{"id":231282,"date":"2020-12-16T17:10:51","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T17:10:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=231282"},"modified":"2023-02-01T05:29:55","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T04:29:55","slug":"assertive-policies-are-needed-to-address-iran-regimes-crimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/assertive-policies-are-needed-to-address-iran-regimes-crimes\/","title":{"rendered":"Assertive Policies Are Needed To Address Iran Regime\u2019s Crimes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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1500 Iranians were killed by security forcer in November 2019 protests in Iran<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Iran\u2019s clerical regime announced that it had carried out the execution of a resident of France, Ruhollah Zam, several European nations responded by pulling out of a Europe-Iran Business Forum that was scheduled to begin on Monday. Meanwhile, the European Union released a statement condemning the execution \u201cin the strongest terms\u201d and reiterating its opposition to the death penalty as well as its concern over the systematic denial of due process and \u201chuman dignity\u201d in the Iranian criminal justice system.<\/p>\n

These actions were undoubtedly appropriate first steps toward a broader reckoning with Iran\u2019s contempt for human rights. But they must be understood in precisely those terms, as the first of many steps designed to hold the regime and its leading officials accountable for the unlawful killing of dissidents and political prisoners, as well as for a host of other malign activities. Furthermore, the EU\u2019s statement and the cancellation of Monday\u2019s economic diplomacy panel should raise serious questions as to why European policy was amendable to such events in the first place.<\/p>\n

With their simultaneous decisions to pull out of the forum, the French, German, Austrian, and Italian foreign ministries seemed to imply that they believe they can have more of an effect by reducing relations with the Iranian regime than by maintaining or increasing them. Yet each of those foreign ministries has accepted, and supported a set of EU policies that run in exactly the opposite direction.<\/p>\n

Those policies are outright appeasement. A lack of serious consequences for malign activity has left Tehran with an abiding sense of impunity, thereby encouraging more of the same behavior and leaving Western policymakers to decide between admitting fault in order to break the cycle, or doubling and tripling down on the status quo in hopes that Tehran would eventually come to appreciate friendly relations with its \u201cenemies\u201d and change its own foreign policies accordingly.<\/p>\n

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Ruhollah Zam was executed on December 12, by the Iranian regime<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The latter preference has been predominant for the better part of four decades, and the consequences arguably include a laundry list of fatalities much like that of Ruhollah Zam<\/a>. In fact, such individual instances of the regime\u2019s political retaliation pale in comparison to certain crimes against humanity that have gone largely ignored and entirely unpunished ever since the founding of the Islamist dictatorship.<\/p>\n

The worst of these crimes made a return to international headlines just days before Zam\u2019s execution, when a group of United Nations human rights experts published<\/a> an open letter to the Iranian government which demanded information pertaining to the systematic execution<\/a> and secret burial of political prisoners during the summer of 1988. The letter was originally delivered to its recipients in September, but was held back from the public to allow for a formal response, which never came.<\/p>\n

The regime\u2019s casual dismissal of that letter served as another reminder of its perceived impunity, insofar as it demonstrated that Iranian officials believe they don\u2019t even have to defend themselves against accounts of a massacre that have claimed 30,000 victims<\/a>. Further details of that massacre emerged in the form of leaked audio recording in 2016, on which Ruhollah Khomeini\u2019s would-be successor could be heard decrying it as the \u201cworst crime of the Islamic Republic\u201d and confirming that the \u201cdeath commissions<\/a>\u201d in charge of it had been utterly indiscriminate in their application of the death penalty, refusing to spare young teenagers or pregnant women.<\/p>\n

The resulting public discussion of the killings yielded some of the most shameless commentary to date, with at least one perpetrator saying he was \u201cproud\u201d to have carried out \u201cGod\u2019s command\u201d of death for members of the People\u2019s Mojahedin Organization of Iran<\/a> \u2013 the main target of the massacre. The relevant quotation was offered to state media by Mostafa Pourmohammadi, who was then serving as Minister of Justice. The current occupant of that office was also a direct participant in the 1988 massacre, as was the current head of Iran\u2019s judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Iran: Who is Ebrahim Raisi?<\/div><\/div>
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