations can yield peaceful fruit, but Americans are not stupid – much to the dismay of Parsi and Pillar – they recognize that trust for a regime run by mullahs that has launched and supported three major proxy wars in Syria, Yemen and Iraq can’t be trusted.

Americans also know all too well the brutal human rights situation in Iran and are acutely aware of the inhumane treatment being perpetrated in Iran on these same people.

Anyone typing in the words “Iran” and “hanging” in Google under an image search can see the ample proof on display of how Iranian regime’s judicial system dispenses justice. Americans also see Iran’s mullahs playing games with the lives of four Americans being held in Iranian prisons as pawns in the hopes of bartering concessions in nuclear talks.

It’s also even more galling to see that while Parsi and Pillar produce so much editorial copy aimed at warning of a war, they have never condemned the wars that Iran is already waging:

Wars against women, children and anyone who cannot exercise their basic human rights without fear of arrest or public beating;
Wars against Christians, Jews, Hindus, Yazadis, Sunni Muslims, or anyone else that doesn’t share their brand of extremist Islam; and
Wars against bloggers, journalists, pastors, businessmen, tourists, YouTubers and anyone else that dares shine a light on what is happening within Iran.

These are the wars Parsi and Pillar are not prepared to talk about and the real wars happening now that matter.

By Michael Tomlinson

Shrinking Hopes of the Iran Regime

May 12, 2015 by admin

The Iran regime continues to suffer reversals on several fronts as it becomes increasingly clear it has overreached in supporting proxy wars and acting as an international rogue state, alarming its neighbors, as well as members of Congress even as it seeks to close a favorable nuclear deal.

Even while the third round of nuclear talks to move the April framework forward begins shortly, Iran’s mullahs have exhibited a callous disregard for international opinion as it engages in an ever brutal human rights crackdown which was highlighted by the arrest of noted human rights lawyer and death penalty opponent Narges Mohammadi without warning or explanation.

According to report released by Iran Human Rights group, in the 18 months since the election of President Rouhani in June 2013, Iranian authorities executed more than 1,193 people. This is an average of more than two executions every day.

The number of executions in that period was 31 percent higher than the number in the 18 months before President Rouhani assumed power. The number of juvenile offenders executed in 2014 was the highest since 1990.

Other human rights and Iranian resistance groups have pegged the number of executed by the regime even higher at 1,500 men, women and children.

But the prospect of a nuclear agreement is being met with growing skepticism with unexpected signs of trouble emerging including the potential for Iran to vastly increase its cyber warfare capabilities.

In a piece in The Hill, Fred Kagan, a national security scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and co-author of a recent report on the Iranian cyber threat, said “We’re in a lose-lose situation from that standpoint. Would you rather have them do that with more resources or fewer?”

Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas), recalled a speech last year in which Iran’s top mullah Ali Khamenei reminded university students they were “cyberwar agents.”

“I do not expect Iran’s quest for power to decrease if an agreement is reached, and cyber warfare is clearly part of its strategy,” he said.

In another clear signal about the threat the Iran regime poses to the region, a summit organized by the Obama administration in Washington invited the leaders of the six Arab Gulf states involved in the military campaign in Yemen against Iran-backed Houthi rebels, but only two monarchs confirmed their attendance with Saudi Arabia’s King Hamad bin Isaa Al Khalifa conspicuously declining the invitation.

The decision amounts to a public vote of no confidence in the U.S.-led response to Iranian aggression and proxy wars in Yemen, Syria and Iraq fueled by Iranian cash, weapons and fighters.

All of which served as a backdrop to a vote in the U.S. Senate yesterday by an unanimous zhi90-0 margin calling for the Iran regime to release three Americans – Saeed Abedini, Amir Hekmati and Jason Rezaian – that it holds in its prisons and assist in locating still-missing former FBI agent Robert Levinson.

Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho), who introduced the measure, argued the four should have been released before the U.S. started negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran.

