Friday, March 29, 2024
HomeIran News NowTo Address Iran Regime’s Latest Abuses, Start by Ending Its Historical Impunity

To Address Iran Regime’s Latest Abuses, Start by Ending Its Historical Impunity

Iran_regime_heads_31102020

On Monday, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran presented his annual report to the General Assembly. The report was completed nearly one year after the nationwide Iran protests, during which over 1,500 peaceful protesters were fatally shot by the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). Thousands of others were arrested, and the regime’s judiciary has spent the past year meting out harsh sentences for activists, including death sentences.

In the midst of the earlier uprising, Iran regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei begrudgingly attributed the coordinated unrest to the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).

Less than a week before Rehman presented his report to the UN, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) hosted an online conference featuring a number renowned politicians from both American and European political circles. In it, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, NCRI’s president-elect, said: “The policy of appeasement has greatly emboldened the regime over the past 40 years,” adding that this was made especially obvious earlier in October when it was revealed that an Iranian diplomat had openly threatened European national security after being arrested for plotting a terrorist act near Paris.

Maryam Rajavi: EU faces a historic test vs. terrorism under the banner of Islam

The diplomat-terrorist, Assadollah Assadi, was arrested in Germany in 2018 and then extradited to Belgium despite appeals from Tehran. When it became clear that those appeals had been unsuccessful, Assadi reportedly resorted to blackmail and told investigators that Iran has numerous terrorist allies and proxies who would be watching to proceedings to see how Iranian operatives would be treated.

Despite his best efforts at intimidation, Assadi now faces trial on November 27, and it is generally expected that a guilty verdict and sentencing will come within days. Last week’s conference sought to underline the broader implications of Assadi’s terror plot, and it urged Western powers to take actions that would hold not just individual perpetrators but also the entire regime accountable.

The same advice is clearly applicable to the human rights situation, and indeed these two issues are very closely intertwined.

The 2018 bomb plot was meant to target an annual gathering of the NCRI, wherein Mrs. Rajavi was to deliver the keynote address. The regime had decided to eliminate the Iranian resistance wake of the 2018 nationwide uprising. By the time the plot was being set into motion, it was clear that the Iranian regime’s authorities had failed in their effort to stamp out dissent at home. Protests continued throughout 2018 despite dozens of deaths and thousands of arrests.

When Tehran similarly failed to crush the organized opposition via foreign terrorism, it reinforced the need for domestic repression. And this set the stage for the even more severe crackdown on the November 2019 uprising. Yet this too appears to have failed to restore control over Iranian society. Protests erupted across multiple provinces just two months after the uprising, in response to the regime’s attempted cover-up of a missile strike that downed a commercial airliner. And since then, officials have been speaking somewhat openly about the lingering threat of further nationwide protests being led by the MEK.

Weekly-Signe-up-logo-1

Since the regime’s days are numbered, the cycle of domestic repression and foreign terrorism can be expected to go on and on, with escalating risk both to the Iranian people and to global security, unless the cycle is interrupted by coordinated action from the international community.

To prevent the regime’s terrorism and human rights abuses, the international community should end its “policy of appeasement” of the Iranian regime. Many of the steps toward that outcome involve a more assertive response to recent and ongoing malign activities by the Iranian regime. But arguably the most important steps involve putting those activities in context with the regime’s fundamental nature and 41-year history, and holding it accountable for crimes that have remained unpunished over the years.

Where domestic human rights issues are concerned, the “policy of appeasement” dates back at least to the summer of 1988, when the international community ignored repeated calls to action by the Iranian Resistance, urging the Western policymakers and media outlets to help prevent an emerging massacre of political prisoners. As a result of overwhelming international silence, the regime was soon able to systematically execute approximately 30,000 dissidents, the vast majority of whom were MEK’s members and supporters.

1988_massacre_18082020
In the summer of 1988, Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering the massacre of 30000 political prisoners

Nearly as bad as the killings themselves was the way in which the lack of an international response contributed to the development of Iran’s abiding sense of impunity. Regime authorities have since cracked down with varying levels of brutality on every major movement that sought to undermine the theocratic system or promote democracy. And at virtually every step of the way, that sense of impunity has been reinforced by Western policymakers who have been ignoring the 1988 massacre.

Such naivety blatantly disregards the fact that Tehran has been openly defending the legacy of the 1988 massacre for more than 30 years, promoting its perpetrators through the ranks of leadership and using it as a template for smaller-scale crackdowns even now.

That trend will continue to escalate, with consequences for both Iranian activists and Western nationals, unless European governments and international bodies start to confront Tehran’s impunity head-on. The Assadi trial and the anniversary of the November uprising provide key opportunities to work toward that outcome. But no single act is more vital than a thorough, independent investigation into the worst crime of the regime: the 1988 massacre.