Why Obama Should Highlight Iran’s Human Rights Abuses
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Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the United States has vacillated between engagement and confrontation with the Islamic Republic, with sanctions filling the gap. As Iran has moved closer to achieving its nuclear ambitions in recent years, tensions are rising once again. The latest round of U.S. sanctions, signed into law in 2010, has hurt the Iranian government by restricting finance for oil refineries and discouraging foreign companies from conducting business with it. Yet sanctions have not delayed Iran’s nuclear drive, foiled its support for terrorism abroad, or kept it from meddling in its neighbors’ affairs…
Washington will only neutralize Iran by exploiting the regime’s main vulnerability: its false claim to legitimacy. The ayatollahs’ hold on power is inherently unstable because they have no popular mandate. Since staging a rigged election in 2009 to keep Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power, they have relied on repression and brutality to silence opposition, jailing journalists, torturing detainees, and executing critics (both real and imagined). By highlighting these crimes on the world stage and actively supporting Iran’s dissidents, the United States can place a new, more effective kind of pressure on Tehran and support the movement for democratic change from within. Focusing on human rights violations will allow the United States to expose the hypocrisy of the regime and remind Iran of its domestic troubles as it tries to expand its power and influence.
The current state of affairs in Iran began with the Green Movement uprising in 2009. As hundreds of thousands flowed into the streets to protest the sham victory of Ahmadinejad in the nation’s presidential election, security forces cracked down, worsening the country’s already severe level of oppression. The Iranian authorities admit to having arrested more than 4,500 protesters during the crackdown. Opposition groups report that there are at least 1,000 political prisoners still in jail, reflecting Iran’s long-practiced tactics of attempting to break dissidents with prolonged imprisonment and isolation and by harassing their families.
Iran has the highest per-capita execution rate in the world, with 252 confirmed executions in 2010 and reports of 300 more (out of a population of over 70 million). In absolute numbers, that is second only to China. And there has been no reprieve in 2011. Official Iranian media and human rights groups report 450 executions this year, many conducted in secret, unannounced to the lawyers and relatives of the accused. There have been 33 public executions so far this year; three men have been hanged for being homosexuals, a capital crime in Iran. In September alone, the state executed more than 100 of its citizens.