“Iran thinks it elevates its position in the world because it does these kinds of things. It does not,” Risch said. “Certainly it shows toughness, but a barbarian type of toughness that the world is not impressed with at all.”

The contradictions in these nuclear talks were described by Jennifer Rubin writing in the Washington Post’s Right Turn blog:

“In short, not only can we not trust the Iranians to comply with whatever is in a final deal but we also cannot trust the administration to call them on it when Iran again cheats, as we know it will. In big ways and small, the administration has already signaled it will have a high tolerance for violations so as not to upset its diplomatic goals. Imagine how much more tolerant the Obama administration will be when cheating would spell the demolition of the president’s ‘legacy.’”

As the scrutiny deepens and expands on the Iran regime, more of the world’s news media are beginning to ask the kinds of hard questions the mullahs do not want to answer as they see their hopes for pulling a fast one on the world quickly shrinking.

By Michael Tomlinson

Why Human Rights Matter in Iran Nuke Talks

February 2, 2015 by admin

There has been a dirty little secret about the negotiations going on between Iran and the P5+1 group of nations seeking to limit Iran’s nuclear capability. It has hung like a cloud over two previous rounds of failed talks over the past years and threatens the third round of talks now underway.

What is it? The unwillingness of the P5+1 group to seriously raise the issue of Iran’s dismal human rights record and the need to make steep improvements in order for Iran to secure any kind of agreement.

For years now Iran’s ruling mullahs and their lobbying and PR machine in Washington, DC have argued strenuously that human rights issues are domestic ones and have no place at the bargaining table. In fact, the chief public face for Iran in the U.S., the National Iranian American Council has made the inclusion of human rights in talks a de facto red line in the sand, akin to asking mullahs in Iran to give up its military capabilities.

It is an odd position to be in since the U.S. has historically pushed for improved human rights situations as a condition of moving forward with international treaties and agreements with totalitarian regimes for decades. For example:

• The U.S. threatened to hold up China’s membership in the World Trade Organization if it did not improve its human rights situation in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre;
• The U.S. threatened to hold back on the North American Free Trade Agreement unless Mexico improved the plight of migrant workers and narco-terror gangs; and

So it is not unusual or inappropriate to broach such topics. In fact, Secretary of State John Kerry just recently raised the issue of the arrest of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian during the most recent round of talks, opening the door to a broader discussion of Iran’s human rights violations.

Iran and its lobbying allies have long contended that talks should be strictly centered on the issue of nuclear research and development, but even that position is a canard since Iran routinely seeks to tie other issues to the talks such as the immediate suspension of economic sanctions or the release of frozen assets.

Why are human rights important to these talks?

Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen, the Treasury Department’s outgoing point man on Iran sanctions, said in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal that Iran was “stuck. They can’t fix this economy unless they get sanctions relief.” Adding “I think they are coming to the negotiations with their backs to the wall.”

A hopeful sign, but also one that reinforces the historic opportunity the West has to seek real and meaningful change in Iran for the Iranian people. In the past year under Hassan Rouhani, there has been a significant rise in a broad crackdown on political dissent, cultural expression, gender restrictions and access to uncensored information and sources.

According to Amnesty International, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Iran and various human rights groups on the ground such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran, public executions have taken off over the past year and reached over 1,000 men and women. Iranian regime’s notorious Evin Prison is now filled to capacity and the mullahs continues to aggressively fund terror groups such as Hezbollah and Houthis and engage in open wars in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen.

More importantly, a nation’s view on human rights towards its own people is the most accurate gauge of its views on its neighbors and the world. By not involving human rights in these discussions, we leave out the one element that could truly make the West trust any agreement reached with Iran. Without a marked improvement in human rights, there can be no guarantees or assurances that Iran would ever live up to whatever bargain it brokered out of economic necessity and not from a worldview that it was right or a moral decision.

