How to get Iran to improve its human rights
The arrest of another Iranian-American dramatizes efforts by Iran’s security establishment to undercut President Hassan Rouhani but also jeopardizes economic gains from the nuclear agreement.
As Iran begins implementing a landmark nuclear deal, hard-liners opposed to the government of President Hassan Rouhani are continuing a domestic political crackdown and jeopardizing a wider opening to the United States and the Iranian diaspora.
Reports that the Intelligence Ministry of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has seized a fourth Iranian-American — United Arab Emirates-based businessman Siamak Namazi — came as Ahmed Shaheed, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, issued a new report documenting Iran’s extensive use of the death penalty, continued crackdown on the press and civil society and discrimination against women and ethnic and religious minorities.
At the same time, the Iranian government has stopped a decadelong policy of denying or ignoring such international condemnations. Human rights activists say that gives them hope that multilateral pressure will eventually bear fruit.
In September, a delegation including members of the judiciary, the Iranian High Council for Human Rights and Foreign Ministry and anti-narcotics officials spent a day and a half with Shaheed in Geneva addressing his concerns, including Iran’s heavy use of the death penalty in drug-related cases, he said.