By Michael Tomlinson

Whitewashing Iran’s human right’s records to lobby softer position on nuclear talks

December 6, 2014 by admin

Photo credit: The gulf and Middle East Association for civil society-August 2014

The Ministry of Intelligence and Security of Iran had instructed its agents to try to advocate themselves as opposition by writing 80% against the regime and the violation of human rights in Iran, but they have to dedicate 20% to denying the opposition, namely the MEK (Mujahedin-e-Khalq), by spreading rumors discredit them. This seems to be the copy framework agreement with the Iranian regime’s lobby and appeasers with respect to the failed Iran talks in Vienna.

Recently, some advocates of Iranian origin who claim to be human rights activists are expressing concerns over the recent resolution of the House of Representatives against the human rights violation in Iran.

One of these “human rights activists” has written an article in The Hill today, expressing concerns that “seeking ways to achieve tangible human rights improvements inside Iran is also closely related to the outcome of the nuclear negotiations” and that including “separate issues – such as Iran’s rights record, or its support for terrorism – will make it more difficult to reach a nuclear deal”.

The author who by the way is a well-known advocate and affiliate of “NIAC” claims that “the Iranian human rights community strongly supports a successful diplomatic resolution of the nuclear crisis, particularly because many believe that without a deal, the human rights crisis in Iran will worsen”. He goes further in whitewashing the regime’s president Rouhani who is just another mullah within the hierarchy of the theocracy ruling Iran, saying: “the perpetuation of tensions over the nuclear file is likely to result in continued and even increased gross human rights violations. For example, throughout the past decade, Iranian hardliners, opposed to a deal, have thrived by capitalizing on the nuclear confrontation and using it to justify their repressive measures. Failure of the negotiations would embolden them. They would seek to weaken the government of relative moderate President Hassan Rouhani.”

This is while in Iran under the so called “moderate” Rouhani, over 1,100 people have been executed and thousands are on death row. Based on the number of executions that mainly appear on state newspapers in Iran, on average every 8 hours one person is being executed. Women are disgracefully attacked by regime-related thugs, either by acid or being stabbed under the pretext of disobeying the dress code. There is no free access to information, Iran is the biggest prison for journalists and the situation of religious minorities is outrageous, to name a few.

Last November, the United Nations General Assembly’s third committee adopted the UN’s 61st resolution condemning human rights abuses in Iran and urged the regime to stop the executions, in such conditions, overlooking the human rights in Iran and ignoring the fact that people and particularly women in Iran are living under despicable conditions is nothing but cruel, shameful and immoral. Asking the US politicians to be softer on the regime with such inhumane records of human rights, is even worse.

The author is also quoting some activists to strengthen his proposition and represent it as a request by the Iranian human rights community. He writes: “As Nasrin Sotoudeh , the prominent human rights lawyer and former political prisoner put it: ‘It is obvious that we welcome peaceful relations with all countries and as such support the negotiations’.” This is while reading Nasrin Sotoudeh’s entire quote, you can see that she is actually demanding the human rights issues to be discussed during negotiations and not to be ignored, exactly the opposite of what the Iranian lobby is criticizing the congress for in the Hill article. Here is her quote from the same source:

“if the Iranian state wants to rehabilitate its relations with the international community, it must certainly address fundamental human rights concerns on issues such as juvenile executions and freedom of expression. The Iranian government should clearly state its position on these issues during the nuclear negotiations. In my opinion, keeping silent on such issues until the end of negotiations will make it more difficult. My understanding is the European countries say we cannot easily bring up human rights issues because it will potentially threaten the negotiations. We say at a minimum ask the Iranian negotiators to express their position on fundamental human rights concerns such as juvenile executions which are banned by all international conventions.”

The truth of the matter is that the Iranian regime has strategically invested in its nuclear program. It is doing everything to get more time to complete the program and will not shift from this unless faced with more pressure and more sanctions. After all it was the sanctions that finally forced the mullahs to go to the negotiation table and accept the Geneva accord, not the appeasement policy that has unfortunately been the dominant policy of the West towards Iran in the past two decades.